Pompeo says more rights don't mean more justice as he unveils human rights report

His comments came at the unveiling of the draft report from his long-touted "Commission on Unalienable Rights" Thursday -- an initiative that rights groups and advocacy organizations feared would have damaging effects on human rights abroad and the rights of women and LGBTQ people.

In a speech at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pompeo repeatedly referenced the founders of the United States, calling the Declaration of Independence "the most important statement of human rights ever written," and warned that "the very core of what it means to be an American, indeed the American way of life itself, is under attack" amid nationwide protests for racial justice and against police brutality.

"Americans have not only unalienable rights, but also positive rights, rights granted by governments, courts, multilateral bodies. Many are worth defending in light of our founding; others aren't," the top US diplomat said. "We are forced to grapple with the tough choices about which rights to promote and how to think about this."

The 'right questions'

Thursday's draft report caps a year of work from the commission unveiled by Pompeo last July, whose largely conservative commissioners were tasked with examining the supposed proliferation of rights and re-focusing on which should be "honored." The commission would focus on principle, not policy, the State Department said.

In his lengthy remarks Thursday, the top US diplomat said that the "commission never intended to time the report's release to the current societal upheavals roiling our country," but noted that "today's unrest directly ties to our ability to put our founding principles at the core of what we do." While he acknowledged that it is "true that at the nation's founding our country fell far short of securing the rights of all," Pompeo claimed "the nation's founding principles gave us a standard by which we could see the gravity of our early failings."

Pompeo said the report contains a framework "to ask the right questions, and a basis for thoughtful, rational debate." Those questions include:

"Are our foreign policy decisions rooted in our founding principles?"

"Are the decisions consistent with our constitutional norms and procedures?"

"Are they rooted in the universal principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?"

"Does a new rights claim that's being presented represent a clear consensus across different traditions and across different cultures, as the Universal Declaration did, or is it merely a narrower partisan or ideological interest?"

'That was then'

"Human rights advocates won great and laudable victories in our lifetimes, from the defeat of fascism, to the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, to the end of Apartheid," Pompeo said. "But that was then. The great and noble human rights project of the 20th Century is in crisis"

Human rights organizations and Democratic lawmakers have long expressed concern about the commission's mandate, the way it was established and operated and its implications on global human rights.

Several human rights organizations sued Pompeo and the State Department in March, alleging that the commission was created and operated in violation of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the 1972 statute that establishes guidelines to which such committees must adhere.

Rights advocates said it was clear early on that women's reproductive rights and the LGBTQ community would likely suffer in the commission's proposed vision.

"We definitely saw that idea coming through the commission's five hearings," Jayne Huckerby, a clinical professor of law at Duke University and director of the university's International Human Rights Clinic, told CNN prior to the report's release.

A false flag

"Commission members especially posited a conflict between religious freedom and women's sexual and reproductive rights, using religious freedom to read down very important rights for women," Huckerby said.

"When you look at what Pompeo and commission members are concerned with," Huckerby said, referring to their argument that a proliferation of rights is weakening core rights, "what they're really talking about is the extension of existing rights to groups that haven't had them previously," Huckerby said. "'Proliferation' is often a false flag."

The human rights community worries about the ripple effect internationally, Huckerby added.

This shift toward a more limited and hierarchical view of human rights would put the US out of step with the international community's approach, which "focuses on effectiveness and guaranteeing human rights for everyone," Huckerby said. "Under international human rights law, religious freedom is not without limits -- there's a prohibition about using it to discriminate against women and the LGBTQ community."

Pompeo's vision would set human rights in the context of an earlier time, ignoring decades of social change.

"It's a very static vision," Huckerby said.