Remarks by First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton
United Nations Economic and Social Council
United Nations Plaza
New York, New York
December 10, 1997
Thank you. Mr. President, your excellencies. I welcome this
opportunity to be here as
we begin this yearlong commemoration, which is not just a
commemoration of the
universality of human rights; it is a celebration of the United
Nations. I am especially
pleased that we are able to gather this morning in the Economic and
Social Council, which
at its first session in February of 1946, established the Commission
on Human Rights.
Forty-nine winters ago the world acknowledged the new common
standard for human
dignity, a code for the peoples and governments of the world to live
by. One of the people
who labored to create that code was Eleanor Roosevelt, then the
United States
representative to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. The place was
Paris. The delegates
who came together to craft the language hailed from countries as
diverse as Lebanon,
Chile, France, China, and Ukraine. The dream was the Universal
Declaration of Human
Rights, the first international agreement on the rights of humankind.
Some of humanity s greatest lessons emerge only after the deepest
tragedies. This
Declaration took shape in a world ravaged by the horrors of
militarism and fascism. In the
wake of the most violent revelations of the depths to which human
beings can dehumanize
one another, the world as a whole was ready at last to agree upon
these standards for
human rights.
Let me read a passage from that document:
Disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in
barbarous acts which have
outraged the conscience of mankind. The advent of a world in which
human beings shall
enjoy freedom of speech and belief, and freedom from fear and want,
have been proclaimed
as the highest aspirations of the common people. Therefore, the
General Assembly proclaims
this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of
achievement for all
peoples and nations.
The document goes on to state what should be obvious, but too
often is not:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity
and rights. They are endowed
with reason and conscience, and should act toward one another in a
spirit of brotherhood.
How radically idealistic an act it was at first for the nations of
the world to
subscribe publicly to this Declaration.
That act did not, however, take place in a vacuum. It was a
response to evil, and I use
that word deliberately. Those who study the Holocaust know that the
Nazis were able to
pursue their crimes precisely because they were able progressively to
constrict the circle
of those defined as humans. From the moment they came to power, they
proceeded step by
step to dehumanize, through laws and propaganda, the mentally ill,
the infirm, gypsies,
homosexuals, Jews those whom they identified as life unworthy of
life.
This cold, dark region of the human soul, where people withdraw
first understanding,
then empathy, and finally even the designation of personhood from
another human being, is
not, of course, unique to Nazi Germany. This device, this ability to
dehumanize, has been
witnessed in all times and places. It is precisely this device that
the Declaration
attempted to help us resist.
Thankfully, in the half-century since the birth of the
Declaration, we have, as a
global people, managed progressively to expand the circle of full
human dignity. Because
of this document, individuals and nations alike have a standard by
which to measure
fundamental rights. Many of the countries that have emerged in the
last 50 years have
drawn inspiration from the Declaration in their own constitutions.
Courts of law look to
the Declaration. It has laid the groundwork for the world s war
crimes tribunals. It has
prompted governments to set up their own commissions to safeguard
basic liberties.
At the United Nations Conference on Human Rights in Vienna in
1993, it was the power of
the Declaration that inspired the establishment of a High
Commissioner on Human Rights.
Let me add, how lucky the United Nations and, indeed, the world is
that Mary Robinson
fills that post.
At the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995, it
was the strength of
this Declaration that enabled us to say for all the world to hear
that human rights are
women s rights, and that women s rights are human rights.
And yet, in spite of this half-century of progress, we have not
expanded the circle of
human dignity far enough. There are still too many of our fellow men
and women excluded
from the fundamental rights proclaimed in the Declaration, too many
whom we have hardened
our hearts against those whose human suffering we fail fully to see,
to hear, and to feel.
Any look back at history shows that every nation has had its blind
spots that have kept
people out of the promised circle of full humanity. Take the example
of my own country. We
in the United States have had our own difficult experiences with the
selective or unequal
application of the rights established in the American Constitution.
Even the founding
fathers, whose ideas of human dignity were so far ahead of their
time, proclaiming that
all men are created equal in the Declaration of Independence,
inscribed slavery in our
Constitution.
