Blinken dismisses Pompeo's controversial initiative to rank human rights

April 1, 2021: “There is no hierarchy that makes some rights more important than others,” Blinken said. "Past unbalanced statements that suggest such a hierarchy…”
The Pompeo commission’s report identified such a hierarchy in the history of U.S. government invocations of human rights to justify new policy initiatives, such as the New Deal pledges made by former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“Social and economic rights are most compatible with American founding principles when they serve as minimums that enable citizens to exercise their unalienable rights, discharge their responsibilities, and engage in self-government.”

The significance of those disputes was underscored when Secretary of State Antony Blinken reversed a second Pompeo-era judgment about human rights.

This one pertaining to “reproductive health, including information about maternal mortality, discrimination against women in accessing sexual and reproductive healthcare, and government policies about access to contraception and skilled healthcare during pregnancy and childbirth. And we are restoring the practice of documenting these rights in 2021 and future years,” Blinken said. “It is one of many steps, along with revoking the Mexico City policy, withdrawing from the Geneva Consensus Declaration, and resuming support for the United Nations Population Fund, that we are taking to promote women’s health and equity at home and abroad. Because women’s rights, including sexual and reproductive rights, are human rights.”