Excerpt of Ms. Magazine op-ed by GJC's Elena Sarver.

The State Department’s newly formed Unalienable Rights Commission held its third public meeting today. It’s been six months since the commission was first announced in July 2019 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, but it’s important to not lose sight of the dangers this commission poses.

To start, the very existence of this group as a way to determine and define human rights fundamentally distorts and misunderstands the very nature of human rights—they cannot be limited based on the views of a single government. Further, we should be most alarmed at its obvious intent: to erode long-established human rights in service of a regressive agenda, with clear antagonism toward abortion rights in particular.

At the outset, the commission is working under a seriously flawed premise. Universal human rights norms exist to hold states accountable: they cannot be defined or redefined based on the demands of an individual administration. Especially an administration like Trump’s, which has systematically disengaged from, rejected and attempted to erode the human rights system since its inauguration.

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Excerpt of Bloomberg article that features GJC President Akila Radhakrishnan.

Following the speech, Global Justice Center President Akila Radhakrishnan said in a statement Suu Kyi’s depiction of an internal military conflict “with no genocidal intent against the Rohingya is completely false.”

“Multiple independent agencies and experts, as well as Rohingya themselves, have documented mass killings, widespread rape, and wholesale destruction of land and property intentionally inflicted on innocent civilians,” Radhakrishnan said. “This is genocide and it’s precisely what the Genocide Convention set out to prevent.”

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Excerpt of CNN article that features GJC President Akila Radhakrishnan.

Following the presentation, the Global Justice Center said the picture Suu Kyi built up of an "internal military conflict with no genocidal intent" was "completely false."

"Multiple independent agencies and experts, as well as Rohingya themselves, have documented mass killings, widespread rape, and wholesale destruction of land and property intentionally inflicted on innocent civilians. The government has discriminated against the Rohingya for decades. This is genocide and it's precisely what the Genocide Convention set out to prevent," Akila Radhakrishnan, Global Justice Center President, said in a statement.

Many in the international community have questioned how a Nobel laureate renowned for fighting for democracy and human rights is now justifying her government's persecution of the Muslim minority.

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Excerpt of Al Jazeera article that features GJC President Akila Radhakrishnan.

Critics describe the army's actions by the army as a deliberate campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide that forced more than 700,000 Rohingya to flee.

“Aung San Suu Kyi’s picture of an internal military conflict with no genocidal intent against the Rohingya is completely false," Akila Radhakrishnan, president of the Global Justice Center in New York, said in a statement to Al Jazeera.

"Multiple independent agencies and experts, as well as Rohingya themselves, have documented mass killings, widespread rape, and wholesale destruction of land and property intentionally inflicted on innocent civilians.

"The government has discriminated against the Rohingya for decades. This is genocide and it’s precisely what the Genocide Convention set out to prevent.”

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