[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 154 (Friday, December 18, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2341-E2344]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

[[Page E2341]]



FIRST LADY HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON DELIVERS ELEANOR ROOSEVELT LECTURE AT 
 GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY--ADDRESS FOCUSES ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE 
                 UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Friday, December 18, 1998

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, just a few days ago, our First Lady, Hillary 
Rodham Clinton, delivered the first of the Eleanor Roosevelt Lectures 
sponsored by the Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill at Hyde Park, New 
York. The address was given here in Washington, D.C., at Georgetown 
University, and I had the honor of being present on that occasion.
  It was particularly appropriate, Mr. Speaker, that our current 
outstanding First Lady should pay tribute to her predecessor, Eleanor 
Roosevelt, whose active involvement in civil rights, human rights and 
other worthy causes set the standard for first ladies who followed her.
  Mr. Speaker, it was particularly appropriate that Mrs. Clinton 
devoted much of her lecture to the issue of human rights. The speech 
was given on December 4--less than a week before the 50th anniversary 
of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Eleanor 
Roosevelt was the chair of the United Nations Human Rights Commission, 
which drafted the Universal Declaration over half a decade ago.
  Most appropriately in her address, Hillary Clinton has put the 
struggle for human rights into a contemporary context. She reviewed her 
own extensive experience in dealing with child labor, religious 
persecution, the sexual exploitation of women and children, hunger and 
malnutrition, the abuse and murder of street children, and other 
similar serious issues. I commend our First Lady for her commitment to 
fight for human rights. Mr. Speaker, I submit her lecture at Georgetown 
University to be placed in the Record, and I urge my colleagues to give 
it the thoughtful and careful attention that it deserves.

   Remarks by Hillary Rodham Clinton, Georgetown University, Eleanor 
  Roosevelt Lectures, Washington, DC--December 4, 1998 (As Delivered)

       I am delighted to be here at this wonderful university. I 
     want to thank my friend and your president, Father O'Donovan, 
     for his introduction, for his leadership, for his many 
     contributions. Not only here to this university but to the 
     much broader American community as well.
       I am delighted to be here with others, from whom you will 
     hear as the program goes on. Dr. Glen Johnson from Val-Kill 
     and Dr. Dorothy Brown and Dr. Sue Martin, Ambassador Betty 
     King and Dr. McGrab and Dr. Milnik . . . . and your own Dr. 
     Jo Ann Moran Cruz and Tracy Roosevelt.
       This is a very important first lecture and a very 
     significant series that was undertaken by the Eleanor 
     Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill at Hyde Park in New York. I am 
     very honored to be taking part in this extraordinary lecture 
     series and I'm very pleased to be a part of something that 
     preserves the legacy of Eleanor Roosevelt. That gives new 
     generations of all of us, men and women, here in America and 
     around the world, a real opportunity to know more about this 
     extraordinary woman.
       What I wish to discuss this afternoon is how Eleanor 
     Roosevelt's legacy as a person, as a leader, as someone who 
     in her own way makes human rights part of our everyday 
     experience and vocabulary, how she can help today to continue 
     to guide us in protecting the human rights of all people and, 
     in particular, of children. I believe that this is an 
     important piece of unfinished business in our century and one 
     of the challenges of the new millennium. It is of course more 
     than fitting to have this first conversation about human 
     rights at this great university and community--one which has 
     always responded to the call of service, God, and humanity. 
     It is the home, as Father O'Donovan just reminded us, of a 
     student community that sends more than a thousand young 
     people a year into Washington, DC schools and neighborhoods 
     bringing math, and reading, and role modeling, and 
     friendship, and a hug to some of our nation's most vulnerable 
     children. It is the home of a brilliant faculty that has 
     devoted their lives to their students, to scholarship, to 
     service. Whether it's in the classroom or in some other 
     activity, Georgetown continues to make an important mark on 
     what we are as a people, how we define ourselves now and in 
     the future. It is certainly the home of many distinguished 
     alumni who have used the Jesuit ethos of service in this 
     world, from Mark Gearan who sends Peace Corps volunteers to 
     every corner of the Earth, to George Mitchell who helped 
     bring peace to Northern Ireland, from my husband, to my Chief 
     of Staff Melanne Verveer who is with me here today.
