Human Rights, DNA and the Higgs Boson?

Yesterday, when launching the FCO’s Annual Human Rights Report, the Foreign Secretary said: “Human rights are part of the lifeblood of the Foreign Office because they are part of our national DNA – our character as a people – and because they are vital to our national interest”.

This formulation of our Ministers’ view that “our values are our interests” struck a chord with colleagues who had worked so hard to produce the Annual Report. Knowing how we’re all more productive when united by a common purpose, we have been debating the department’s “mission statement” this week.

I can’t tell you what this will be yet. We’re still haggling. But one of the bones of contention is whether a department focused on universal human rights can claim to be promoting “British values”. That would be convenient, because we could then tap into the “GREAT” Campaign.

Thus: “Education is GREAT – Britain” (a slogan illustrated by a picture of King’s College Cambridge); “Innovation is GREAT – Britain” (with a robotic hand). Similarly: “Human Rights are GREAT – Britain” (perhaps with a picture of Magna Carta). There’s a budget for the GREAT campaign. Some of us dream our departmental strap line might appear on banners in British embassies around the world.

Others cautioned that, by laying claim to human rights, we would be playing into the hands of governments who tried to dispute their human rights obligations on the grounds that these were a “Western imposition”; or of those who asserted their own, less arduous rule book (local and regional values).

Others pointed to the indisputable benefits of well-run regional human rights mechanisms; and the importance of presenting human rights in a way which resonated with ordinary people everywhere, not as a British export.

I have suggested one way to square this circle, in our in-house conversation. We should steer clear of the implication that Britain is GREAT because we invented human rights. Historians trace many of the concepts to English-speaking polities; but they can take root anywhere; and they are a common good, whatever their origin.

In that sense, I prefer to think of the UK being closely involved in the discovery of human rights, as we were in the discovery of DNA, and the Higgs Boson – though both those breakthroughs were collaborations (one with the US and one with Europe).  This analogy suggests opponents of universality risk turning out to be “flat earthers”: one can refuse to believe in the Higgs Boson, but that won’t stop particles having mass.

For our strap line, therefore, we could focus on the transformative impact on Britain that could follow, and does follow, when we focus the FCO’s work on human rights. So my vote goes to: “GREATER Britain: with human rights and democracy at the heart of foreign policy”.

That formula suggests simply that the UK is at its best when doing human rights work. I think that is straightforwardly true. But a second reading, which I like just as much, is that a human rights-oriented foreign policy is good for us in other ways: for our security and our prosperity. And may be even more important for us in the future, as the power and influence of nations is exerted and shared in different ways. Which brings us back to the Foreign Secretary’s choice of words.

What next? Are these considerations “an old chestnut” or an evergreen issue for diplomats everywhere? That’s something we’ll find out at next month’s Leadership Conference – for Heads of Post who travel back to London once a year to caucus and learn from each other. We’ve been asked to lead one of those sessions, with the title: “Human Rights, Prosperity and Security: Pulling together or apart?”