By Donna Miles
American Forces Press Service
MIAMI – An active theater engagement program at U.S.
Southern Command is making notable progress in promoting respect for human
rights within regional militaries, the command’s human rights coordinator
reported.
“Throughout our entire area of
responsibility, many nations in this region have had a history of human rights
abuse in the past 20 or 30 years,” Leana Bresnahan acknowledged in an interview
with American Forces Press Service.
Bresnahan credited Southcom’s human
rights policy, the first for a U.S. combatant command when it was issued in
1990, and its standup five years later of the first COCOM human rights office,
with helping reverse that course.
“This emphasis on human rights is
something that is unique for a combatant command,” said Army Maj. Gen. Gerald
W. Ketchum, director of Southcom’s theater engagement directorate. “But the
reality is that it is integral to everything we do.”
Southcom’s human rights office
represents an institutional statement of U.S. values and the command’s
commitment to maintaining a robust human rights program in the region,
Bresnahan said.
“Human rights are part of our national
values, our history, our traditions,” she said. “The bottom line is -- it is
what we do as a nation.”
That principle underpins U.S.
engagements with countries around the world, and is written into foreign
security assistance laws. The so-called Leahy Law, for example, prohibits U.S.
military assistance to foreign military units that violate human rights with
impunity.
“We are prohibited from providing
security assistance or any other DOD-funded training to a unit of a foreign
national military if there are credible allegations of gross human rights abuse
unless there has been effective action to investigate and prosecute those human
rights abuses,” Bresnahan said.
That congressional mandate provides the
carrot that has helped Southcom inculcate respect for human rights within the
region, she noted.
Bresnahan said she’s been encouraged, as
the region has put decades of military dictatorship and conflict behind it and
embraced democracy, at how open regional partners have been to the human rights
message.
The American Convention on Human Rights,
for example, established the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to
protect and promote human rights, as well as the Inter-American Court of Human
Rights to enforce these rights.
“The transformation has been amazingly
positive, and the militaries serving in these countries today are receptive to
the human rights message,” Bresnahan said. “They know that human rights are an
issue, and there is a great deal of awareness. They are aware of their
responsibilities and open to assistance.”
As part of its charter, Southcom’s human
rights office works with regional militaries to help them develop doctrine that
encompasses human rights principles and training programs that introduce them
to their forces. The staff also works with them to help strengthen their
internal control systems and increase cooperation with civilian authorities.
These efforts are particularly important
and relevant, Bresnahan said, in the few countries where the governments call
on their militaries to help local police forces provide internal security.
Ketchum emphasized that the United
States strives to be a facilitator, supporting partners in their efforts and
promoting shared values. “We are not dictating what people should be doing,” he
said. “We provide forums and minimal resourcing that allows everyone to come
together on this issue. We emphasize the importance of it and try to help where
we can as they develop their own path for training, for integrating that into
institutions, into how they develop their doctrine.”
“And we have had some real success
stories in providing support,” he said.
The training focuses at every level,
through classroom courses and field training exercise scenarios to senior-level
military colleges and seminars.
The Western Hemisphere Institute of
Security Cooperation at Fort Benning, Ga., integrates human rights into every
course it provides to Latin American mid-level officers and noncommissioned
officers every year, Bresnahan said.
Meanwhile, the Center for Hemispheric
Defense Studies in Washington is introducing more human rights into its
strategic-level curricula for senior-level officers and civilians. In addition,
the Defense Institute of International Legal Studies incorporates respect for
human rights into training it provides at the schoolhouse in Newport, R.I., and
around the region through its mobile education teams.
But equally important, Bresnahan said,
is the troop-level training conducted predominantly by partner-nation military
members themselves.
Often the U.S. military members’ biggest
contribution, she said, is the example they set. “The respect that partner
nation militaries have for the U.S. military is tremendous,” she said. “These
guys in uniform are the best messengers you can get. It is very powerful.”
Every member of Southcom’s staff as well
as service members traveling or operating in its area of responsibility are
required take an online human rights course and carry a pocket-sized card
describing the command’s human rights policies. The reverse side covers the
so-called “five Rs” of human rights: recognize, refrain, react, record and
report.
“They need to recognize what a human
rights violation is, refrain from committing a violation, react if they see one
being committed by someone else, and if they can’t prevent it, immediately
record it and report it up their chain of command,” Bresnahan said.
While acknowledging that some military
members initially questioned why they were getting involved in human rights
training, she said, “increasingly, our own military personnel are realizing the
influence they can have on this issue.”
U.S. State Department and other
governmental as well as nongovernmental organizations share that assessment.
“They recognize that our military people have a level of influence on other
militaries that they might not have,” Bresnahan said.
With recognized successes, Ketchum
acknowledged that the mission isn’t yet complete.
In some cases, Southcom can’t support a
partner nation because of its human rights record. “Some of our countries are
challenged and we really want to help, but human rights remains an issue that
is going to have to be discussed and overcome,” he said.
Navy Vice Adm. Joseph D. Kernan,
Southcom’s deputy commander, said that’s a challenge the command struggles with
as it engages in the region. “Human rights are important, and countries that
ask us at the leadership level to come in and work with them know we are going
to advocate human rights,” he said.
“And we often advocate strongly for
providing support to a country that may have had a long past human rights
issue,” Kernan continued. "We remain very sensitive to human rights
abuses, but our perspective in some cases is that we would like to work with
willing partners and promote human rights through side-by-side engagement.”
“This, as well, affords us the
opportunity to build a more expansive partnership across a number of other
common interest areas,” he added.
Bresnahan emphasized the increasingly
complex security challenges the region’s military forces are being tasked to
meet, and warned that promoting respect for human rights is a long-term effort.
“One should never assume the war has been won,” she said. “Like freedom itself,
respect for human rights requires constant vigilance.”
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