It has taken most of our 220 years, some of them bloody, few of
them easy, to extend
the benefits of citizenship to African Americans, to those without
property, and to women.
Eleanor Roosevelt herself was 35 years old before she could vote.
Even today, we circumscribe the circle in what we choose not to
see. Black South
Africans described what it was like to work all day in white
environments in which one was
literally not seen. In the Balkans, people have willed themselves not
to see the humanity
of those whose heritage is different from their own. We ourselves in
the industrialized
world often choose not to see the child labor that goes into our
beautiful carpets or our
comfortable shoes.
In too many places today what we fail to see are the injustices
done to women. We
choose not to see the injustice of legal systems around the world
that continue to treat
women as less than complete citizens. In too many places, female
heirs are seeing less
inheritance than male heirs. Inequitable divorce laws compel women to
remain in cruel
marriages. And some courts of law require the testimony of two women
to equal that of a
solitary man.
Our vision is limited in other areas as well. We choose not to see
the contribution of
women to the economic lives of their families and countries. In too
many places, women are
discriminated against for bank loans and credit, first jobs and
promotions. They are
denied pay equal to that of men, or any pay at all. They live
disproportionately in
poverty, making up 70 percent of the world s poor.
We also circumscribe the circle by what we choose not to hear.
Freedom and equality for
all depend first on whether a citizen truly has a voice. It is
telling that even in the
drafting of the Universal Declaration, there was a debate about women
s voices. The
initial version of the first article stated, All men are created
equal. It took women
members of the Commission, led by Hansa Mehta of India, to point out
that all men might be
interpreted to exclude women. Only after long debate was the language
changed to say, All
human beings are born free and equal.
Today, we still choose not to hear the voices of many women. In
too many places women
are blocked from participating in the political lives of their
countries. Just nine days
ago in Sudan, 36 women were arrested while attempting to deliver a
petition to the United
Nations office there in protest of human rights violations in their
country. They were
arrested, fined, and at least one woman received 40 lashes.
In too many places girls and women never even learn to project
their voices. Two-thirds
of the 130 million school-age children out of school are girls.
Two-thirds of the 96
million people worldwide who can neither read nor write are women.
Even now the Taliban in
Afghanistan are blocking girls from attending school. Not only that,
they are blocking
those like Emma Bonino, the European Union Commissioner for
Humanitarian Affairs, who
would speak out against this injustice.
Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, the rights to petition
the government and
to assemble all these are essential. Just think how much weaker these
rights are in a
nation where the majority of young women are illiterate. Rights on
paper that are not
protected and implemented are not really rights at all.
We further constrict the circle of human rights through what we
choose not to feel. As
Eleanor Roosevelt put it, When will our conscience grow so tender
that we will act to
prevent human misery rather than avenge it?
In too many places, the suffering of women is defined as trivial,
explained away as a
cultural phenomenon. Perhaps it is for this reason that women do not
receive proper health
care, including access to family planning. Perhaps that is why, in
some countries where
more than 90 percent of women have undergone genital cutting, the
practice continues.
Perhaps that is why domestic and sexual violence remains the most
serious under-reported
and widespread human rights violation in the world.
In almost every country of the world, domestic violence is one of
the leading causes of
injury and death to women. In my country, 30 percent of female murder
victims are killed
by current or former partners. As Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright has said, domestic
violence can never again be dismissed, as it often has in the past,
as part of a country s
norm or as a set of private assumptions about family life. Let us say
it loudly for the
entire world to hear us: We do not believe that violence against
women is simply cultural;
we believe it is simply criminal.
Perhaps that is why rape and sexual assault continue to be tactics
of war. It is the
cruelest injustice that so many wars end not in peace for women and
their families, but in
refugee crises that trap women and children in lives that go from bad
to worse. Women and
children make up 80 percent of the world s 23 million refugees.
The full enfranchisement of the rights of women is unfinished
business in this
turbulent century. What meaning does the language of freedom and
human rights have for a
young woman forced into prostitution and traffic in the commercial
sex trade? What meaning
can it have for women forced into involuntary servitude as sweat-
shop workers or domestic
servants? What meaning can it have for a woman forced either to bear
a child or abort one?
What about the very ingrained practices that undermine the growth and
development of girls
from their very first years, such as the common practice of feeding
them last or less?