       Now, as you might imagine, being somewhat in awe of this 
     great university which has produced so many important people 
     and that has made so many important contributions to our 
     country, I thought I needed to discuss this speech with 
     Eleanor Roosevelt. (laughter and applause) When I first told 
     people some years ago that I sometimes hold imaginary 
     conversations with Mrs. Roosevelt, there were some--
     particularly, I must say, in the journalistic community--
     who thought they finally had irrefutable evidence that I'd 
     gone off the deep end. (laughter) Well, I only can commend 
     to you this imaginary conversation technique--whether it 
     is with a parent, a grandparent or a beloved former 
     teacher or a famous person--it does help to get your ideas 
     straight because you say, ``What would my grandmother say 
     about this?'' Or, ``what would Mrs. Jones, who desperately 
     tried to prevent me from dangling participles, have to say 
     about this?'' So talking to Mrs. Roosevelt, even in my 
     imagination, has proven to be a very great source of 
     strength and inspiration. You can imagine some of the 
     situations I find myself in when I say, ``Oh my good 
     gracious, what would Mrs. Roosevelt say?'' (laughter)
       As anyone can tell you, particularly my daughter, I am 
     technologically challenged. But, I decided in preparation for 
     this speech to try a more modern, more acceptable way of 
     communicating. So, first I tried to email her at 
     [email protected], but I think the server was down. I 
     tried calling on her cell phone, but the circuits were busy. 
     Then I tried paging her but was told she had traveled to 
     another part of Heaven to work with a group of angels on 
     strike, and that I would need a universal skypage to get 
     through to her.
       So there I was last night, I got home from New York late, 
     worried about what I was going to say, staring at some pages 
     of print when I realized that her life has already given us 
     the guidance we need on today's topic so many times over. Not 
     just some inspirational words that we might hear in our 
     minds, in our imaginary conversations such as, ``The thing to 
     remember is to do the thing you think you cannot do.'' But 
     also in her example, in the path that she created, in the 
     life that she lived. Wherever I go as First Lady, I am always 
     reminded of one thing: that usually, Eleanor Roosevelt has 
     been there before. I've been to farms in Iowa and factories 
     in Michigan, welfare offices in New York, where Mrs. 
     Roosevelt paid a visit more than half a century ago. When I 
     went to Pakistan and India we discovered that Eleanor 
     Roosevelt had been there in 1952, and had written a book 
     about her experiences.
       So I was particularly honored when I received the Eleanor 
     Roosevelt Center Gold Medal at Val-Kill. A beautiful wooded 
     retreat where she went to entertain friends and family to 
     think and to write. As I walked through her home I tried to 
     imagine again how she worked tirelessly there for what she 
     believed in. And I was told a story that I've never 
     forgotten. It was a day in the 1950s and she had a speech to 
     give in New York. She was so sick that her throat was 
     literally bleeding. Everyone wanted her to cancel, but she 
     refused. She drove from Hyde Park to 125th Street in Harlem. 
     And when she got out of the car, a young girl with her face 
     beaming handed her a bouquet of flowers. Eleanor Roosevelt 
     turned to the person with her and said, ``You see, I had to 
     come. She was expecting me.''
       Well, they were always expecting her and she always came. 
     She came to give support and to give a voice to those without 
     either. To the migrant workers who watched her march through 
     fields that had been newly plowed and were thick with muck, 
     they would just matter-of-factly greet her by saying, ``Oh 
     Mrs. Roosevelt, you've come to see us.'' As if it were the 
     most natural thing in the world. To the Japanese-Americans 
     during World War II and to African Americans every day during 
     her long life, she would help support people who faced 
     discrimination and challenges.
       Another of my favorite stories is of an African American 
     child, a first grader, whose mother worked in a laundry mat. 
