On July 8, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo launched a Commission on Unalienable Rights, charging it with the task of rethinking the foundations of human rights in a time when "gross violations continue throughout the world, sometimes even in the name of human rights" and when "International institutions designed and built to protect human rights have drifted from their original mission."
The State Department's first announcement of the commission on May 30 also claimed that "[human rights] discourse has departed from our nation's founding principles of natural law and natural rights." In reaction, several critics publicly decried the terms "natural law" and "natural rights" as fig leaves for conservative politics, religious commitments, and the denial of abortion and LGBTQ rights. In Pompeo's remarks on July 8, he made no mention of natural law or natural rights. Hopefully, though, the Commission will take up this language again, for it is essential for repairing the cause of human rights.
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