By Jean M. Geran

On Jan. 21, Secretary Clinton is scheduled to make an important speech on new technology and 21st-century statecraft. After a year of weak U.S. leadership on human rights and democracy issues, this speech is an important opportunity to reiterate a strong U.S. commitment to freedom across the board. The latest Freedom in the World 2010 survey results from Freedom House highlight an overall decline in global freedom for the fourth consecutive year. Now is the time to redouble our support for human rights and democracy, not cut back as the Obama administration has done. As my colleague David Kramer pointed out, the Secretary began digging the Administration out of the human rights hole it was in last December with her speech at Georgetown University. She has a lot more digging to do. But the inherent link between new technology and freedom of expression, assembly, and association makes her upcoming speech an ideal tool. 

There are promising signs that this will be a good speech thanks to some creative stars on her policy planning staff and others peppered around the administration. State has commendably been leading the use of new technology for the Haiti response with several initiatives. Mobile text giving, crisis mapping and database innovation have contributed to a transformation in how the international community is responding to a horrible natural disaster. I hope the administration continues to think big and in a bipartisan fashion on Haiti. They should do the same on human rights.

Creating innovative partnerships and delegations to Iraq and Afghanistan with leaders in the technology industry and asking Twitter to delay maintenance while protests were underway in Iran have been examples of creative diplomacy in the midst of an otherwise flawed foreign policy. But Iran also illustrates the limits of this kind of diplomacy when it is not backed by a robust commitment to human rights in U.S. policy. 

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It is a sad bit of irony that International Human Rights Day and President Obama's formal acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize coincide today.

Much has been written about the strange choice of the Nobel Committee and good suggestions made on how the President could redeem his premature award. My favorite suggestions were that he accept it on behalf of American men and women in the military who have fought for freedom or donate his medal to Shirin Ebadi (her Nobel medal was recently stolen by regime thugs) and invite her to the White House for the handover. Regardless of how he handles the acceptance speech, the president already has said that the award should serve as a "call to action." Action from Obama on human rights globally is long overdue.

Obama is increasingly criticized in the United States and other regions for his persistent refusal to promote universal human rights and democratic values or speak out in support of those around the world risking their lives to defend them. It's time to change course. After an imperfect but bold decision on the use of U.S. hard power in Afghanistan, the president now needs to do the same with soft power issues.

Obama's foreign policy instincts, especially on these issues, are not great and he needs to start listening to those within his own administration who understand the importance of promoting human rights and democratic values globally. There is no doubt that bitter battles were waged within the State Department and across the interagency over whether or not the president should meet his fellow Nobel Laureate the Dalai Lama and over what the words he should, or should not, use when speaking about the Iranian opposition (including fellow Nobel Laureate Shirin Ebadi). But at the end of the day, it is the president who sets the tone of U.S. foreign policy and decides who wins those internal battles. And so far, the administration's internal human rights defenders appear to be losing most of them. They must be frustrated.

Obama has prioritized talking with our enemies which can make sense if done right. But if we compromise on universal principles like human rights from the outset we already have lost. And talking for talking's sake leads nowhere. But if the United States holds fast to principles in the midst of negotiations, talking may bear fruit. Take Burma as an example. I remain wary of the dialogue the United States has opened with the generals who rule Burma because I've seen the pattern before with U.N. envoys coming and going with no results from "dialogue." Talk is not progress unless the generals are speaking to Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, other democracy movement leaders and the ethnic nationalities directly about the future of their country. But I would be delighted if the United States discussions succeeded in facilitating change and led by Assistant Secretary Kurt Campbell, perhaps they will. The State Department has thus far kept to longstanding, principled demands for progress on human rights, including the release of political prisoners, before lifting sanctions on the regime. Also positive was ambassador-at-large for global women's issues Melanne Verveer's recent meeting with Burmese women activists to discuss sexual violence by the Burmese military. I met with some of these same women, nearly 8 years ago, and the widespread rape continues unabated. As I have articulated before, sexual violence, the use of child soldiers and other crimes against humanity against ethnic minority civilians have long provided justification for U.N. Security Council action on Burma. Sadly, the Obama administration has dropped the U.S. effort at the Security Council begun under President Bush and Ambassador Verveer has little to offer the women she met. Thus we see the limits of engagement on these issues without support from the top.     

