By Thomas A. Shannon. Mr. Thomas Shannon is special assistant to the ambassador at Embassy Brasilia.

We are living through a period of quiet but profound change in the international human rights agenda, which will pose new diplomatic challenges to the United States. While the principal human rights issue of the 1980s--political repression--will remain our primary human rights concern through this decade, several new issues have emerged that do not easily fit into our traditional understanding of human rights. Nevertheless, The United States must come to terms with these "new" issues, or lose what influence it has over the human rights agenda.

Children of poverty

First on the list are the rights and welfare of children. Vigilante killings of street children in several Latin American countries have highlighted an explosive Third World social problem that has been declared a human rights issue by such groups as Amnesty International and Americas Watch. Rapid urbanization and the breakdown of family structure under grinding poverty have turned millions of children out onto the streets of Latin America, Asia, and Africa. Deprived of normal care, feeding, and education, many of these children take to petty thievery, prostitution, and drugs. Lack of social services and creaky judicial systems have provided few institutional means to deal with this problem. Consequently, off-duty policemen and businessmen in some cities have taken matters into their own hands, forming extrajudicial groups that harass, intimidate, and kill street children.

The reemergence of death squads in some Latin American cities, but this time without the political overtones of the past decade, underscores the precarious existence of many of the world's children, who neither have a voice in government nor wield economic or political clout. The recognition that many nations are failing their children prompted the 1990 UN-sponsored World Summit for Children, the largest-ever gathering of heads of state. The World Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted unanimously by the UN General Assembly in 1990, set benchmarks by which nations' treatment of children can be judged.

Cultural survival

Second is the right of indigenous people to retain their cultures and ways of life. Historically, this issue has been treated as an anthropological problem. It achieved human rights status only recently, when Indian cultures were violently and systematically repressed by central governments, as in the cases of the Guatemalan Maya and Nicaraguan Miskito during the 1980s.

This understanding is changing. Responsibility for protecting primitive Indian groups has devolved upon governments, as publics acknowledge that some groups face cultural and physical extinction unless their contact with the modern world is better controlled. Although some governments are reluctant to accept this responsibility, international human rights organizations are not reluctant to assert it. Amnesty International's interest in the fate of Brazil's Yanomami Indians--a tribe decimated by disease and the depredations of their homeland by timber poachers, ranchers, and miners--is evidence that the issue has entered the mainstream of the human rights community.

Environmental organizations, too, have expressed interest in the fate of indigenous peoples, adding political urgency to the issue. Environmentalists know that most indigenous groups depend for their survival on their habitat; the economic development of their traditional lands is a direct and immediate threat to them. The melding of human rights and environmental concerns is a new and politically powerful development which will ensure that the plight of many indigenous peoples is well publicized throughout Europe and North America.

Struggle and flight

The last item on the emerging human rights agenda is the rights of refugees and other displaced persons. Again, the problem is not a new one; what has changed is our understanding of it. In the past, refugee rights have been viewed largely as a humanitarian issue, acquiring a human dimension only when the displaced persons were political exiles. However, the suffering inflicted on refugee groups in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Central America, and Africa--either through political manipulation, denial of relief supplies, or outright attack--has highlighted the central human rights aspect of this problem. America's own strapped resources and public "compassion fatigue" make uncertain the U.S. ability to continue to respond to these man-made disasters. The result is a growing consensus that the international community must hold to account governments that provoke, countenance, and manipulate the mass displacements of human beings.

The emerging human rights agenda poses a tough diplomatic challenge. The issues on the agenda reflect deep-rooted economic, social, and political problems that admit of no quick fixes. Unlike political violence, these issues also are not amenable to the customary finger-pointing and condemnation. This is not to diminish responsibility for human suffering, but to recognize that in most cases, harsh rhetoric gives reluctant governments an excuse to resist international pressure.

Unless handled adroitly and in good faith, human rights issues will drive a wedge between the developed and developing worlds. Third World nations are already nervous about what they perceive as the erosion of the traditional concept of state sovereignty, which provided them some measure of protection from outside interference. While international interest in human rights protection is legitimate, it must keep governments focused on human rights and not permit them to slide off the point by claiming that national independence is at stake.

Ways and means

How to accomplish this? A modest beginning would include the following: first, a reexamination of the structure of the State Department's annual human rights report. The format needs to be revised and expanded to include these new issues. Since much of the human rights report's structure is legislatively mandated, such a review would probably require consultation with the Congress.

Second, redouble U.S. efforts in multilateral human rights fora. Such fora are a useful means to engage countries that would otherwise resist bilateral approaches in human rights. For such fora to be effective, however, they must focus on real human rights issues. Efforts by some Third World nations to introduce extraneous issues, such as national economic development as a human right, or to include as fora members known human rights abusers, such as Cuba, must be resisted. Finally, we must look for creative ways to express our willingness to help countries struggling to improve their human rights records--for instance, Administration of Justice programs that help train police and courts in juvenile justice. Although such programs would have only a limited impact, they would identify us diplomatically as part of the solution and not part of the problem.

While efforts to provide protection to politically marginalized and vulnerable groups is a marked expansion of our traditional human rights policy, it is in keeping with its overall purpose. The history of the 1980s should be evidence enough that human rights issues can be ignored only at our own risk.