Human Rights and the 2008 Presidential Campaign

January 9, 2008, 12:30pm – 2:00pm

About This Event

Human rights issues have rarely, if ever, been a principal focus of political campaigns for president or even for Congress.  Over the past few years, however, human rights questions have played a more and more central role in how the United States is perceived around the world.  One of the rationales cited by President Bush for the war in Iraq, for example, was the need to establish a democratic state in the heart of the Middle East.  The “unsigning” of the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court; the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the denial of habeas corpus to certain prisoners; revelations regarding U.S. use of torture—all these have colored the attitude of the international community toward America and thereby implicated U.S. national interests quite directly.  Moreover, the continuing saga of unstaunched death and destruction in Darfur, Sudan, has cast a pall over the reputation of every country that has failed to stop it. 

Given the relationship, then, of human rights controversies to U.S. policy and interests—the fact, for example, that how the world regards this country can have a very direct impact upon America’s national security and the need, in light of Iraq and Darfur, to clarify when in the future the United States should commit its blood and treasure to countering regimes that abuse human rights—one might assume that human rights would have been more central to the 2008 presidential campaigns to this point than in years past. 

The Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) has tracked the percentage of times candidates for president were asked questions about human rights in the presidential debates to this point in the campaign and has sought to ascertain the positions of all active candidates on seven key human rights questions.  The results of those studies will be released at a panel discussion moderated by CAPAF Senior Fellow William Schulz and including Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post, Gary Haugen of the International Justice Mission, and other commentators on human rights, politics, and the media today.

This event is co-sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Featured Presenters:
Karen DeYoung, Associate Editor, The Washington Post
Gary Haugen, President, International Justice Mission
Gayle Smith, Co-Founder, The ENOUGH Project
Bill Wasserman, President, M+R Strategic Services

Moderated by:
William F. Schulz, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress Action Fund

Location

Center for American Progress Action Fund
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Resources

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Biographies

Karen DeYoung, author of Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell, is an associate editor at The Washington Post. She currently writes about terrorism issues for the National and Foreign Desks and from September 2001 until the summer of 2003 she covered U.S. foreign policy for the paper, including the beginning of the counterterrorism struggle and the lead-up to the Iraq war. Before then, she covered global issues including war crimes, the global HIV/AIDS epidemic, and narcotics trafficking. 

Gary Haugen serves as the president of International Justice Mission, an organization founded in 1997 to address injustices witnessed by overseas missionaries and today rescues victims of violence, sexual exploitation, slavery, and oppression. Based on referrals of abuse received from relief and development organizations, IJM conducts professional investigations of the abuses and mobilizes intervention on behalf of the victims. 

William F. Schulz served as executive director of Amnesty International USA from 1994-2006 before becoming a Senior Fellow at CAPAF. 

Gayle Smith is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Co-Chair of the ENOUGH Campaign. She also is Director of the International Rights & Responsibilities Program and Energy Opportunity Program. Previously, Gayle served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from 1998-2001, and as Senior Advisor to the Administrator and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 1994-1998.

Gayle was based in Africa for over 20 years as a journalist covering military, economic, and political affairs and has also consulted for a wide range of NGOs, foundations, and governmental organizations, including UNICEF, the World Bank, Dutch Interchurch Aid, Norwegian Church Relief, and the Canadian Council for International Cooperation. She won the World Journalism Award from the World Affairs Council and the World Hunger Year Award in 1991, and in 1999 won the National Security Council's Samuel Nelson Drew Award for Distinguished Contribution in Pursuit of Global Peace. Gayle is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Oxfam America, the Africa America Institute, USA for Africa, and the National Security Network, on the Policy Advisory Boards of DATA, the Acumen Fund, and the Global Fairness Initiative, and is the Working Group Chair on Global Poverty for the Clinton Global Initiative.

Bill Wasserman applies his public policy and campaign expertise to the work of M+R clients. Most notably, Bill directs M+R's efforts with the Save Darfur Coalition (SDC), serving as lead campaign strategist in SDC's effort to build an international campaign to help end the genocide in Darfur, Sudan. Bill's leadership at M+R has extended across multiple other clients, including the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, Experience Wave (an initiative of the Atlantic Philanthropies), AARP, ACLU, and many others. Before joining M+R, Bill served in the Clinton administration as director of the Office of Consumer Affairs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where he focused on consumer issues and childhood nutrition. Prior to serving in the Clinton administration, Bill built and led numerous national advocacy and policy campaigns on consumer, environmental and civil liberties issues.