Berkley Center

Rev. Drew Christiansen, S.J., writes in an America online Short Take that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's new Commission on Unalienable Rights is deeply problematic. Christiansen argues that its creation is motivated by a desire to manipulate international understandings of human rights, both by ignoring the perspectives of other nations and by seeking to return our understanding of natural rights to the days of the American Founding. This approach ignores the many meaningful ways in which our shared understandings of human rights have developed over the past two centuries and therefore represents a threat to international human rights advocacy.