State Department Launches ‘Commission on Unalienable Rights’

From CNS News.com (July 8):

(CNSNews.com) -- Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo announced today that the U.S. Department of State has created the ‘Commission on Unalienable Rights,’ which is designed to advise the Secretary on “human rights grounded in our nation’s founding principles and the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said Pompeo.

“The commission is composed of human rights experts, philosophers, and activists, Republicans, Democrats, and Independents of varied background and beliefs, who will provide me with advice on human rights grounded in our nation’s founding principles and the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” said the secretary at the State Department.

“It’s a sad commentary on our times that more than 70 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, gross violations continue throughout the world, sometimes even in the name of human rights,” he said.  “[T]he time is right for an informed review of the role of human rights in American foreign policy.”

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Secretary Pompeo continued, “I hope that the commission will revisit the most basic of questions: What does it mean to say or claim that something is, in fact, a human right? How do we know or how do we determine whether that claim that this or that is a human right -- is it true, and therefore, ought it to be honored? … Is it, in fact, true, as our Declaration of Independence asserts, that as human beings, we – all of us, every member of our human family – are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights?” [read more]