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	Swiss put human rights at center of UN reform by Tom Wright International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights Switzerland   Published: July 1, 2005   Geneva: As Kofi Annan prepares to take his reform plans for the United Nations to the General Assembly this autumn, one country is playing a surprisingly crucial role in the process.   That country, Switzerland, which only joined the UN in 2002, is more known for its neutrality than for pursuing an active foreign policy.   But since last year it has taken on a new mantle: leading an effort to put human rights at the center of UN reform.   While issues like Security Council enlargement take the spotlight, Switzerland's proposal to replace the Human Rights Commission, a discredited UN body, with a more powerful panel has quietly received support, from officials including Secretary General Annan and such countries as the United States.   Switzerland's success in getting its voice heard shows how a small, independent country, one that has long stayed on the sidelines of global affairs, is finding its niche in the UN alongside Security Council members like the United States or China.   "Switzerland can play a role that many larger countries cannot," said Walter Kalin, a professor at Bern University who has worked for the Swiss government on UN reform. "It can be a bridge builder."   Many smaller countries, like Canada and New Zealand, share Switzerland's belief that human rights and international law are important counterweights to power politics, Kalin said by telephone from Kosovo, where he was on a UN mission.   Since it joined the UN, Switzerland has made human rights a central plank of a more active foreign policy. It pressured Nepal this year to accept UN observers and has been a leading critic of U.S. policy at the Guantánamo Bay detention center.   Switzerland waded into the reform debate last year by proposing a human rights council in Geneva to replace the Human Rights Commission, which has become one of the UN's biggest embarrassments.   The commission, based in Geneva, fills its 53 seats by regional rotation, which means countries with poor human rights records like Libya or Zimbabwe often sit in judgment over democratic countries.   Meeting only annually, the commission has also been slow to react to human rights abuses, like the escalation this year of the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, diplomats say.   Switzerland has won widespread support for its idea to establish a council whose members would meet regularly, be selected by a two-thirds majority in the General Assembly and wield greater powers.   Speaking last week to the General Assembly, Anne Patterson, the acting U.S. ambassador to the UN, said Washington backed the plan. Only China, of the major countries, has yet to lend its support, UN officials say.   "When you have a voice like Switzerland's, which is neutral, it always helps" build a consensus, said Eric Tistounet, the secretary of the Human Rights Commission.   In the past few years, Switzerland has begun to throw off its isolation.   Threats like terrorism demanded a more active approach to foreign relations and were a factor in Switzerland's decision to finally join the UN and to commit armed troops to peacekeeping missions.   But the government still follows its 400-year-old policy of neutrality, which means it has refused to join such military alliances as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.   "Foreign countries are more likely to listen to Switzerland as a mediator in UN reform," said René Schwok, a professor at Geneva University. "It is less likely to have a hidden agenda as it is neither a member of the European Union nor of NATO."   Swiss officials say that Geneva's role as a center for humanitarian organizations, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, lends the government credibility on human rights issues.   "We are known as a country with a tradition of defending and promoting human rights," said Ulrich Lehner, who leads UN affairs at the Foreign Ministry.   Still, Switzerland's foreign policy is probably also driven by practical motives, like the hope of burnishing its image abroad, said Jonathan Steinberg, a professor in European history at the University of Pennsylvania.   After bad publicity in recent years, with issues like the scandals over missing Swiss bank accounts of Holocaust victims, "the government is doing what it can to look better," Steinberg said.   Switzerland's role in UN reform goes back to 2003, when it asked Kalin to write a broad report on how to improve the Human Rights Commission.   The idea for a stronger body had been talked about before. But it was Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss foreign minister, who pushed the idea during a meeting with Annan in New York last September, according to UN officials and Swiss diplomats.   The United States favors a smaller rights council of 20 members with solid human rights records. Most developing countries prefer a larger council and oppose strict criteria for membership.   (Published by International Herald Tribune) Visit the related web page
	Taking Our Values Public by Bernie Horn Center for Policy Alternatives USA   July 13, 2005   Why do we progressives wince at the word “values?” Because it has become a club, fashioned by the right wing to bludgeon our candidates.  It has become a code word to attack our morality. In this war of words, how can progressives fight back?  How do we reframe the values debate?    First, we have to understand how the conservatives have hijacked the word.   Thanks to the right-wing messaging machine, many Americans think the term “values” is synonymous with “moral values,” defined by a specific religious code of personal conduct.  It’s an attempt to convince the public that conservatives have values and progressives do not. But that’s just spin.   Everybody makes value judgments constantly, and most values have nothing to do with morality.  They simply measure “good” and “bad.”  Values judge how fabrics feel, how flowers smell, how foods taste, how music sounds.   