PCUSA human rights report: Does it still have any purpose?
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, January 22, 2004
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Some members of the Advisory Committee on Social Witness Policy, asked to submit a paper on human rights without seeing the final version, raised some objections both about the content and whether the paper serves any useful purpose.
The human rights report is submitted annually by ACSWP to the General Assembly. It makes no proposals and is strictly for informational purposes. It used to be published as a pamphlet on human rights, but recent general assemblies have decided to save money by making it available through the PCUSA’s Web site.
Victor MakariMostly, the paper is a report on human rights problems around the globe, based on assessments by what the PCUSA calls its “partner churches,” with some refinement and commentary from the denomination’s staff.
It is not exciting reading.
Belinda Curry of ACSWP’s staff collated the latest version of the annual human rights report, currently standing at 28 pages. But she noted that there were many gaps – including Eastern Asia and Central and South America – because the partners in those areas not submitted their reports.
Victor Makari, area coordinator for the Mideast in the denomination’s Worldwide Ministries Division, said the incompleteness of the report was “not a new phenomenon. When these reports are filed, we depend on a lot of sources, including our partners in the field. You’ve always been tolerant of our deadline.”
Makari said some of the reports from his region, including a piece on Palestine, were “entangled in the electronic process.”
ACSWP members decided to give Makari and Will Brown, associate director for ecumenical partnerships in the Worldwide Ministries Division more time to get their material together. But they also decided by voice vote to review the added content before they gave final approval as a report from ACSWP.
Will BrownBut the late reports were not the only problem. Questions were raised about how well the PCUSA, with its limited partnerships, can give a thorough assessment of human rights problems around the globe. Other groups, such as Amnesty International, do a far more comprehensive and timely job of reporting human rights conditions.
Brown even questioned the value and readership of the report as a Web document and not as a printed report. “There is power in having something published,” said. “If we want to be helpful to people in a lot of places, we have to have a document.”
He recalled that the General Assembly debated the issue of whether to publish the annual report or post it on the PCUSA Web site to save money. “It was really frustrating to us that that General Assembly decided to post it electronically – to sit on the platform and not be able to make a comment. I hope we can revisit that.”
But Makari said, “There’s evidence that enough Presbyterians looked at it” and that they were “not the ones who go to Amnesty International.” Makari also favored a published report as a companion piece to the PCUSA’s annual “Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study.”
ACSWP voted to proceed with the 2004 human rights report and to have a subcommittee make proposals about the future – including whether the report has any value.
“We always come up against this every year,” said Jananne Starless of Sacramento, an elder and committee member. “We always try to determine what the value of this document has been, both to worldwide mission and the congregation. We’ve been informed it still has value because it is used in the field often times when we are dealing with human rights issues.”
Makari favored continuing the annual report. “Our partners are living in conditions where they are not able to speak to the human rights issues. It’s a valuable piece for our own church and our partner churches, no doubt about it,” he said.
Ronald StoneIn the past, he said, “we have depended on the tolerance of the committee to take the initial pieces and trust the direction and then come back to the committee with additional pieces with the approval of the chair.”
But committee member Ronald Stone, an elder and retired professor of Christian ethics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, objected to some of the content of the unfinished report before the committee – particularly in the section dealing with human rights in the United States.
That section included statements about issues, including civil rights, immigration, hate crimes, the death penalty, health care, poverty, the minimum wage and temporary assistance for needy families, women’s earnings. The comments in those sections bore a striking resemblance to the platform of the Democratic Party.
“I’m not sure a human rights report is the best place to criticize the details of U.S. policy,” Stone said. “I think there is a distinction between universal human rights and U.S. policy.”
Stone criticized, for instance, statements that all but spelled out what kind of medical insurance should be provided for all Americans.
The section on human rights in the United States was prepared by Eleanor Giddings Ivory, director of the PCUSA’s Washington lobby.