Book Notes

In Our Own Best Interest: How Defending Human Rights Benefits Us All. By William F. Schulz. Boston, Mass.: Beacon Press, 2002. Pp. 235. $15.00, paper.

William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International U.S.A., has devoted his professional life to the promotion of human rights. With In Our Own Best Interest, Schulz aims to show the average American how our country’s approach to human rights issues may directly impact our everyday lives. It was a talk show appearance on Knoxville’s National Public Radio station that brought the need for such a project to Schulz’s attention. After discussing human rights issues around the world, his interviewer wanted to know what “all of this [has] to do with a person from East Tennessee?” Schulz found this to be a fair question, and one that the human rights movement has historically failed to address. Wishing to provide a fuller answer than he was able to give on the radio that day, Schulz wrote In Our Own Best Interest to emphasize the practical, everyday consequences around the globe and here in the United States that may result when human rights abuses are overlooked.

Before setting out to support his thesis, however, Schulz clearly establishes his belief that securing basic rights for all is, first and foremost, our collective moral duty. As Schulz explains, human rights defenders have traditionally relied on a sense of empathy and justice for support; “we have as-

sumed that if we describe the suffering dramatically enough, good people will respond.” And while many have, he says, the numbers are not strong enough to attract the kind of steady political attention that the movement needs to make widespread progress. In order to secure this kind of support, Schulz argues that human rights activists must call attention to the potential pragmatic benefits of their efforts. By way of example, Schulz cites past social movements that began as “moral crusades,” but only achieved maximum public support once the average person could see how the relevant issues affected his or her own life.

Having clarified his intent, Schulz sets out to catalog the different ways that democratic governments have been—and will continue to be—negatively impacted by our failure to make human rights a foreign and domestic policy priority. Schulz explores these issues as they emerge within the following contexts: stability and democracy, economic welfare, environmental protection, and public health. Some of these connections are more obvious than others; for instance, Schulz makes a strong case that nations that respect human rights are far less likely to go to war with a country like the United States. Our ability to avoid such conflicts has clear implications for our national security, stability, and economic welfare. Perhaps less straightforward, though, is the global impact that human rights abuses may have on the environment and on greater public health, and how these harms may touch American lives.

Schulz argues that environmental disasters are more likely to arise in those countries that deny their citizens such basic rights as freedom of speech and access to an independent press. Schulz points to Chernobyl as one example of administrative secrecy and suppression leading to an ecological catastrophe. Several smaller nuclear accidents preceded Chernobyl, and the Soviet government concealed these incidents from not only the general public, but from the very workers in charge of keeping their nuclear power stations safe. Without accurate information as to the potential for danger, these workers were ill-equipped to prevent future problems. The end result was the most destructive nuclear accident in history, the radiological impact of which was felt as far away as the United States. And these are not just the mistakes of a past era; as recently as 1996, a high-ranking Russian nuclear inspector was arrested and charged with high treason for disclosing information regarding Russia’s current handling of nuclear reactors. Alexander Nikitin’s report spoke of incompetent submarine crews, reactors that cracked while in operation, and nuclear waste leaking out into the ocean. He also claimed that nuclear accidents had killed more than 500 people since 1961 and nearly led to an unintended attack on three U.S. cities. As Nikitin observed (having finally been cleared of all charges in 2000), “Any attempt to conceal any information about harmful impacts on people and the environment is a crime against humanity.”

Aside from the obvious health implications imposed by undisclosed environmental hazards, there are other ways that public health may be affected

by human rights violations. Countries that deny their average citizens basic rights are likely to treat their prisoners even worse. In addition to problems of abuse and torture, prison cells are often so grossly unsanitary as to provide the perfect breeding ground for a host of diseases, including drug-resistant tuberculosis. Once inmates are released back into the general population, they pose a serious health risk to the greater community—a community that is likely to include tourists, business persons, and servicemen and servicewomen from the United States. With international travel so commonplace, Schulz fears that “worldwide pandemics [are] no longer a fantasy.”

While much of In Our Own Best Interest is devoted to documenting the ways in which foreign practices may adversely affect American interests, Schulz also examines certain U.S. policies that tarnish our own human rights record and serve to undermine our credibility on sizeable issues. For example, ingrained tendencies towards racial profiling, coupled with ongoing problems of police brutality in minority communities, threaten to halt the progress we have struggled to make in this country regarding discriminatory government practices. Schulz also scrutinizes abuses in our prison system and our support of the death penalty and considers how these practices may perpetuate violence within our society at the same time that they damage our standing in the international community.

Interestingly, one of the most compelling aspects of Schulz’s work relates not to its content, but to its timing. The original edition was published just prior to the September 11 attacks. In a new preface added to the paperback edition, Schulz writes that he had considered including a chapter on terrorism when he began this project, but decided that such a discussion would not further his goal of convincing average Americans that human rights abuses affect us too—the threat of terrorism having once been so far removed from our everyday experience. Schulz now calls this decision “inexcusably shortsighted,” and he addresses the ways in which rampant human rights violations in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan have created a ripe environment for extremism in those countries.

Throughout In Our Own Best Interest, Schulz combines victims’ stories with relevant research and social commentary, presenting a convincing case that we ignore human rights abuses at our own peril. His text offers timely and relevant advice to an American administration and public facing unprecedented challenges and concerns. Every nation worried about the safety and well-being of its citizens, as well as the plight of human rights victims around the world, would likely do well to heed Schulz’s message and address these issues with determination, sensitivity, and urgency.

—Cristine Reynaert

Copyright © 2003 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
Harvard Human Rights Journal / Vol. 16, Spring 2003