International Human Rights

 
In addition to promoting religious liberty in the United States and Georgia, Georgia Community Foundation monitors developments in the field of international human rights that threaten religious and economic liberty and national sovereignty.

While serving from 2005 through 2008 as the Chairman of the Social and Human Sciences for the U.S. National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization ("UNESCO"), GCF Founder Jim Kelly participated as a U.S. delegate in several international human rights conferences. At those conferences, he observed how UNESCO and other United Nations-affiliated organizations are pursuing a human rights education ("HRE") agenda. Under the HRE agenda, UN officials and representatives of non-governmental organizations are promoting human rights education at the national level by lobbying for the teaching of human rights in government-run schools. Unfortunately, the human rights comprising the HRE agenda consist of ambiguous civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights developed by officials in the Geneva, Switzerland-based Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights ("OHCHR"). By undermining the organic development of human rights at the national level, the UN’s promotion of the HRE agenda undermines national sovereignty and marginalizes the efforts of religious and other civic organizations to teach morals, ethics, and character to adults and youth.

In 2005, Engage published Jim Kelly's article titled "Human Rights Education, Religion, and Parental Choice in Education."

Meanwhile, since 2005, the UN and the OHCHR have relied on a matrix of human rights governance networks to hold global businesses accountable for contributing to the realization of economic rights, such as the right to housing, right to health care, right to social security, right to education, right to a clean and safe environment, right to food, and the right to share in the benefits of scientific research. By pressuring transnational businesses to permit human rights activists to conduct human rights impact assessments of their business operations, products and services, and governance, the matrix of human rights governance networks seeks to build a global welfare state to replace the national ones that no longer have the political or economic capacities to provide for their citizens.

In 2011, Engage published Jim Kelly's article titled "Multinational Enterprises and the Matrix of Human Rights Governance Networks."