Conservatives have long had a complicated relationship with the United Nations (UN); however, criticism of the UN, and particularly of the human rights project that the UN birthed and sustains, has grown louder in recent years. While much of this criticism is justified, certain sectors of the right fail to grasp that the UN-based human rights project is both a colossal failure and an extraordinary achievement. Discussions of how to respond to the failure can only translate into sound policy if they are grounded in an appreciation of the foundational principles and ongoing power of the modern human rights project.
The UN was formed in the aftermath of WWII, and both the organization itself and the human rights movement it birthed must be understood in that context, and in relation to each other. One of the primary motivations for forming the UN was the desire “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women…” This desire was a direct response to the atrocities of WWII. The UN was the forum for the drafting and signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), which set the course for human rights advocacy at the UN and around the world. Today, through symbolic power, the legacy of the UDHR, and a multitude of UN agencies and initiatives, the human rights project is inextricably intertwined with the UN.
Unfortunately, this project soon devolved into what legal expert Mary Ann Glendon has termed the “demolition derby.” By the 1960’s and 70’s, “The (human rights) movement, like the Declaration itself, attracted many persons and groups who were more interested in harnessing its moral authority for their own ends than in furthering its original purposes” “Special interest groups” began reading the UDHR as a menu of disconnected rights, Glendon writes, even as they lobbied for the recognition of controversial new “rights.” Today, both in the UN itself and within the larger human rights ecosystem, human rights are regularly used to call for abortion, LGBTQ affirmation, and other progressive causes, even as human rights abusers such as China and Russia continue to hold prominent leadership roles in the UN.
It is therefore hardly surprising that conservative opposition to the UN and the human rights project has increased in recent years. Much of this criticism is justified; however, the growing tendency to repudiate the very foundations of the UN and disavow the whole post-WWII human rights project is troubling. Case in point: in 1998, First Things released a statement titled “On Human Rights.” While critical of the distortions of human rights, it reiterated support for the UDHR and human rights, properly construed. Fast forward to 2014, when First Things editor R.R. Reno penned an essay titled “Against Human Rights,” in which he recommended abandoning the human rights paradigm. This shift was a harbinger of things to come. As an essay in National Interest aptly put it, “certain, more au courant, voices on the American right regard the universal human rights regime established after the Second World War as a manifestation of the liberal-globalist imperium, empowering supranational and non-governmental organizations at the expense of the nation state.”
While highlighting real abuses of human rights language and instruments, this line of criticism fails to sufficiently distinguish between the original foundations and intent of the UN and human rights movement and their subsequent distortions. As a result, it also fails to see their potential. As Glendon masterfully recounts in her book A World Made New, the UDHR was an astonishing achievement. While Glendon notes in her other work that the framers left the philosophical underpinnings of the UDHR vague, she shows that the UDHR itself is intellectually sound when understood as a network of interconnected rights and responsibilities, and it is consonant with many of the world’s great religious and cultural traditions. While highly critical of the “demolition derby,” Glendon defends the UDHR and the human rights paradigm, properly understood. Although much of Glendon’s writing centers on the universality of human rights, this universality does not undermine the deep Christian foundations of the modern human rights project. After all, the language of human rights was not a secular, Enlightenment era novelty. Rather, it developed through the work of Thomas Aquinas, Francisco de Vitoria and the Salamancan school, Hugo Grotius, and others, while Glendon demonstrates that the UDHR itself was heavily influenced by Catholic social thought through Jacques Maritain, Charles Malik, and Latin American delegates.
Building on this understanding of both the failures and the potential of human rights system, two serious concerns emerge. First, by unreservedly rejecting the UN-based human rights paradigm, conservatives are missing an opportunity to remedy the very situation they decry. Presumably these critics don’t wish to eliminate the rights to life, marriage, and family (among others), but simply to use a new language and institutional framework to promote these social goods. This is easier said than done. Ideas cross borders, and defending our values at home will require cross-cultural collaboration. Human rights remain the most promising way of doing this.
I have witnessed firsthand how the promise of human rights, undergirded by an authentic human anthropology, continues to inspire young people. For youth in countries ravaged by genocide, extreme poverty, and political violence, the statement that all human beings possess innate dignity and that this dignity entails certain rights is nothing short of revolutionary. What is more, international law remains almost entirely on our side; thus far, attempts to redefine human rights have largely been relegated to non-binding documents and statements. This will not remain the case if we cease fighting for authentic human rights, though. Conservatives, and Christian realists especially, should heed Glendon’s response to Reno:
“To (cease promoting Christian understandings of human rights)…would be to leave the field to those who use human rights as a mere pretext for imposing the views of the powerful upon the weak.”
The second concern is that, by rejecting the UN and human rights without reservation, the conservative movement risks undermining its own foundation. Those prepared to throw out the entire post-WWII human rights paradigm may believe that if we restore Christian culture in the West, the rest will take care of itself. In reality, we are seeing a rise in conservative Christian WWII revisionism paired with antisemitism and anti-Americanism. I am not suggesting that conservative critics of human rights are all Nazis; however, if we tear down the post-WWII scaffolding, that leaves a space in which the Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens of our culture can thrive. It is no coincidence that the Catholic Church has become one of the world’s foremost proponents of human rights; Church leaders, and especially Pope John Paul II, understood that human rights language could build bridges across cultures, but could also help the Church to better articulate its own understanding of human dignity and flourishing to Christians. As Mary Ann Glendon has explained, “…the rights tradition into which the Church has tapped was importantly influenced by the biblically informed, continental, dignitarian tradition which she herself had already done so much to shape.” In doing away with the rights tradition, conservatives risk sweeping away the very cultural foundations they hope to preserve.
The energy of conservative policymakers would be far better spent fighting for an authentic understanding of human rights at the UN than lobbying for US withdrawal from the organization; similarly, conservative civil society advocates should focus on promoting existing educational initiatives such as the Human Dignity Curriculum that will empower the next generation to reclaim the human rights movement. The movement that was born at the UN over 75 years ago is under attack, but it will only perish if conservatives refuse to defend it.