     His father was a mechanic who couldn't get good work. They 
     lived in a tin shack without any foundation so every time it 
     rained their house slid down the hill. This child wrote to 
     Eleanor Roosevelt telling her that his house was literally 
     falling down a hill. So she went to Kentucky, set up a 
     meeting with the heads of the realty association and the 
     banks, which led not only that child getting his house on 
     much firmer footing, but also eventually to integrated 
     housing in Lexington, Kentucky. The next year in the mail, he 
     sent his second grade picture to Mrs. Roosevelt

[[Page E2342]]

     and she carried it with her to remind her of the boy she had 
     never personally met. On the back, he had written his name 
     with such care, erasing it many times so that it was just 
     right, that it left an imprint on the front of the photo. He 
     also included a letter, ``Dear Mrs. Roosevelt,'' it said 
     ``Thank you for my house. I know you did it.''
       Without fanfare, she went anywhere and everywhere she 
     thought her presence would make a difference. She wanted to 
     see with her own eyes the everyday violations that rob 
     individuals of their dignity and all of us of our humanity. 
     And then she rolled up her sleeves and tried to do something 
     about what she saw.
       And that is the path she is asking us to walk today; to 
     open our eyes and hearts, to use our minds and hands, and 
     fulfill the promises of her greatest achievements of all, the 
     Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It happened exactly 50 
     winters ago. As the Chair of the commission drafting the 
     Universal Declaration of Human rights, Eleanor Roosevelt 
     worked tirelessly from 1946 to 1948. Imagine how she must 
     have felt on December 10, at 3:00 a.m. when the nations of 
     the world agreed to create this new common standard for human 
     dignity. We know how everyone else felt. The delegates stood 
     and gave her a standing ovation.
       Let me read a passage from that document: ``The advent of a 
     world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and 
     belief, freedom from fear and want have been proclaimed as 
     the highest aspirations of the common people.'' The 
     declaration, as we know, did not take place in a vacuum. As 
     Father O'Donovan has already reminded us, it was a worldwide 
     response to evil, and I use that word deliberately. Those who 
     study Hitler's rise to power and the Holocaust know that the 
     Nazis were able to pursue their crimes precisely because they 
     were successful at constricting the circle of those that were 
     defined as fully humans. They proceeded step by step, through 
     laws and propaganda--Jews, the mentally ill, the infirm, 
     gypsies, homosexuals--all of whom they identified as unworthy 
     of life, as not human, as alien, other.
       Throughout history, and even today, we have seen in many 
     places and in many times this cold dark region of the human 
     soul, this schizophrenia of the soul that permits one group 
     to dehumanize another. And it was that all-too-human 
     characteristic that the Declaration and Eleanor Roosevelt 
     wanted to help us resist. In the half century since the 
     declaration, this document has created an ideal that nations 
     and individuals have reached towards, knowing that they will 
     never quite achieve it, but knowing that we must never stop 
     trying. Many countries have used the Declaration for their 
     own constitutions. Courts of law look to it. It has laid the 
     groundwork for the world's war crimes tribunals.
       At the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in 
     Beijing, it was the strength and challenge of this 
     Declaration that enabled us to say for the world to hear 
     that human rights are women's rights and women's rights 
     are human rights. It was the power of the Declaration that 
     led in 1989 to the United Nations Convention on the Rights 
     of the Child. I am very proud that my husband signed that. 
     And now I hope with all my heart that the United States 
     will join with the Vatican and all the other nations of 
     the world except Somalia and ratify the Convention once 
     and for all. (applause) And this is why. In spite of our 
     progress on human rights over the last half century, it is 
     unconscionable that we still have not seen the circle of 
     human dignity expanded to include all the children of our 
     world. There are still too many excluded from the 
     Declaration, too many whose suffering we fail to see, to 
     hear, to feel, or to stop.
       Now, any look back in the course of human history shows 
     that every nation, every society, has its blind spots. Spots 
     that somehow prevent us from understanding how the full 
     circle of rights should include all of our fellow human 
     beings. In our country it has taken us most of our 222 
     years--most 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 was 35 
     years old before she was given the right to vote.
       And we also know--especially in this new global economy--
     that no nation can move ahead when its children are left 
     behind. Eleanor Roosevelt understood that. She knew that 
     whether we treated children with respect would not only 
     determine the quality of our lives, but also who we were as a 
     nation and what kind of life it would be for the next 
     generation. You could see it in the way she talked to 
     children. I've seen so many pictures of her bending down from 
     her tall frame and leaning her entire body over to hear a 
     child, looking right into the eyes of that child, trying to 
     understand that child's dream, trying to convey that she 
     believed in that little boy or girl, and she always tried to 
     give those children a voice.
