Erin:Welcome to T2A webchat where we are learning more about the Human Rights First organization, its goals and missions and its relation to the global political climate. Our guest is Neil Hicks, the organization's International Policy Advisor Let’s take our first question from Eritrea... ------------------------------- Simon, Asmara, Eritrea (email):Without human rights, life is in danger. Many strong countries who are telling others to respect human rights are indeed violating them. Everyone needs to respect human rights.
Neil:We at Human Rights First are very much of the same opinion. We are a U-S-based organization and we have an international focus and concern in our work so that means we are very much concerned about the human rights practices of the U.S. government as well as human rights practices and violations in other parts of the world I agree with you that it is vital that all governments strive to uphold their obligations in the field of human rights. ------------------------------- A.C. Rathnavel, India (email):How effective is your organization in identifying and resolving cases of violation. Do you speak with leaders of countries with identified violations and how do you verify the information you obtain?
Neil:We are an organization that tries to measure our effectiveness to identify problems, define what we mean by resolving them and work toward doing that. On the problem, we use a variety of techniques to arrive at a result so yes we certainly talk to governments, those responsible for the violations and we seek to confirm with them what they think they are doing whether they agree there is a violation and we make recommendations to the government as to how it should change policy to prevent violations from occurring. But we do a lot of other things too. We use the media to try to bring pressure on violators, we work through international organizations like the United Nations, we also try to encourage other governments to bring pressure to bear and we do this a lot with the U.S. government -- to put pressure on other governments to improve their human rights practices...we also work with governments in Latin America and with Europe. And very importantly we try to mobilize ordinary people to have a voice on human rights issues and to speak out on violations. We receive information about violations from a variety of sources; from the press, but also from people in the countries concerned, victims of violations and from local human rights organizations. We verify that information by contacting local human rights activists and discuss with them the reports. We can also talk to journalists and even government officials in that country so we get different reactions to reports of violations so we can make a judgment as to what is really happening. We carry out our own investigations with fact finding missions on the ground to establish the facts. ------------------------------- Wondwossen Hailu, Addis Abeba, Ethiopia (email):Is it a human rights abuse when governments force residents to live in conditions dangerous to their health?
Neil:Yes, there is a right to health. It's what's often referred to as an economic right. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights includes both civil and political and economic and social rights. Human Rights First is committed to upholding all rights including economic and social and civil and political, so certainly if there is a denial of the right to health this is a human rights issue and we would urge governments to work for the realization of economic and social rights, just as they do with civil and political rights. ------------------------------- P. Madan Mohan, India (email) :What is your group’s approach in developing countries…do you have offices or affiliates in India and other places around the world?
Neil:We don't have any affiliates or offices in any other country than the United States, but we do work in close partnership with local organizations and activists in many different countries. We haven't done much work in India and don't have a lot of human rights activist contact there. ------------------------------- Charles (email):How does your organization differ from the many other human rights groups that already exist? How much of your group’s financial assets go toward direct aid to the poor and sick? What is the nature of this direct aid?
Neil:We are one of only a few organizations in the United States that are not funded by governments In the United States, it's only Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and ourselves who are independent of government funding. There are many other international focused human rights organizations but many take funding from the U.S. government and elsewhere. We think it's important to maintain our independence of all governments. Even if you look around the world, many organizations in Europe either take funding from their own government or from European Union sources. We often work in close partnership with these groups but we choose to be independent of government and that's one of our distinct characteristics. I also think it's important that there should be more than one or two groups. It's good to have a plurality of voices on these questions. We all have our different styles and weaknesses and we complement each other in working together to promote human rights. We're not a humanitarian organization in that we don't give money to anyone to alleviate poverty for example. We spend our own money on our own programs. You can learn more at www.humanrightsfirst.org.
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Hannah:Does the organization abide by a code that dictates when intervention is necessary, or is that decided on a case-by-case basis?
Neil:This is the most difficult decision we have to make We're a small group, about 75 employees, so we can't deal with every human rights violation in the world. So we have to be selective. We do that by trying to identify issues and areas where we think we can make a difference, where it's possible for our organization to achieve a desired result. We work within the framework of a 5-year strategic plan (on the website) and of an annual plan which works toward the strategic plan goals. That doesn't mean we're not flexible because things happen in the world and violations occur and sometimes we will react if we see an opportunity to contribute -- but most of our work takes place within the framework of our strategic and annual plans.
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Hannah:Your mission statement says you “build coalitions among those with diverging views.” How do you approach the process of unifying seemingly clashing cultural and political perspectives?
Neil:Let me answer by providing examples. If we look at our work in the United States in recent years, we have been quite successful in campaigning against torture in the United States by U.S. forces, by building an alliance of retired very senior military officers -- and with the help of these distinguished former military leaders we've been able to reach out to people in both political parties and across the political spectrum to build a strong sentiment and coalition against the use of torture in the interrogation of terror suspects by any branch of the U.S. government. This was the first time we had this kind of alliance with military leaders but it was the appropriate alliance to deal with the problem we were facing, especially as those who defended the use of torture said it was necessary on national security grounds So in order to counter that argument, we had real experts on national security who said it's not necessary.