President Obama campaigned on change and has had nearly a year of trying to be "Anything But Bush." But it is time to move on and become the leader that Americans -- and human rights activists around the world -- expect. We want a leader who stands for universal principles in line with our own -- even when it is difficult to do so -- and builds alliances with nations or people within nations who share our commitment to human rights, democracy and peace -- not with tyrants who don't. The president cannot rely on his personality to win over dictators and convince them to change, but his popularity could benefit human rights defenders around the world if he chose to stand with them. The current situation of downtrodden dissidents and frustrated friends is certainly not the best that U.S. leadership has to offer, but principled choices leading to real action on human rights is change I could believe in.

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By Jean M. Geran

This past week marked yet another of 2009's 20th anniversaries highlighting the challenges we face to protect the world's afflicted. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), passed in 1989, has now been ratified by 193 countries -- except the United States and Somalia. Its 20th anniversary prompted the usual round of calls on the United States to ratify it, but ratification would not necessarily improve the lives of the world's children. The Obama administration says it is reviewing the CRC, but the reality is that like some other human rights treaties, the technicalities of U.S. law and problems with some aspects of the CRC make ratification anytime soon unlikely.

Vulnerable children are a common denominator in many foreign policy challenges today -- whether an orphan who needs to be adopted, a child soldier or trafficking victim who needs to be reunited, an unaccompanied minor refugee who needs to go home, or a poor child whose family needs support to stay together. Instead of the CRC, a far more productive focus for child advocates would be to urge Secretary Clinton to fix the broken U.S. policy and aid apparatus on global children's issues. A good start would be to designate someone at the State Department, ambassador-level or higher, to coordinate all child protection issues across the U.S. government. 

International children's issues currently fall afoul of the U.S. government's dysfunctional foreign aid system. There is bipartisan consensus that the system is broken. Secretary Rice attempted foreign assistance reform through transformational diplomacy, and the Obama administration has its State-led Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (QDDR) and pending legislation on the Hill. But I doubt change is imminent. For the foreseeable future, gaps will remain in culture, approach, and purpose between State, USAID, and other U.S. agencies with international programs -- and vulnerable children around the world will continue to fall through the cracks.

Every child's right to a family, their best protection against abuse, is enshrined in the CRC. But protecting that right requires finding permanent solutions for each orphan, abandoned or separated child. From a U.S. policy perspective, responsibility for each category of children as well as the solutions available to them are spread across numerous offices and departments from State, to USAID, to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and others. The divisions run wide and deep, but the issue where American foreign policy interests come together around children -- or more often collide -- is over inter-country adoption.   

Americans adopt more children from abroad than any other nation and international adoptions have more than doubled since 1989. Adoption is not right for every child without a family nor is it the full solution to the orphan crisis brought on by HIV/AIDS. But for many needy children adoption is the only way to have a permanent family. Yet adoptions must be done right. Unfortunately, weak laws and regulations in developing countries, preferences for infants over older children, and the money involved can lead to inappropriate adoptions and, in extreme cases, baby selling. Such problems have forced the State Department's Office of Children's Issues to stop adoptions from specific countries like Cambodia and Guatemala until officials could ensure that they were legitimate -- a necessary but tragic outcome for families and children caught in the pipeline. 

As a member of the Policy Planning Staff under Secretary Rice, I developed an initiative that would have improved interagency coordination and created bilateral partnerships and a trust fund at UNICEF to help countries strengthen their own child protection systems. Though there was wide support including from the Secretary herself, the initiative was derailed by petty turf issues, scarce resources and resistance to new approaches -- all common bureaucratic dysfunctions. Opposition to international adoption also played a role. A USAID officer told me that he maintains a firm wall between international adoptions and any assistance he oversees for orphans to keep it from being "tainted." The problem is that the same authorities in developing countries in charge of adoptions are also in charge of other vulnerable children. The bureaucratic wall helps no one -- not the abandoned child languishing in an institution even though a family is willing to adopt him or the government official trying to stop bad adoptions and place children safely into families in her own country. It needs to come down. 

It will take a mandate from the top to push the bureaucracy past these problems and Secretary Clinton is perfectly placed to direct it. As a former Senator and long-time child advocate, she knows of the strong bipartisan support in Congress for adoption and orphan issues. The secretary can task someone on her staff, possibly an existing assistant secretary, with the mandate to implement a comprehensive strategy to protect children globally. An "ambassador for children" could chair a senior policy coordinating group to include HHS and others to oversee strategic diplomacy, technical assistance, exchanges, and public-private partnerships to help developing countries improve child protection systems and provide better oversight of all adoptions. An effective coordinating mechanism could unlock significant resources from Congress, the private sector, faith-based groups, and other international partners.  

Assisting countries that want to improve their own governance is the best way to reduce the abuse, exploitation and neglect of orphans and vulnerable children anywhere. It doesn't require ratifying a new treaty, just some leadership and more effective cooperation.

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