Human Rights

A set of regulations contained in the Dodd-Frank financial reform law is having unintended consequences in war-torn central Africa, lawmakers and witnesses said during a hearing Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday named a Democratic operative well known for his rhetorical jabs at Republicans as the department's new Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism.

The nomination of Ira Forman, who led the National Jewish Democratic Council for 15 years, was announced in conjunction with the release of the International Religious Freedom Report for 2012. His first role will visit the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz with a group of imams before heading to the International Conference of the Global Forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem.

The position was created by the 2004 Global Anti-Semitism Review Act, sponsored by Rep. Tom Lantos (D-Calif.), then the only Holocaust survivor in Congress, and former Sen. George Voinovich (R-Ohio).

Oil-and-gas companies are concerned about reporting requirements for doing business with Burma now that the United States has established relations with the country.

Companies are lobbying the State Department on the reporting issue as the administration works to build diplomatic ties. President Obama on Monday hosted Burmese President Thein Sein at the White House in the latest sign of growing cooperation.

Oil-and gas-firms are interested in buying blocs in the resource-rich Bay of Bengal off of Burma’s western coast. Burma has offered up several plots to European Union bidders in recent auctions, and U.S. firms are also beginning to show interest.

The House foreign affairs panel on human rights cleared three bills Wednesday in its first mark-up of the year.

The panel approved by voice vote legislation from chairman Chris Smith (R-N.J.) that would create new sanctions for the president to use against countries that refuse to return children abducted from the United States by one of their parents. The legislation is named after a New Jersey boy, Sean Goldman, who was abducted to Brazil for five years by his mother before being returned last year.

Smith's panel held a hearing last week on the legislation with Sean's father, David. The State Department's special adviser for children's issues warned at the hearing against sanctions and said the department's preferred approach was to get countries to comply with the United Nations treaty on parental child abductions.

Issa said the White House "effectively lied" to the public about the nature of the attack

President Obama is coming under pressure to spell out what exactly the Atrocities Prevention Board he launched a year ago is supposed to accomplish amid ongoing violence and allegations of chemical weapons use in Syria.

Obama announced the creation of the board to great fanfare during a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Museum last April 23 as a way of “making sure that the United States government has the structures, the mechanisms to better prevent and respond to mass atrocities.”

On Wednesday, a coalition of 19 human-rights groups wrote to the president asking him to issue an executive order explaining his administration's “overriding strategy for preventing atrocities.”

“It is time to show the American public what progress has been made, to reiterate your continued commitment to atrocities prevention, and to fully engage the many allies you have in this important task,” the Prevention & Protection Working Group wrote in a letter to the president. “As organizations dedicated to preventing and stopping genocide and mass atrocities, we are eager to support you and your administration in those efforts.”

Asian-American lawmakers and advocates are troubled by changes to family-sponsored visas in the Senate’s immigration bill.

The Treasury Department published a list of alleged Russian human rights abusers Friday, defying the Kremlin's threats of retaliation.

Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday endorsed a British-led effort to prosecute sexual assault in combat zones.

Kerry and his counterparts endorsed the Declaration on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict as part of the common statement they agreed to at the end of their two-day G-8 foreign ministers' summit in London. The declaration calls on “further action” to prevent sexual violence in conflict zones and prosecute the perpetrators.

“Ministers recognised that further action at the international level is imperative to end sexual violence in armed conflict, to tackle the lack of accountability that exists for these crimes and to provide comprehensive support services to victims, be they women, girls, men or boys,” the declaration states.

The State Department later announced it was committing $10 million to help support the initiative.

Lawmakers called on the State Department to designate Vietnam as an egregious human-rights violator on Wednesday ahead of talks in Hanoi on Friday.

The chairman of the House human rights panel said the State Department should designate the communist nation as a “country of particular concern” under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act because of its continued religious persecution and political repression. The call comes days before the annual human-rights dialogue is expected to take place in Hanoi after being cancelled last year. 

The State Department lifted the designation, which opens up countries to criticism and possibly sanctions, in 2006 amid reports of progress on human rights. Since then, said Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), religious persecution has gotten worse.

“We do call on the Obama administration to designate Vietnam as a country of particular concern,” Smith said at a press conference with religious leaders. “The Vietnamese government has cracked down on religious believers, evangelicals, Montagnards, Catholics and others.”

Smith also said he would re-introduce his Vietnam Human Rights Act within the next day or two. The bill would create benchmarks that Vietnam would have to meet to get U.S. assistance; it cleared the House last September but died in the Senate.