During her years as First Lady, Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton was a fierce champion of human rights, speaking out about a variety of abuses, with a particular focus on women’s rights.  Here, for example is an excerpt from the speech she gave in 1998 at the White House commemoration of the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone here today, however, knows how far we still have to go to ensure that the circle of human dignity embraces all citizens. Whether it’s young girls being sold into prostitution in Thailand, women who are victims of violence in their own homes here in this country or elsewhere, boys being used as human shields in Uganda, those recovering from the ravages of the Yugoslav conflict, or those arrested in China for political activity; we have to recognize the depth of injustice and human suffering that still exists around us. . . .

When we celebrate today the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we do have much to be thankful for. And many of us are living in societies and democracies that have gone such a far distance in the last 50 years to honor and protect human rights.

But let us not forget the hundreds of millions of people who are still at risk, the 100 million children who live in the streets, the 160 million children who are not even in primary school, those who are denied freedom of religion, freedom of thought, freedom to express an opinion, who have no choice that they can make to determine the course of their own lives.

This is not a marginal issue. Human rights goes to the very center of what we in the United States believe politics and democracy should be about.  And so today we celebrate the progress, but we also challenge ourselves to continue to seek out opportunities, wherever possible, to do all that we can to eliminate the continuing scourge of human rights abuses, wherever they may be found.

Should Hillary continue to frame human rights as going to “the very center” of America’s self-conception, she could be the perfect messenger for the new Administration, explaining to the world that we no longer will ignore the very principles at home that we so ardently championed abroad.

In addition (and perhaps as importantly), she could help bring about a sea change in the way the State Department itself looks at human rights.  Within “the building,” there is considerable bureaucratic ambivalence (and not infrequently hostility) toward human rights issues.  There are two reasons for this.

First, the dominant role played by the regional bureaus, in terms of policy means that country teams often regard human rights as a nuisance that gets in the way of things like trade, military cooperation, narcotics interdiction, and anti-terrorism.  During my time at State, I witnessed (and participated in) dozens of fights over whether to consider human rights when adopting a specific policy (say, trade with China, military assistance to Uzbekistan, or the war on drugs in Colombia).  Although we would win our share of the battles, we never were able to get past the general perception that human rights should only be talked about when dealing with countries that were not our friends or allies.

Second, the dominant role played by the regional bureaus also has an impact on career decisions.  If you’re a young foreign service officer working on the China desk, and your next step up the latter depends on a positive evaluation from your boss, the head of the China desk, and s/he thinks human rights should not get in the way of good relations with China, what position are you going to take?  There certainly is little incentive to buck your boss.

In addition, this has created a widespread perception that service in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor can be a career killer.  DRL has two knicknames:  “DRooL” and “the NGO inside the building.”  To say the least, neither of these is exactly an incentive to serve there.

This certainly is understandable.  If you want to move up the ladder, the last place you want to be is in a bureau that constantly bucks the system.  During my time in DRL, we struggled to get talented junior foreign service officers to serve (which is not to say we weren’t successful), and we saw senior foreign service officers who had served (or were serving) in DRL get passed over for the Senior Foreign Service.

Just to be clear, this does not mean that there aren’t talented and dedicated foreign service officers in DRL, or that there aren’t foreign service officers working in other bureaus (and overseas) who have pushed their offices to oppose human rights abuses.  Both exist, and both should be commended.  It also does not mean that there aren’t those who serve in DRL who go on to serve in significant positions — Mona Sutphen, Obama’s new deputy chief-of-staff, is one such example.  But overall, recruiting and keeping talented FSOs is far harder than it should be.

Clinton should think seriously about significantly expanding the size and budget of DRL.  It is sorely understaffed and in need of significant additional resources to do its job, which has only been made much harder by the policies of the Bush Administration.  Doing so also would send a strong signal to the rest of the building that DRL can and should play an important role in policy decisions.

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