Mark L. Schneider, Governments Weigh the Costs of Repression, 1978 A former Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador, U.S. President Jimmy Carter appointed Mark L. Schneider as United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights. He delivered these remarks, which explain the specifics of the Carter Administration s human rights policies toward Latin America, at a meeting of the American Society of International Law. In the 1990s, U.S. President Clinton appointed Schneider as the Director of the Peace Corps. My topic is the U.S. human rights policy as it affects the countries of the hemisphere. I shall explore the ways in which the existence of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights affects U.S. relations with Latin America. The U.S. Government over the past year has emphasized in its bilateral relations with all countries, whether in the Americas or other regions, that human rights concerns are of fundamental importance. Examining the implementation of this policy, three general points need to be made. First, the policy is a global one that seeks to achieve the full exercise of the same rights for all peoples in all countries. Second, human rights objectives will not determine each and every foreign policy decision; yet neither will they be shunted aside. They have been moved from the wings to center stage of American foreign policy decisionmaking, and they will be pursued even when they compete with other significant interests. Finally, it is a policy that must be implemented pragmatically to be effective. Countries differ in historical and cultural attributes, and we have to choose the right tactic and approach to be effective. There will be no automatic formulas, no summing up the number of detainees to produce mechanistic conclusions. Each time, in each country, we will try to determine what actions will influence governments to halt the use of repression. President Carter signaled a heightened consciousness toward human rights in his address to the Organization of American States in April 1977. He declared: You will find this country eager to stand beside those nations which represent human rights and which promote democratic ideals. Our own concern for these values will naturally influence our relations with the countries of the hemisphere and throughout the world. To those who ask whether the policy has gone beyond the reaches of rhetoric, let them ask the governments in Latin America and elsewhere. Let them ask the leaders of democratic opposition forces whether a different message is coming from Washington. Let them ask the victims and their families. We may not have taken all of the steps that every outside observer might wish or even what some advocates inside might propose, but there should be no question that a fundamental change in the tone and direction of United States policy has occurred, placing this country alongside those who speak for human dignity. Some regimes call forth the banner of sovereignty to challenge this new priority to human rights. With the background of the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man, the International Covenants and the Helsinki Final Act, we reject the notion that governments can claim immunity from international concern when they violate the rights of their citizens. When individuals disappear in the night, when dissidents are killed or tortured or committed to mental hospitals or placed behind bars for exercising fundamental civil rights, then the international community cannot stand silent. The recent reminder of the Holocaust taught us at least one lesson: there is an obligation for the human family, whether as individuals or as states, to bear witness. We cannot stand silent ever again.
The rights we seek to advance both regionally and internationally are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Declaration on the Rights and Duties of Man. Fundamentally, they include without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion, the right to be free from governmental violation of the integrity of the person, the right to the fulfillment of basic human needs, and the right to civil and political liberties. We seek to promote the full range of these rights. All are important. And we reject the argument that nations must choose between political freedom and economic development. There is no necessary inconsistency between the two. People, no matter how poor, desire to be free. That statement does not relieve us of the obligation to promote economic development in the region and elsewhere. When we apply our policy to nations within the hemisphere, I would emphasize that we have stressed to them that we do not come to this concern with a special claim to purity. Slavery was outlawed in many of the countries in Latin America far earlier than it was in the United States. We have tolerated violations of the rights of minorities for far too long. Equal justice before the law for a poor migrant worker still is a matter of grave doubt in many parts of our own country. Vast gaps in the distribution of economic and social benefits persist. The difference is that we acknowledge these flaws and are working to resolve them. And we admit the legitimacy of international inquiry into them. We acknowledge too that the history of our relationship with the nations of the hemisphere has not been without reproach. Yet, in the hemisphere, there are historical and topical reasons why the implementation of the human rights policy has had a particularly high profile. That does not contradict the global nature of the policy. Some look to our concern for dissidents and Soviet Jews and argue that it is really only a part of the cold war strategy. Others, witnessing our opposition to apartheid and our efforts to promote majority rule in Southern Africa, assert that the policy is focused primarily on that part of the world. Nevertheless, there are several underlying reasons for the high visibility of the policy s implementation in Latin America. First, Latin America was a region where past U.S. policy actions had drawn sharp attack, precisely because of their failure to respond to traditional U.S. values. Second, Latin American nations form part of the western political traditions and share with us historical commitments to individual freedom. Their own struggle for independence from colonial rule was rooted in philosophic soil not unlike our own. We are seeking to encourage a return to the rule of law and democratic values, not the initial creation of a system that protects those values. Third, our network of economic, military and political ties with Latin America has a far longer history than those in other parts of the world. Our determination to carry out the statutory human rights conditions placed on foreign assistance programs inevitably meant that some saw a special focus on the hemisphere. Fourth, until late summer of 1977, the Inter-American Development Bank was the major international financial institution affected by human rights legislation. Many of the early actions of the Administration with regard to multilateral lending thus were concentrated in the hemisphere. Furthermore, the United States has a veto power in The Fund for Special Operations of the IDB, unlike in other institutions, adding to our impact in this region. Finally, it is only in Latin America that we are a constituent part of a regional human rights structure with special obligations as a member of the Organization of American States and a signatory of the American