------------------------------- Erin:What recommendations do you have for people looking to get involved in human rights related policy? What is a good starting point for learning the skills and acquiring the resources necessary to work in this field?
Neil:Human rights issues arise everywhere so it's probably best to start with where you are with your local context and area of interest. If you're motivated to become involved in either a local fight on human rights issues or are interested in something international, then getting involved as a volunteer initially and giving your time and expertise to a rights cause you believe in is a way to get started. Most human rights activists don't work for human rights organizations, they have regular jobs and lives but get caught up in human rights causes for one reason or another. If you're someone living in the developed world and are a student, then yes there are courses you might take in university that can increase your chances of working in the human rights field, so the field of law and also social sciences like political science and also specializing in a particular country or region, learning the language is very important. These can all be a foundation for professional work in the field of human rights. -------------------------------
Erin:How do you promote a code of human rights without being accused of ethnocentrism? Have you had to deal with claims that your work is ethnocentric, and if so, how have you dealt with this? How do you balance respect for cultural practices with the need to reform them?
Neil:As a organization based in the U.S. in dealing with human rights issues around the world in a wide variety of cultural contexts, it's important to bear in mind cultural differences and have a strategy for advancing human rights in an appropriate way for local context. The way we try to do that is by working closely with local people and activists. One of the powerful things about human rights is that people around the world of all different cultural backgrounds want them and support the cause. So in every country we can find allies and because they come from within those communities they are authentic voices of that culture and that country. So very often we are combating governments, especially governments who try to claim that human rights are somehow not applicable to them, that they are special, and they use a variety of excuses, with culture being a frequent one, and we have to show that in fact their people who represent their culture do in fact want these rights and are aggrieved when these rights are denied. Human Rights have roots in every culture and society. The Universal Declaration of 1948 is a product of cultural collaboration and cooperation. The drafters of the Declaration were selected to represent the major religions and different cultural regions of the world and it's a remarkable achievement of agreement between people of diverse backgrounds.
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Erin:Policymaking in the United States often seems very polarized, in that issues are often decided along party lines. Have you had difficulty promoting your message on a non-partisan level, or do you see participation from both sides of the political spectrum?
Neil:We certainly view human rights as a bipartisan issue and over Human Rights First's 30-year history we have been able to cooperate with Presidents and congresses of different parties in advancing human rights causes. And today, we have members of both parties in the Congress who we work with on a range of human rights issues and who we view as supporters of human rights issues so in practice there is a good deal of bipartisan support and cooperation on human rights issues. There is a Congressional Human Rights Caucus which is a bipartisan body within both Houses of Congress, which champions human rights issues around the world. One problem with this approach is perhaps, that in a way it's remark easy to find bipartisan support on a human rights question, on many human rights questions -- the downside of that perhaps is that when these questions become difficult and there are policy trade offs to be made, then the support of both parties is perhaps not as strong as we might like it to be. So support for human rights is broad within both parties in the U.S., but perhaps we can sometimes question how deep it is. -------------------------------
Erin:What changes do you hope the incoming U.S. president and administration will bring, with regard to human rights initiatives?
Neil:We view human rights promotion and protection around the world as being something that should be undertaken multilaterally in cooperation with other governments. Unfortunately we have reached a situation in the world where the U.S. government speaks very loudly about human rights but many people around the world don't believe it. There is a limit to the unilateral power of the United States to promote human rights. So we hope that the next administration will give some priority to restoring U.S. relations with its democratic allies around the world and give a new focus to its work within international institutions like the United Nations, like the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe), where diplomacy is often gradual and frustrating but nonetheless where real progress can be made and where the U.S. could restore its reputation as a global leader on human rights issues. ------------------------------- Erin:Do you think humanity has made progress in expanding the notion of human rights, and engaging in humane practices? Or are we progressing in some ways while regressing in others?
Neil:There has been real progress at the level of raising awareness of rights and setting standards for rights at the global level. Human rights really is a universal cause today, many people of all different countries are aware of human rights and they demand their rights in many different contexts. Clearly we have many pressing human rights problems in the world today that have not been resolved. We can talk for example very seriously about the recurrence of genocide from the wars in the Balkans to Rwanda to the current situation in Darfur. Here we see perhaps the most serious form of human rights violation existing in the modern world and the international community seemingly impotent to stop it, so that is a great challenge facing the human rights movement. Similarly in the area of economic and social rights, global poverty is an enormous problem, progress has been very patchy at best -- and grinding poverty is again a massive challenge for the human rights movement. There have of course been great successes in terms of countries that were dictatorships becoming free societies, in southern Africa, in Latin America, in southern and eastern Europe and in parts of Asia -- these are great successes which should not be minimized in any way, but the struggle for human rights is a continuing struggle -- one can never sit back and declare victory -- there will always be other challenges. -------------------------------
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Erin:Thank you Neil. Neil Hicks is International Policy Adviser to Human Rights First at www.humanrightsfirst.org Our thanks to him and to you for joining us. We hope you can come back Wednesday, September 17th at 1800 utc when we learn the story of the woman who shared the success and failures of Mahatma Gandhi. We’ll talk with Arun Gandhi, the fifth grandson of the late spiritual leader and Kastur. That’s Wednesday, September 17th at 1800 utc right here on voanews.com See you then! | 
