Last week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosted a meeting with leaders of human rights organizations to mark the 75th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. But through subtle stage management, the State Department arranged for Blinken’s praise for human rights to be recorded and promulgated — while the world was not able to hear the retorts from human rights advocates who criticized America’s backing of Israel’s war on Gaza.
The Universal Declaration was a landmark in history. While it was only a statement of principles, and so did not have legal force in itself, it was broadly inspirational and has formed the basis for numerous subsequent treaties and laws. According to Guinness World Records, it’s been translated into more languages than any other document — over 550, from Abkhaz to Zulu.
After the December 7 meeting, the internet exploded in bitter laughter at Blinken, and it’s easy to understand why. At the start of the meeting at the State Department, Blinken informed the assemblage that “the universality of human rights is under severe challenge and rights are being violated in far too many places … And of course we see atrocities in the midst of conflict.” Yes, of course. Just one day later, on December 8, the U.S. vetoed a resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling for a ceasefire in Israel’s war on Gaza.
I joined human rights leaders for the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and in recognition of their courageous work. We know that when more people in more places have their rights respected, the world is more peaceful, more secure, more prosperous. pic.twitter.com/nWOBHJjtTZ
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken)
December 8, 2023 Notably, the Universal Declaration states that “everyone has a right to a nationality.” The Universal Declaration was adopted on December 10, 1948, one day before U.N. Resolution 194 was passed. Resolution 194 famously stated that, in the wake of the establishment of Israel earlier that year, Palestinian refugees “wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date.” This anniversary has not been commemorated with an event at the State Department.
Indeed, the whole process with Blinken was as distastefully funny as the Russian government’s own recent celebration of the Universal Declaration’s anniversary, in which it spoke of its deep concern over “the human rights situation in Ukraine.” This is where the U.S. government’s stage management comes in.
There were four human rights organizations in attendance, all represented by their top officials: Amnesty International (Agnès Callamard), Human Rights Watch (Tirana Hassan), the Committee to Protect Journalists (Jodie Ginsberg), and Freedom House (Michael Abramowitz).
We know this because all four leaders appeared in the above photo happily tweeted out by Blinken himself. And all four groups confirmed their presence to The Intercept. But when asked, the State Department refused to name who was in attendance because, it explained, this meeting took place in a “private setting.”
In addition to the photo provided by Blinken, you can watch a video of this private setting on the State Department’s publicly available website. At 0:59, as Blinken natters on, you can see one of his bored functionaries glancing at his watch.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks at a meeting with four leaders of human rights organizations at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 7, 2023.
Screenshot: The Intercept; Video: U.S. Department of State
What actually happened is that, as the Committee to Protect Journalists puts it, “the State Department made clear that Secretary Blinken wanted to make a statement on the record but the meeting was private.”
In other words, the U.S. government insisted that there be a public section of the meeting at the start, in which Blinken spoke and the human rights leaders would be photographed listening to him. Then, these photographs and Blinken’s words were distributed to the world. But the human rights leaders’ words were not.
Asked about his own experiences in such situations, Kenneth Roth, Hassan’s predecessor as head of Human Rights Watch, says that “there is nothing inherently wrong with having an off-the-record meeting with government officials … but it is odd for the Biden administration to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration with an off-the-record meeting.” Roth explains that the Universal Declaration had modest influence in the decade after its adoption because it was considered undiplomatic for governments to criticize others by name. However, that changed in the 1960s and 1970s. “A commemoration of the Declaration that embraced what has made the document so impactful,” Roth contends, “would have been an on-the-record meeting in which abusive governments were unabashedly singled out by name.”
Human Rights Watch and Freedom House both declined to provide any details about what their officials told Blinken, stating that the post-photo op section of the meeting was off the record.
However, Amanda Klasing, Amnesty International’s national director for government relations and advocacy, did comment. Callamard, she says, “urged Secretary Blinken to seize the current inflection point, be consistent in the US’s attention to human rights, and send the message that human rights apply equally to non-US allies and to its closest friends. She made clear that this is especially urgent today, as Amnesty International has documented that the government of Israel – one of the US’s closest allies – is flagrantly violating international humanitarian law in its attacks on Gaza. She urged him to see the need for an immediate ceasefire and a stop to the transfer and sale of arms to the government of Israel in the existing context.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists was also willing to describe its leader’s remarks. According to CPJ, Ginsberg “most certainly brought our full-range of deep and urgent concerns regarding journalists in Gaza. The ongoing disaster is a top priority for us. Ginsberg underscored that more than 60 journalists have been killed (the vast majority Palestinians in Gaza), the increasingly difficult conditions, and the broader clampdown on the press and arrests including the West Bank. Notably, we strongly reiterated our demand for accountability in the likely targeting of journalists in southern Lebanon. In doing so, we stated our deep concern that the pattern of journalists being killed with impunity by the Israel Defense Forces is a long one.”
Roth, for his part, adds that “we don’t need another symbol of the Biden administration’s commitment to human rights. … A more meaningful way to celebrate the Universal Declaration would have been to visibly enforce it in the human rights black hole that the Middle East has largely become for the Biden administration.”
In a nice touch by the State Department, the meeting was held in its Thomas Jefferson State Reception Room, so the participants were overseen by both a statue and a painting of Jefferson. Jefferson was America’s first secretary of state, as well as the author of the Declaration of Independence — in some ways the progenitor of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Jefferson also enslaved 600 people over his lifetime and raped his dead wife’s half-sister, whom he owned. He thus is perhaps America’s greatest exemplar of our history of soaring rhetoric combined with a much grimier reality.
The post How Biden’s State Department Conceals Its “Human Rights Black Hole” in the Middle East appeared first on The Intercept.
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