       The Declaration makes that clear. It reads, ``All human 
     beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.'' All 
     human beings--it did not say all men, or all members of 
     certain races, regions or religions. It did not say all 
     adults. It also did not make choices between children 
     because, in fact, it says specifically, ``All children, 
     whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same 
     social protection.'' Because human rights are not given to us 
     by a parent or the government. They do not miraculously 
     appear when we turn 18. No piece of paper can give them or 
     take them away. We know that children should be treated with 
     extra care--not less. And every child should be viewed as 
     endowed with all rights and dignity accorded to all human 
     beings.
       Now of course that's not always been the view of children. 
     For millennia we viewed children as the property of their 
     families, principally of their fathers. They were mostly used 
     for work--work outside and inside the house. Parents were 
     given the right in every culture to abandon, ignore or sell 
     their children. But over the centuries, we grew to understand 
     that children were not just little adults, that they need the 
     care, discipline and the love of a family. And we began to 
     understand too--as industrialization spread across the 
     world--that in order for children to be successful in the 
     world that is being created, they needed education, they 
     needed protection, they needed to grow slowly but surely into 
     adulthood. We have to only go back to  the 19th century to 
     see how different times were. In Dickens' Hard Times, poor 
     children grow up in a town where the black soot from the 
     factory virtually extinguishes the sun and the school is 
     taught by a teacher appropriately named Choke M. Child. So 
     in this century, we have begun to appreciate more that 
     children are people, are individuals, and not property.
       Now what does that mean to us? Well, clearly in our 
     country, it has meant passing laws, and enforcing them to 
     prevent children from being abused in labor; being abused by 
     those who are closest to them--their family; being given 
     certain protections, whether they are caught up in the court 
     system or the welfare system; being given the right of--which 
     sounds like an oxymoron--compulsory education; being viewed 
     in other words as people themselves who we must nurture into 
     full citizenship. If you've ever worked with children, you 
     can see in their eyes how so often we fail at that very 
     fundamental task of respecting them. I've worked with abused 
     and neglected children for more than 25 years. I've looked 
     into the eyes of many poor children, many abandoned children, 
     and I'm always amazed that there are some in our world who 
     continue to dismiss the suffering of children, who believe 
     that somehow children are so resilient that they will always 
     bounce back, and it is not all of our responsibility to care 
     for all of our children, and that we interfere with the 
     rights of parents when we do something as simple as try to 
     prevent children from being physically abused.
       So we've changed attitudes, and we have seen great progress 
     doing so here in our own country and around the world. There 
     are others who say that human rights are a Western invention 
     and that they come from a Judeo-Christian base and that they 
     don't have universal application. But we also know 
     differently. We can go back and trace the roots of the 
     beliefs that were set forth in the Declaration. They were not 
     invented 50 years ago. They are not the work of a single 
     culture, whether it is Confucius who articulated them in 
     ancient china, or Sophocles who wrote 2500 years ago about 
     such rights and had antigone declare there were ethical laws 
     higher than the laws of kings. But whether it is the Golden 
     Rule--which appears in every possible religion in one form or 
     another--we know that at root we understand--whether we admit 
     it or not--that we as human beings are vowed to each other in 
     a mutual realm of respect, that we should nurture for our own 
     sake, as well as for others.
       Now what are these rights? Well, for children, the UN 
     Convention on the Rights of the Child declares that every 
     child is born with the right to be protected from abuse and 
     abduction, violence and work that threatens his or her 
     development. It says that every child has the right to 
     worship freely and express opinions and aspirations, that 
     every child has the right to health, to education, to life. 
     These are the promises that Eleanor Roosevelt and every other 
     champion of human rights held out for all people, but it has 
     been up to us adults to make these promises real in the lives 
     of children.
