Human Rights Commissions & Committees
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This research paper discusses the principal human rights commissions and committees, public and private, their charters, activities and performance. The cause of human rights has probably been advanced more by the actions and example of exceptional and dedicated individuals, such as Mahatma Gandhi, Andrei Sakharov and Harry Wu, among many others, than it has by the activities of professional human rights organizations. Some of the latter, such as the European Commission on Human Rights in the public sector, and Amnesty International among private organizations, have made substantial contributions at the margin to man's slow and frustrating progress toward a more civilized world. Since the 1970s, the human rights movement has become larger, better organized and more influential. Important elements of it have also some taken on some of the more unattractive features of the modern world. Some agencies have become more bureaucratic and hobbbled by inertia. Others are more dynamic but pursue their agenda with ideological fervor and narrowness of viewpoint. As the movement has become a career path for ambitious professional activists, competition among private human rights organizations for media and public attention has become more intense. After the end of World War II, the United Nations took the lead in defining minimum standards of human rights and in sponsoring along with the churches, the International Red Cross and other private groups, humanitarian aid
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rights. In 1977 Congress established in the Department of State an Office of Human Rights and Humanitarian Assistance (OHRHA).
The emphasis placed by President Jimmy Carter on human rights as a critical element of its foreign policy provoked controversy. Jeanne Kirkpatrick, President Reagan's Ambassador to the United Nations, said Carter's human rights policy failed because "it was utopian, because it was conducted outside of the political and historical context, and because it didn't work" (Kirkpatrick, 1981, p. 49). Reagan largely ignored OHRHA and put it under Assistant Secretary of State Eliott Abrams, later convicted of illegal activities in Central America. Clarke said that office has largely become ineffective:
"After its debut in 1978, the State Department's annual human rights report was a major event in international politics. . . . Today, . . . no one gives a damn. The 1997 version appeared last month to barely suppressed international yawns" (1998, p. B9).
Another international organization, the South African Truth and Conciliation Commission, which offers amnesty to past human rights abusers in return for confessions has exposed many of the abuses of the apartheid period, such as the beating and slaying of black
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Approximate Word count = 2255
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)
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