What Does Pompeo’s Commission on Unalienable Rights Mean for U.S. Foreign Policy?

On Thursday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo unveiled a draft report produced by the Commission on Unalienable Rights, a panel he established last year to examine the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy. Speaking in Philadelphia about the commission’s report, he said that America is fundamentally good and that human rights must play the central role in its diplomacy.

According to Pompeo and the commission’s report, the cause of fundamental human rights, as articulated by the Declaration of Independence and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, has come under threat from authoritarian regimes, politicized human-rights advocacy, and the failure of multilateral human rights bodies. “The vital 20th-century human-rights project has come unmoored,” said Pompeo. “It needs a re-grounding. That is risky for Americans, and it is deadly for others around the world.”

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