*EPF307 06/25/2003
Transcript: Report Shows How U.S. Supports Human Rights in Tough Places
(Interview with Assistant Secretary of State Lorne Craner) (1790)

With the release of the State Department report "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2002-2003," says Lorne Craner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, people will be able to see in one place what the United States is doing in "some of the toughest countries around the world" to support democracy and human rights.

The report, which was released June 24, details U.S. efforts in 92 countries and entities. It can be viewed at http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/shrd/

In an interview with Washington File staff writer Stuart Gorin just prior to the report's release, Craner said that since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the United States has increased its funding for democracy projects. He cited as examples support for an independent printing press in Kyrgyzstan, a human rights law clinic in Uzbekistan, and assistance to women who want to be candidates for political office in Middle Eastern countries.

"In countries where there are beginning to be elections, we've supported efforts to bring election officials from different countries together," he said, adding that the United States also has supported individuals who've been jailed for dissident activities.

Asked what is the connection between human rights and democracy, Craner said "If a country is democratic, generally you will find human rights respected, because people in the country will want to live without fear of getting a knock on the door late at night. They'll want to be able to read a newspaper that they think is truthful. They'll want to be able to watch a TV station or hear a radio station that they think is giving accurate news."

The assistant secretary added, "You can have an improvement in human rights without democracy, but chances are it will not be durable, and it will not grow that deep."

Following is a transcript of the interview:

(begin transcript)

QUESTION: The State Department has been issuing the annual human rights report for 27 years. What was behind the decision to now issue a second report on the U.S. response?

SECRETARY CRANER: I would give you two reasons. The first is that it's a congressional mandate, and up on the Hill they have for some years been wondering about the link between the reporting and the human rights report and our human rights policies in these different countries. So what we have done in this report is to demonstrate the link between the two.

The second is, I think, when the draft legislation appeared on the Hill, there were, of course, many people in the building who said, "Oh, not another report," and the case was made, this is an opportunity for the United States to tell its story about what we've been doing around the world to advance human rights and democracy, and people understood that.

So those are two motivations.

Q: The annual report covers 196 countries, and this new report is on 92 countries and entities. What were the criteria for selecting them?

SECRETARY CRANER: The criteria laid out by the Hill was that we would report on our human rights strategy and activities in countries where there were extrajudicial killings, torture, or other serious violations of human rights. And when we went through the list, there are certainly more than 92 countries where human rights aren't perfect, but we figured that this was the number, 92, where there were such serious violations of human rights.

Q: How do you measure the success of U.S. efforts in this endeavor?

SECRETARY CRANER: I think the ultimate success is whether things improve in the country or not, and I think if you look back over 25 years, if we had issued this report when we first started issuing the human rights report, there would have been many, many more than 92 countries on it. My guess is there would have been somewhere around 130 countries on it.

And I think the United States certainly can't claim all the credit for having advanced human rights and democracy in Latin America and Asia, places like South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, and elsewhere, or all the credit for the fact that many of the former Soviet states are now democratic.

But I think we've certainly had a good deal to do with it in many, many of those cases. So that is the ultimate measure of success, whether the countries become democratic and become nations that respect human rights.

Q: How was the information collected for each country?

SECRETARY CRANER: We went out to our embassies and told them what the purpose of the report was, and they came back with what they had been working on, not only in terms of programming, but also in terms of policies in these countries, and then we had a couple of drafts back and forth with each one of them.

Q: How will the report be utilized overseas?

SECRETARY CRANER: We'll be distributing it here and overseas. My expectation is that overseas there will be great interest in particular countries, but also in particular chapters. My expectation, for example, is that some of the ambassadors in the Middle East, for example, may want to extract that section and have it publicized in their country.

I've had a number of ambassadors and foreign leaders coming to me asking about translations of the original human rights report, and I suspect I'm going to get the same number of requests for translations of this strategy.

Here in the United States, we'll be using it to talk to people about what has become a bipartisan policy of supporting human rights and democracy in this country.

Q: I was going to ask if it will be available in other languages. Obviously, it will be.

SECRETARY CRANER: Yeah, I don't think we're going to be able to translate every single report into every different language, but I think the key is, they're not very long. Some of the human rights reports go on for 60, 70, 90, 100 pages. These, by and large, are two or three pages long.

Q: Could you cite one or two examples from the report of activities or programs in which the United States is engaged to support democracy and human rights in other countries?

SECRETARY CRANER: Sure. Let me just talk about two for one second. In Central Asia, of the five countries, in two of them we've doubled our funding for democracy, and in two of them we've quadrupled our funding for democracy. This happened after 9/11, when we became much more closely aligned with those countries. But we wanted to demonstrate to the people of the country that we did not have an unquestioning relationship with their governments.

And so in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, for example, we added to our support for those working with political parties, including in the opposition in those countries. In Kyrgyzstan, we're supporting for the first time ever an independent printing press, so that independent newspapers can be guaranteed that they'll be able to print their newspapers any day that they want, instead of being censored or not being able to publish at all.

In Uzbekistan, for the very first time ever, there's a human rights law clinic in that country where people who were accused, they think falsely, can go to the law clinic and receive legal aid.

Those are just a very few of the examples of the kind of programming we've done with that greatly increased amount.

A second good example, I think, is in virtually any country in the Middle East. We've taken a serious look at what we were doing for the many years before 9/11 and decided that wasn't nearly enough to support democracy and human rights in those countries.

So across the region we've been supporting journalists, we've been supporting women, who, in countries where there are elections, want to run as candidates. In countries where there are beginning to be elections, we've supported efforts to bring election officials from different countries together. We've supported individuals who've been jailed for dissident activities. That's very basically, a new take on policy after 9/11.

Q: I know we talked about this earlier, but would you reiterate the importance of human rights to U.S. foreign policy?

SECRETARY CRANER: Yeah, I think it has rightly been a given since the 1970s that human rights and democracy in the 1980s have to play a part in U.S. foreign policy. And as both the president and secretary of state have said since 9/11, it is an integral of the fight against the war on terror to try and create more democratic societies where people have more constructive outlets for their thoughts.

Q: Also as a follow-up, would you reiterate the connection between human rights and democracy?

SECRETARY CRANER: If a country is democratic, generally you will find human rights respected, because people in the country will want to live without fear of getting a knock on the door late at night. They'll want to be able to read a newspaper that they think is truthful. They'll want to be able to watch a TV station or hear a radio station that they think is giving accurate news.

You can have an improvement in human rights without democracy, but chances are it will not be durable, and it will not grow that deep.

Q: In the U.S. point of view, how successful or unsuccessful was the recently concluded U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva?

SECRETARY CRANER: The Human Rights Commission is a big mess. It has been a big mess for some years. It took some years to turn it into a big mess. It is not performing anywhere near what the founders had hoped for, people like Eleanor Roosevelt and others, that countries would come together to defend human rights.

That said, I think we hit the bottom probably last year, and this year was a slight improvement, both in terms of resolutions passed and countries elected to the Human Rights Commission for next year's session.

Q: Is there any other comment that you'd like to make?

SECRETARY CRANER: No, I think I'm looking forward to getting people's reactions to this. It's the first edition we've put together. I think it makes people want to read it.

But I think it's going to be important that for the very, very first time people will be able to see in one place what we're doing in some of the toughest countries around the world to support democracy and human rights.

Q: All right, thank you.

(end transcript)

(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)

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