       In many African villages, I'm told that neighbors greet 
     each other not by saying hello, but by asking, ``How are the 
     children?'' Well the answer is that today, 50 years after the 
     Declaration, children are doing better around the world. They 
     are more likely to live to see their 5th birthday and even 
     their 75th. In health, nutrition, education, water supply and 
     sanitation, three out of five countries are pretty much on 
     track to reach the child survival goals set by the 1990 World 
     Summit on Children. Over the last two decades, infant 
     immunization rates rose from 5 percent to 80 percent, saving 
     more than 3 million lives a year.
       Around the world, I have personally seen governments and 
     non-governmental organizations come together to put the lives 
     of children first. Just a few months ago, Yemen adopted a 
     national strategy for girls' education, including eliminating 
     school fees for girls. Last year in the United States, we 
     extended health insurance to millions of children, and 
     enacted the Adoption and Safe Families Act, which says that 
     our first priority in the child welfare system is the health 
     and well-being of children. There are many examples I could 
     give you of the progress we have made--certainly over 50 
     years, but even over 10 and the last 5 years. But still we 
     have to ask, ``How are the children?'' And the honest answer 
     is, which children? Where do they live? Who are their 
     parents? How affluent are they? What kind of societies are 
     they part of? Because, despite the advances, in many places 
     around the world children are not

[[Page E2343]]

     doing very well at all. There are old foes like malnutrition 
     and malaria and new foes like trafficking and child 
     prostitutes and laborers. There is still a long distance for 
     us to travel.
       Over the last few weeks I randomly had pulled headlines 
     from around the world. From Hong Kong, ``Child Prostitutes 
     Make Tearful Plea;'' in Bangladesh, ``The Plight of Street 
     Children;'' in Nairobi, ``Poverty Blamed for Child Labor.'' 
     Eleanor Roosevelt certainly would be the first to point out 
     that a child's rights go far beyond simply responding to the 
     images that we see on TV, or that reach us through the 
     Internet or the newspaper. We have to ask ourselves, each of 
     us, ``What is it I can do? What is it I can ask others to do? 
     How can I move my government, my church, my friends forward 
     to do more for children?''
       I think there are some very specific ways we can bear 
     witness and things we can do to support those children whose 
     lives are not much better today than they were 50 years ago, 
     or who face new challenges--like being kidnaped, or being 
     forced into combat--that we didn't even dream of 50 years 
     ago. We have to understand that we can't just be satisfied by 
     giving children help and nutrition for emergencies. We have 
     to look at root causes. We have to support work by our own 
     government, by our development agencies like USAID, by 
     international organizations such as UNICEF. And it is 
     particularly important that we do not forget the faces of the 
     children here in our country, at this time of prosperity and 
     peace. Americans have so many blessings, but there are even 
     those among us who are being left out.
       If we talk about human rights and freedoms we have to ask 
     ourselves, ``What does that mean to the 7 million children 
     who still die every year of malnutrition?'' What does it mean 
     to the 585,000 women who still die of childbirth 
     complications or the girls who are fed last and fed least 
     because they are not valued as much as their brothers?
       What meaning can it have for a child who does not have 
     access to school or for one who is shut out at school? We 
     know that education, especially for girls, is the single best 
     investment any country can make. It is what will give 
     children a better future, keep them out of the labor market 
     before they're ready, and keep them off the streets. And yet, 
     140 million primary school age children are not in school--60 
     percent of that 140 million are girls. And I have seen first-
     hand the obstacles, the cultural and economic obstacles that 
     stand in the way of sending girls to school. In a small 
     village outside of Lahore, Pakistan I visited with mothers 
     who had sent their daughters to local primary school, and now 
     they had daughters who had graduated who wanted to go on with 
     their education, but there was no secondary school. I've met 
     with families in Bangladesh, who in return for food and money 
     permitted their daughters to go to school. It was a bribe, 
     but it was a worthy bribe.
       I've also visited places where child labor is the norm not 
     the exception and, as Eleanor Roosevelt said when she 
     championed the Child Labor Amendment in our own country so 
     many years ago, ``No civilization should be based on the 
     labor of children.'' But that is happening every day--even in 
     this country because children are being forced into labor, 
     sold into labor, and we are not doing enough about it. The 
     types of labor children are subjected to in this new global 
     economy have perhaps changed, but not the impact on the 
     child. It is not a problem of the past. It should not be 
     excused by saying that parents need money. And we should not 
     close our eyes to the work of children that goes into 
     beautiful carpets or comfortable running shoes because the 
     fact remains that one quarter of the children in the 
     developing world, 120 million, work full time. It's a very 
     difficult problem because many of them are the sole support 
     of their families often with widowed or abandoned mothers, 
     with younger siblings, or they're helping to supplement the 
     hard earned income of a father.
