Patricia M. Derian

Patricia Murphy "Patt" Derian (born August 12, 1929) is a United States civil rights and human rights activist, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs from 1977 to 1981.^[1]

Biography

Patricia Murphy was born in New York City and grew up in Danville, Virginia.^[2] She was educated at the University of Virginia School of Nursing, graduating in 1952.^[2] She married Paul Derian following graduation,^[1] and worked as a nurse.^[2] She was a supporter of the African-American Civil Rights Movement.^[2]

During the 1960s, she moved to Mississippi to support public school desegregation.^[2] Derian helped organize the Loyalist Democrats (not to be confused with the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party) as a challenge to the state's all-white official delegation^[1] and was elected as one of Mississippi's delegates to the 1968 Democratic National Convention.^[2] She remained active in civil rights in the 1970s, serving as president of the Southern Regional Council and was a member of the executive committee of the American Civil Liberties Union.^[2]

During the 1976 U.S. presidential election, Derian was deputy director of the Carter-Mondale campaign.^[2] After Jimmy Carter won that election, he nominated Derian to be Coordinator for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs.^[2] President Carter, however, had the post elevated to that of Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs effective August 17, 1977, and Derian served in that capacity for the remainder of the Carter administration.^[1] In this post and as head of the new Bureau of Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs in the United States Department of State, she worked to improve policy coordination on humanitarian issues such as human rights, refugees, and prisoners of war.^[3]

In 1978, Derian married Hodding Carter III, who was then Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.^[4]

Derian was a vocal critic of Jeane Kirkpatrick and of the so-called Kirkpatrick Doctrine during the 1980s, which advocated U.S. support of anticommunist governments around the world, including authoritarian dictatorships, if they went along with Washington's aims —believing they could be led into democracy by example. Kirkpatrick wrote, "Traditional authoritarian governments are less repressive than revolutionary autocracies." Derian objected to Kirkpatrick's characterization of some governments as only "moderately repressive," arguing that this line of thinking allowed the U.S. to support "a little bit of torture" or "moderate" prison sentences for political dissenters.^[5]

Derian, who had headed an Inter-American Commission on Human Rights delegation in 1979 to investigate reports of widespread human rights abuses in Argentina, returned to Buenos Aires in 1985 to testify in the historic Trial of the Juntas.^[6][7]

Works by Patricia M. Derian

• Human Rights: A World Perspective (1978)
• "Human Rights: The Role of Law and Lawyers" (March 16, 1978, Washington, D.C)
• coauthored with Warren Christopher, Four Treaties on Human Rights (1979)
• Human Rights in Latin America (1979)
• Human Rights in Jeopardy (1980)
• Review of Human Rights in Latin America (1980)
• Human Rights in South Africa (1980)
• U.S. Commitment to Human Rights (1980)

References

• John Kelly Damico, From Civil Rights to Human Rights: The Career of Patricia M. Derian (Ph.D. dissertation, Mississippi State University, 1999).

1. 1 2 3 4 Kaufman, Burton (2006). "The Carter Years". Facts On File, Inc.  Missing or empty |url= (help)
2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Department of State Nomination of Patricia M. Derian To Be Coordinator For Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs, March 7, 1977
3. ↑ State Dept. Performance and Accountability Report for FY 2005
4. ↑ Profile of Hodding Carter III
5. ↑ Wayne King, "Washington Talk: Presidential Politics; Why Kirkpatrick Says (Other) Women Should Run for Office", New York Times, Nov. 2, 1987
6. ↑ Andersen, Martin (1993). "Dossier Secreto". Westview Press.  Missing or empty |url= (help)
7. ↑ Juan Mandelbaum. "Our Disappeared — Nuestros Desaparecidos".