As I have been privileged to travel around the world, I have met
countless women who
know nothing of this Declaration and its promises. They are, however,
eloquent in their
belief that they deserve respect and better treatment in their
families, workplaces, and
societies.
Yet some critics continue to dismiss women s sufferings as minor.
But are they? In 1958
Eleanor Roosevelt wrote:
Where do human rights begin? In small places, close to home, so
close and so small that
they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world
of the individual
person the neighborhood he lives in, the factory, farm, or office
where he worked. Such
are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice,
equal opportunity,
equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have
meaning there, they have
little meaning anywhere.
Other critics dismiss human rights violations as harmless. A
report released this week
by the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict proves
otherwise. According to
the report, an upsurge of egregious human rights violations is almost
always a powerful
warning of dire events to come, including massive refugee flows and
civil wars.
Still others say that human rights are a Westerner s luxury not
inalienable, but alien.
I believe, and the women I ve listened to believe, that human rights
are as essential to
life as air or water, that they are felt beyond culture and tradition
as innate. The women
I have met do not feel that human rights are a foreign concept
invented by purists. Rather
they know in their very hearts and souls, in spite of everything they
are told by culture
and tradition, that these are God-given rights that they were born
with as surely as they
were born into the human family.
For if they are not innate, how have people throughout history
known to fight for them
so valiantly? Paradoxically, the proof of universality lies with the
perpetrators of human
rights violations themselves. Why would those who have dishonored
humanity run to cover
their tracks were it not for the knowledge that wrong had been done?
The Nazis tried to
hide their concentration camps. Communism kept its terrors in the
shadow of the Iron
Curtain. Scores of bodies are hidden in the hard ground of places
like Bosnia and deep in
the forests of places like Rwanda.
Throughout my hemisphere, people have disappeared. Why go to the
trouble? Because human
rights transcend individual regimes and customs. The beliefs
inscribed in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights were not invented 50 years ago. They are
not the work of a
single culture or country. They have been with us forever from
civilization s first light.
Sophocles wrote about them 2,500 years ago when he had Antigone
declare that there were
ethical laws higher than the laws of even kings. P.C. Chang, who
helped draft the
Universal Declaration, pointed out that Confucious articulated them
in ancient China. The
belief that we must respect our neighbors as we would respect
ourselves resides in the
core of the teachings of all the major faiths of this world.
The principles inscribed in the document whose birth we mark today
are not constructed,
but revealed. Every great religion exposed and taught their truth. If
I were to tear up
this declaration, its values would abide. If I were to burn this
document, its meaning
would remain. If I were to forbid someone from hearing its words,
they would still ring as
loudly as ever in the hearts of men and women.
It is because every era has its blind spots that we must see to
our own unfinished
business with even greater urgency now while we stand on the
threshold of a new
millennium. We must rededicate ourselves to completing the circle of
human rights once and
for all. We must challenge ourselves to see more sharply, to hear
more clearly, to feel
more fully.
And we must do something else. We must support democracies new and
old that work to
fulfill the aspirations of this Declaration. As my husband, the
President, said last
night: Democracy, the rule of law, civil society those things are the
best guarantees of
human rights over the long run.
It is time for us as a global community to commit ourselves. We
have run out of excuses
not to. Here we are at the very close of the 20th century, a century
that has been
scorched by war time and time again. If the history of this century
teaches us anything,
it is that whenever the dignity of any individual or group is
compromised by the
derogation of who they are, of some essential attribute they possess,
then we all leave
ourselves open to nightmares to come.
Conversely, if the century has a lesson for us that is redeeming,
it is that by
extending the circle of citizenship and human dignity to include
everyone without
exception, then we have the basis where new worlds of hope can
flourish.
So, let us in this year of commemoration walk toward those new
worlds. Let us do so
knowing that the path will never be easy. These rights may be
eternal, but so too is the
struggle to attain them. Though the darkness of the human heart may
recede, it will never
go away. It must be with realistic eyes that we look for human
rights. And it must be with
open hearts that in this, the 50th anniversary of the Universal
Declaration on Human
Rights, we rededicate ourselves to its fulfillment.
Thank you very much.
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