       The new face of child labor also includes things that I 
     don't think Eleanor Roosevelt even thought to worry about. 
     Girls are being sold as part of an international trade in 
     human beings from South Asia, to the Middle East, to Central 
     America. It is estimated that there are 250,000 children in 
     Haiti alone who are virtually enslaved as domestic servants. 
     I heard about that on my recent trip to Haiti. How they are 
     often given away, sold, separated from their families, 
     sexually and physically abused, malnourished, and literally 
     sometimes worked to death. There are girls that I've met in 
     Northern Thailand, when I visited their village I could tell 
     by looking at their parents' homes which ones had sold their 
     daughters into prostitution. The homes were bigger, nicer, 
     they sometimes even had an antenna or satellite on top. But 
     the next day I visited with some of the daughters that had 
     been sold into the brothels in Bangkok and other cities who, 
     after they became infected with HIV, were thrown out into the 
     streets and found their way home. They were rejected by their 
     families, and thanks to the good services of relief and 
     religious organizations they were taken in. And I met those 
     girls--some of them as young as 12--dying from AIDS.
       Eleanor Roosevelt worked hard to rescue European refugee 
     children during World War II. But I don't know if she, or 
     anyone, could have seen the horrific ways in which children 
     are now being brutalized by war. Until relatively recently in 
     human history, war was being fought out between soldiers. 
     Some conscripts, some volunteers, but by in large adult men--
     counting teenagers in their mid to late teens in some 
     societies who were part of whatever the war effort was. In 
     the last twenty or so years, that has increasingly not been 
     the case. Who will speak today for the two million children 
     that have been in conflicts in the last two decades, with six 
     million seriously injured or permanently disabled, the one 
     million left without parents or the twelve million left 
     without homes? The primary victims of modern warfare are 
     women, and children, and civilians--people who are picked on 
     as victims, who are kidnaped by perpetrators, who are forced 
     into being refugees. Who will speak for those children who 
     are being used as instruments of war? From the young girls 
     systematically raped in Bosnia, to the quarter of a million 
     child soldiers around the world.
       Who will speak for the three children I recently met in 
     Uganda--Janet, Issac and Betty? Like many children in 
     Northern Uganda, they have literally been stolen from their 
     homes. The boys are used in battle as human shields. The 
     girls are sent into slave labor, usually raped, and then 
     given away as wives to rebel commanders. The children are 
     often forced to kill other children who don't obey or try to 
     escape. The rebels call themselves soldiers but they are 
     cowards, for only cowards would hide behind children in 
     battle.
       I met the head of a boarding school, a nun, Sister Rachele. 
     Her 139 female students had been the subject of a raid by the 
     rebels who had crossed the Sudanese border, had taken the 
     school, tied the girls up, beaten them, and then taken them 
     all away into the dead of night. But this tiny little woman 
     of God was determined to get them back. She went after them, 
     she was armed usually only with her faith, but she was able 
     to pull together some funds to ransom some of the children 
     out. She served as a safe haven for those who could find 
     their way back. Many have, but I was sad to talk with the 
     mother of one of those students who has not been rescued. Her 
     mother doesn't know if she's alive or dead. She only knows 
     that she was taken as part of a war that she has no say in 
     whatsoever.
       We also know that we cannot fulfill the journey that the 
     Declaration started us on when 100 mullion street children 
     now live in the developing world alone. They are out of 
     school, without homes or families. They're left to take care 
     of themselves, they roam the streets in tattered clothing, 
     they sell gum, and they beg and they dig through the trash 
     for food. I've seen them in Bulgaria. Roma children--one of 
     the most discriminated against groups in Europe--you might 
     call them gypsies. Roma children, sometimes by their own 
     parents, are put out on the street to beg. Or if there are 
     too many children in the family some are just left there. Or 
     if they want to go to school instead of turning tricks they 
     are left there.
