US human rights panel will have widespread impact

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Social Values ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Religious Liberty ◽  
The Body ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Lgbt Issues

Significance Pompeo launched the commission on July 8, charging it with providing “fresh thinking” on human rights where concepts of rights have “departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights”. However, the body’s precise activities are left vague. The commission is also widely interpreted as an effort to infuse the current framework for human rights in US foreign policy with more conservative social values. Impacts The commission could be a flashpoint in budget negotiations down to September/October and beyond. The body will likely reinterpret rights more conservatively, including on abortion and LGBT issues, and elevate religious liberty. The pro-Israel lobby will welcome the commission, partly as the UN has been criticised as being ‘anti-Israel’.

Religion’s role in US foreign policy to grow

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Religious Persecution ◽  
Muslim Countries ◽  
Trump Administration

Significance Any Trump-Rouhani meeting would undoubtedly involve discussion of religion and politics, since these issues have set both governments at odds since the Iranian Islamic revolution in 1979. This is important, since the nature of the influence that religion is having on US foreign policy is changing under Trump’s administration. The administration has often downplayed the role of ‘values’ (understood to be the promotion of democracy and human rights) in foreign policy. Now, religious freedom is emerging as a values framework. Religion is also used more frequently to justify the administration’s policies towards complicated issues including Iran and Syria, and counterterrorism. Impacts Defense Secretary James Mattis would likely oppose any attempt at regime change in Iran. Emphasising religious freedom will play well to pro-evangelical voters, likely most benefitting Republicans. The administration will increase funding for anti-genocide and anti-religious-persecution measures. Perceptions that the Trump administration is ‘anti-Muslim’ could constrain it advancing foreign policy in Muslim countries. US sanctions could be imposed on religious grounds, which could affect US and other investors.

Trump values reshape US foreign human rights agenda

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Future Thinking ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Wide Range

Significance The report is intended to guide future thinking on human rights in US foreign policy and to emphasise a global battle for values versus China and Russia. It also has a clear electoral aspect, as the selected rights will appeal to religious conservatives and strict constructionists in the legal sector, two groups that President Donald Trump will rely on as he seeks re-election this November. Impacts A Democratic president would discard the Commission on Unalienable Rights and the report. A Democratic president would focus on a wide range of ‘new’ human rights areas. The report will curtail Trump's scope to downplay rights disputes with Russia and China.

Prospects for US foreign policy to end-2018

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Order ◽  
Us Foreign Policy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Human Rights Council

Subject Prospects for US foreign policy to end-2018. Significance The United States yesterday withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council, the latest in a series of foreign policy moves this year shaking up the international order.

scholarly journals God, New Natural Law Theory, and Human Rights

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 613
Author(s):  
Christopher Tollefsen
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Creative Activity ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Full Theory ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Epistemological Dimension

Critics of the “New” Natural Law (NNL) theory have raised questions about the role of the divine in that theory. This paper considers that role in regard to its account of human rights: can the NNL account of human rights be sustained without a more or less explicit advertence to “the question of God’s existence or nature or will”? It might seem that Finnis’s “elaborate sketch” includes a full theory of human rights even prior to the introduction of his reflections on the divine in the concluding chapter of Natural Law and Natural Rights. But in this essay, I argue that an adequate account of human rights cannot, in fact, be sustained without some role for God’s creative activity in two dimensions, the ontological and the motivational. These dimensions must be distinguished from the epistemological dimension of human rights, that is, the question of whether epistemological access to truths about human rights is possible without reference to God’s existence, nature, or will. The NNL view is that such access is possible. However, I will argue, the epistemological cannot be entirely cabined off from the relevant ontological and motivational issues and the NNL framework can accommodate this fact without difficulty.

On American Values, Unalienable Rights, and Human Rights: Some Reflections on the Pompeo Commission

2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathias Risse
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Economic Rights ◽  
Declaration Of Independence ◽  
American Values ◽  
Natural Law Theory ◽  
Per Se ◽  
The U.S

AbstractIn July 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a Commission on Unalienable Rights, charged with a reexamination of the scope and nature of human rights–based claims. From his statements, it seems that Pompeo hopes the commission will substantiate—by appeal to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and to natural law theory—three key conservative ideas: (1) that there is too much human rights proliferation, and once we get things right, social and economic rights as well as gender emancipation and reproductive rights will no longer register as human rights; (2) that religious liberties should be strengthened under the human rights umbrella; and (3) that the unalienable rights that should guide American foreign policy neither need nor benefit from any international oversight. I aim to show that despite Pompeo's framing, the Declaration of Independence, per se, is of no help with any of this, whereas evoking natural law is only helpful in ways that reveal its own limitations as a foundation for both human rights and foreign policy in our interconnected age.

Rights

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Pennington
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Legal Positivism ◽  
Individual Rights ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Group Rights ◽  
Constitutional Jurisprudence ◽  
Theological Thought

One of the most notable characteristics of Western societies has been the development of individual and group rights in legal, theological, and philosophical thought of the first two millennia. It has often been noted that thinkers in Non-Western societies have not had the same preoccupation with rights. The very concept of rights is laden with numerous problems. Universality is the most basic and difficult. If human rights are only a product of Western ideas of justice, they cannot have universality. In an age that is dominated by conceptions of law embracing some form of legal positivism, many scholars recognize only individual rights that have been established by the constitutional jurisprudence of individual countries or their legal systems. Historically, the emergence of rights in European jurisprudence is intimately connected with the terms ius naturale and lex naturalis in Western jurisprudence and theological thought. Human beings may never agree on universal rules of a natural law, but they might agree on universal precepts that shape the penumbra of rights surrounding natural rights.

Dutch ties with Turkey and Russia may not recover soon

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Energy Resource ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Eu Accession ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Bilateral Relations

Significance This comes after the formal withdrawal of the Dutch ambassador to Turkey in early February and the resignation of Foreign Minister Halbe Zijlstra on February 13 marked new lows in the Netherlands’ relations with Ankara and Moscow, respectively. Impacts Poor bilateral relations could hit Dutch tourism to Turkey. Tension with Russia combined with shrinking domestic reserves may encourage the Dutch to move away from gas as the main energy resource. The Netherlands is likely to reject any further talks about Turkey’s EU accession for the foreseeable future. The Netherland’s foreign policy focus on human rights, particularly of minority groups, could further sour relations with Turkey and Russia.

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