In the realm of public policy, we certainly want government officials to uphold the values of honesty and integrity, but that would be true whether they administered conservative or progressive public policies.   So how do conservatives equate moral values with opposing public health coverage, favoring lower taxes or blocking the exercise of free speech?  And how do they get away with ignoring the most basic Judeo-Christian value—love thy neighbor—as they advocate for discriminatory policies?   Conservative Value Confusion   This is the message framing trick: The right wing’s “moral values” refer to private, not public, policy values.    “Private values” signify commonly accepted measurements of a good person.  They include loyalty, piety, generosity, courtesy, bravery, respectfulness and patriotism.   The term “public values” means commonly accepted measurements of good public policy. Substantive public values include fairness, justice, equality, freedom, opportunity and security. There are also procedural public values, like efficiency and transparency, which measure the administration of government, whether the substantive policy is progressive or conservative.   Significantly, the private value most commonly misused by conservatives is “personal responsibility.”  Unemployment, hunger, discrimination are all the individual’s problem, they say. They’re not a societal problem. Conservatives twist the language of responsibility to shirk responsibility.  It’s downright Orwellian.   But conservatives don’t even have to say the words “personal responsibility.” They just use the framework of personal responsibility to present their messages.  Studies consistently show that when news stories involving social issues are framed to focus on individuals’ misfortunes, the public tends to place responsibility on the individual.  When similar stories are framed to focus on the conditions and policies that cause individuals’ misfortunes, the public tends to hold government policies responsible.  (See Bales and Gilliam, “Communications for Social Good,” 2004.)  For the same reason, trumpeting private values suggests individual responsibility, the conservative position.  Using public values suggests societal responsibility, the progressive argument.   So how do we construct a language of progressive public values?  It’s easy, because progressive values reflect historic American values.   Historic American Values   “We hold these truths to be self-evident:  that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  These famous lines from the Declaration of Independence are the greatest values statement in U.S. political history.  It proclaims public values—measurements of the quality of governments, not individuals.   Here is where we begin to formulate progressive values, by translating the three tenets “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness” into contemporary language.   By “Life,” Thomas Jefferson and the signers of the Declaration did not mean simply the right to survival. They meant a right to personal security.   By “Liberty,” Jefferson was referring to the kinds of freedoms that were ultimately written into all federal and state Bills of Rights, blocking the government from infringing upon speech, religion, the press and trial by jury, as well as protecting individuals from wrongful criminal prosecutions.   But how do we translate Jefferson’s “pursuit of Happiness?”  It cannot mean that everyone has the God-given right to do anything that makes them happy. To understand “pursuit of happiness,” we must consider an earlier part of the same sentence:  “all men are created equal.”  Jefferson is not saying we have an unlimited right to pursue happiness; he is saying that all of us have an equal right to pursue happiness.  In today’s language, we’d call it the right to equal opportunity.   Contemporary Progressive Values   Now let us rearrange and restate America’s historic values as a Progressive Declaration:   First, progressives are resolved to safeguard our individual freedoms.  We must fiercely guard our constitutional and human rights, and keep government out of our private lives.   Second, progressives strive to guarantee equal opportunity for all.  We must vigorously oppose all forms of discrimination, create a society where hard work is rewarded, and ensure that all Americans have equal access to the American Dream.   Third, progressives are determined to protect our security.  While forcefully protecting lives and property, we must ensure the sick and vulnerable, safeguard the food we eat and products we use, and preserve our environment.   Our progressive values differ fundamentally from those of conservatives.  While conservatives work to protect freedom, opportunity and security only for a select few, progressives work to extend these rights to all Americans. Now, that’s morality.   When presented with this structure, some progressives note that the words freedom, equal opportunity and security sound awfully moderate to them.  Exactly! These are values that resonate with the vast majority of Americans.  The concept of framing is to build a bridge connecting progressives with undecided voters.  When we use familiar public values to describe and defend progressive policies, average Americans understand that we’re on their side.   It’s not that progressives should never use private values. The personal attributes of individual candidates for office are properly measured by such values. But the point is that progressives gain the upper hand when we move the policy debate from private to public values, because we’re the only ones who favor freedom, equal opportunity and security for all.   This is a battle we can win. We can assail the right wing’s perversion of the language of values.  We can declare our own values through a progressive linguistic framework.  We can sway Americans to our side by showing that progressive—not conservative—policies are grounded in “values.”   (Bernie Horn is senior director of policy and communications at the Center for Policy Alternatives).
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