       I also saw them in Brazil where three street children a day 
     are killed, usually by police doing the bidding of merchants 
     who are tired of having these children camped in front of 
     their stores. In both Bulgaria and Brazil, I saw how caring 
     people can make a difference. I visited a center run by a 
     Bulgarian--American who has taken in children off the streets 
     who are now going to school and learning, and thinking about 
     a better future. But it's a small number of those that need 
     to be helped. I visited a unique program in Brazil in 
     Salvador de Bahia. A circus school where children were taken 
     in and taught skills to entertain people who would come and 
     see them perform. They would then have money so they could be 
     housed, and given food, and educated--children who once had 
     no future, thinking they wouldn't have one. It's not only in 
     warm places like Brazil--I visited a center for street 
     children in Mongolia where the children, because of the rapid 
     changes in social life, because of problems adjusting to the 
     new global economy, are either being pushed out or running 
     away from homes that are in a great deal of stress and 
     turmoil.
       When we think bout what is happening with these tens of 
     millions of children around the world, we certainly cannot 
     forget that there are still children here in Washington, DC 
     and throughout America that need their rights protected as 
     well. We should not, for example, condemn violence against 
     children in Kosovo and turn away from it on the streets 
     of Washington. We cannot mourn the children of Mongolia 
     and forget about homeless children here, or raise our 
     voices about children out of school in Guatemala and close 
     our mouths when young people here drop out. We have to do 
     better by our own children as well. We've been making 
     progress here and around the world.
       I've been pleased that this administration, under the 
     President, has put the protection of children on the front 
     burner. For example, this year, we are increasing by tenfold 
     our U.S. commitment to take children out of abusive workrooms 
     and put them in classrooms all over the world. Since 
     September, the Voice of America has been broadcasting monthly 
     public service announcements asking parents if they've talked 
     about their children's health today, focusing on child 
     survival issues, talking hard talk in some places, like not 
     feeding your girl children, or being exposed to HIV and AIDS. 
     We join with Ukraine to combat trafficking of girls in and 
     out of that country. And from Guatemala to Nepal, I've seen 
     how small investments in educational scholarships for girls, 
     or safe birthing kits, or Vitamin A, can lift up and 
     transform lives. So there is much that we can point to that 
     is heading in the right direction, but there is much more we 
     have to do.

[[Page E2344]]

       Another story from Eleanor Roosevelt. She once talked about 
     receiving a letter from an African American boy who had taken 
     a drink out of what was then considered the wrong water 
     fountain, and he was beaten up for it. He sent her the cup he 
     had used to get the water and explained what happened. She 
     not only kept that cup, she carried it around with her as a 
     reminder of all the work yet to be done. I wish we each had 
     some little talisman that we could carry around with us, that 
     would remind us everyday of the work still to be done. I hope 
     we remember the children who are victims and weapons of war 
     when Congress revisits our United Nations dues. It should be 
     unacceptable to all Americans of any political persuasion 
     that the richest and most powerful country in the world is 
     the number one debtor to the United Nations. (applause)
       I hope we remember the children toiling in glass and shoe 
     factories as we work to fulfill the promises and one day 
     ratify the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the 
     Child. I hope we continue to do all that we can to help 
     promote democracy around the world to make sure that all 
     parents have a voice that will be heard from the ballot box, 
     and even the soap box, so they can speak out on behalf of the 
     needs of their children. We know that we have to do more than 
     pass, and even implement new laws. We have to teach people 
     that they do have rights, and how to exercise them.
       I was particularly pleased by an American-funded project I 
     saw recently in Senegal. Where out in the villages they're 
     learning about democracy, they're acting out skits. Someone 
     stands up and expresses an opinion and then another stands up 
     and they discuss it and take a vote on it. The rudiments of 
     democracy. And in this skit are both men and women 
     participating. As a result of that democracy skit one small 
     village, after talking about issues that effected them--
     health, the education of their children--to put an end to 
     female circumcision. That was a very brave decision. They 
     convinced people in the village that it should be done, and 
     they put it to a vote and they voted for it. And than, two 
     men in their village went from their village to other 
     villages and started talking to the people in the other 
     villages and explaining that they had read the Koran and 
     there was nothing in it that talked about this. It was not 
     good for their daughters, it sometimes led to them 
     hemorrhaging and bleeding to death, and sometimes caused 
     grave complications in childbirth. Slowly, village after 
     village began to recognize that it was a fundamental right 
     of a young girl to grow up whole, to have her health 
     protected. And then, the next thing I knew I got a letter 
     saying these villages had banded together and presented a 
     petition to the President and that a law would be passed. 