Declaration. The General Assembly of the O.A.S. was a major forum for the articulation of our policy. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance emphasized last year at Grenada the importance of the human rights policy and our desire to see the strengthening of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Looking back over the course of the past year, let me summarize how we have put this policy into practice. All of these actions have been taken globally; yet as I have noted, they have seemed more pronounced, and more of a break with the recent past, in the hemisphere. We have engaged in vigorous diplomacy, raising at all levels human rights issues in the context of our overall relationship with nations. We have stated clearly the high priority that the U.S. executive and legislative branches and the American people ascribe to this objective. Human rights concerns huddled on the periphery of diplomatic dialogue in the past in some case even beyond the pale. Now they are at the center of diplomatic interchange. Frequently, that has meant the center of host government decision-making. These initiatives often have been underlined by symbolic acts: trips by senior State, Defense, and Treasury Department officials; high-level discussions with individuals in the political opposition, some living in exile; and cultural and education exchanges. When President Carter met with Cardinal Arns and other spokesmen for human rights concerns in Brazil and when Secretary Vance met with human rights advocates in Argentina, they were sending a message of commitment to human values and democratic ideals throughout the region. When the bilateral relationship includes military or economic aid, we have communicated frankly that this Administration is making human rights a fundamental factor in its assistance decisions. In this connection, we have halted, reduced or refused to increase security assistance to a number of Latin American and other countries over the past year and have withheld commercial licenses for military equipment for armed forces in several nations which have engaged in serious human rights violations. No country with serious human rights violations can assume that it will receive arms from the United States for internal security purposes. In addition, we have denied or deferred bilateral economic assistance to certain countries. As Deputy Secretary Warren Christopher has said, When countries we assist consistently curtail human rights, and where our preferred diplomatic efforts have been unavailing, we must consider restrictions on the flow of our aid, both overall levels and individual loans or grants. In the multilateral lending arena, it is legitimate for donors to take human rights into account in providing development assistance. The integrity of the individual, equity and social justice are closely linked to economic development. Among the more than 20 non-needy loans we have opposed in the international development banks, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay were among the countries affected. Several loans have been withdrawn from consideration by other countries in the region after being informed that we could not support them. Since we also advocate meeting the basic human needs of the poor, in most cases we usually will support loans or bilateral projects even in countries governed by repressive regimes. We ask whether the projects directly benefit the needy and what the impact of our action on the overall human rights situation will be. These are some of the ways in which we have implemented the human rights policy in pressing for improvements in various countries in the hemisphere. At the same time, we have viewed the existence of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission as an independent force pressing for the achievement of the same goal the advancement of human rights. The Commission has been a lonely and often embattled defender of human rights throughout its history. Its role remains unique in the region and its potential, with the coming into force of the American Convention on Human Rights, is substantial.
We have the opportunity in this hemisphere to match the strides taken in Europe through the work of the European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights. The concepts of democracy and individual liberty have strong appeal throughout the Caribbean and Central and South America. We have a tremendous distance yet to travel; but it is not an impossible journey. With Venezuela, Costa Rica, Mexico and others, we were successful in expanding the resources and financing of the Inter-American Commission this year. That perhaps was a small first step. The coming into force of the American Convention on Human Rights will be a more significant and impressive step. In Grenada last June, Secretary Vance offered the Commission open access to the United States and urged others to do the same. Since then, the Commission has visited Panama and El Salvador and other visits appear likely. These actions and its recent reports, have enhanced the stature and influence of this regional body. It is significant that there will be public debate and discussion of those reports at the O.A.S. General Assembly this year and hopefully this will take place each subsequent year. We have our own obligations in the hemisphere and we took our own first step last year when President Carter signed the American Convention. It was submitted to the Senate for ratification this year. We have encouraged other states to do likewise and the number of signatories and adherents has climbed each month. Seventeen nations now have signed the convention and seven have ratified it. Strengthening the regional human rights machinery is essential to achieve human rights improvements in the long run, providing a regional consensus and applying the weight of regional condemnation against violations. For this reason, we also endorsed action which took place in the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva last month when Nigeria successfully sponsored a resolution favoring the creation of regional human rights commissions. The Commission specifically referred to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as a model for regions where no such institution existed. The establishment of more active and vigorous regional human rights institutions will be a major accomplishment. Even then, however, our bilateral conduct must continue to reflect human rights concerns. There is a final issue I would like to address today and that is to examine briefly what has been our record. No one can fail to recognize that authoritarian military regimes still rule today in many countries of the hemisphere, and that each day sees new victims of repression in some corner of the region. But there has been change, some of it a result of international nongovernmental activity, like the International Commission of Jurists, the International League for Human Rights, international church groups, or Amnesty International, some of it the result of pressure from other nations, some of it the result of internal tensions widening the fissures in these regimes. But some also may be a result of our policy. We will never know which act helped produce the decision to release prisoners, to reduce torture and disappearances, to end a state of siege, to restore judicial process. We can never plot graphically the cause and effect that produced decisions to schedule elections and turn away from rule by decree. But for the first time, we are beginning to see governments weigh the costs of repression. They weigh them in relation to their relations with the United States, with other governments and with the international community. Some of their responses are cosmetic, designed to ease the pressure for change without altering the system of repression they have set in place. But even then, each act of liberalization has a shock effect on the remainder of the institution, and each time it may be a little more difficult to hold back the forces seeking greater freedom and greater human dignity. So we, and hopefully organizations such as yours, and individuals as well, will continue to expose violations of human rights and press for governments to halt their acts of repression. Senator Robert Kennedy said once,
Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. We intend to keep to our course, for our actions may yet send forth some of those ripples that moving together will help protect the dignity of the individual in the hemisphere and the future of democracy in the world. Remarks by Mark L. Schneider, United States Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law 72 (April 27-29, 1978) 202-208.