     Now that law will not end this cultural custom, but it 
     will begin to change attitudes about it. More and more 
     girls and women will say, ``No, this is not necessary.''
       There are certain rights to health that we need to protect. 
     First, think of what we could accomplish if we valued and 
     respected every child, with particular emphasis on girl 
     children, because they are still the most at risk in so many 
     societies around the globe. If we are to put children's 
     rights on the same level as adult's rights, then we have to 
     think about what it is that we want for our own children. 
     Those of us in this beautiful Gaston Hall, who try to keep 
     our children healthy, who try to give them good educations 
     that lead to a fine university education like this one here 
     at Georgetown. We try to protect them from abuse and neglect 
     and abandonment and desertion. We try not to put them to work 
     in full time jobs before they are ready. So we have to think 
     about what we want for ourselves, and in many countries where 
     some of the worst violations of children's rights occur, 
     those who are in power protect their own children and then 
     look at others children as being beyond the circle of human 
     dignity.
       So we have to complete that circle, and that falls to every 
     generation. It fell to our parents who fought off depression 
     and oppression. It fell to the generation that fought for 
     civil rights and for human rights. And it falls to each of 
     us, particularly the students who are here today. I like very 
     much the article that Tracy Roosevelt recently wrote. She 
     talked about the legacy that her great grandmother left all 
     of us and that any young person could follow by standing up 
     for the rights of others by standing against stereotyping of 
     any person or group of people.
       Now we might not have Eleanor Roosevelt's stature--either 
     in height or in life--but each of us can contribute to a 
     child's future. We can make sure that we are part of a 
     society that values health care for everyone, a good 
     education for everyone, the strength of families to give them 
     the tools they need to raise their own children with future 
     possibilities, to make sure we do everything we can to live 
     free from abuse and violence and war, and to make it possible 
     for every person and every child to speak freely and live up 
     to their own God-given potential.
       As we look forward to the next fifty years, we will face 
     many challenges and opportunities. It was almost 50 years ago 
     that Eleanor Roosevelt spoke about this. She spoke about 
     democracy and human rights to a group of students, both high 
     school and college students, in New York. As we listen to her 
     those words still ring true today. She said, ``Imagine it's 
     you people gathered here in this room who are going to do a 
     great deal of the thinking and the actual doing because a 
     good many of us are not going to see the end of this period. 
     You are going to live in a dangerous world for quite a while 
     I guess, but it's going to be an interesting and adventurous 
     one. I wish you courage to face yourselves and when you know 
     what you really want to fight for, not in a war, but to fight 
     for in order to gain a peace, then I wish for you imagination 
     and understanding. God bless you. May you win.''
       Those words are just as true for this generation of 
     students as they were fifty years ago for the ones that 
     Eleanor Roosevelt spoke to. I go back to that first story, 
     despite how sick she was, she showed up and took that bouquet 
     of flowers from that young girl. ``You see'' she said, ``I 
     had to come, she was expecting me.'' Think about all of the 
     children who are expecting us. Think about, as we go forward 
     into Advent and celebrate this Christmas season, about a 
     particular child who no one was expecting but grew up to give 
     us a chance to think anew, to live again in way that connect 
     us more deeply and profoundly to one another. Eleanor 
     Roosevelt can serve as an inspiration, and a reminder that 
     although as President Kennedy said, ``God's work on this 
     Earth is our own,'' we know that we can never complete it. 
     But we know that we can live richer lives if we try. To the 
     children of America and the world, you see, we have to come, 
     because they are expecting us to make good on the promises 
     that were made to them fifty years ago. Thank you all very 
     much. (applause)

     

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