[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1998, Book II)]
[December 10, 1998]
[Pages 2149-2153]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks on Presenting the Eleanor Roosevelt Awards for Human Rights
December 10, 1998

    Thank you very much. I want to welcome all of you here, the Members 
of Congress, the members of our foreign policy team who have worked on 
this, National Security Adviser Berger, Under Secretary Loy, Assistant 
Secretary Koh. I welcome Ambassador Nancy Rubin, the Ambassador to the 
U.N. Commission on Human Rights; Theresa Loar, the Senior Coordinator 
for International Women's Issues; members of the Roosevelt family; and 
other distinguished guests.
    I would like to say also, before getting into my prepared remarks, 
that someday when I write the memoirs of these last several years,

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one of the proudest moments of our administration for me will be the 
work the First Lady has done to advance the cause of human rights. I 
remember the speech she gave in Beijing on a rainy day when people were 
struggling through the mud to get into that remote facility; the talk 
she gave just a few days ago at Gaston Hall at Georgetown University 
about Eleanor Roosevelt--I think one of the finest speeches she ever 
gave; but more important, the concrete work, the Vital Voices work in 
Northern Ireland and Latin America and all the little villages she 
visited in Latin America and Africa and Asia, on the Indian Subcontinent 
to try to advance the condition of women and children, especially young 
girls. And I think that every person who has ever been the parent of a 
daughter could identify strongly with the remarks she just made and the 
brave women who were just introduced.
    You know, most of us, at least who have reached a certain age, we 
look forward to the holidays when our daughters come home from college, 
and they have the human right to decide whether they want to come home 
or not. [Laughter] When our daughters are married, and they have our 
grandchildren, we hope they'll find a way to come home. Imagine--I just 
wish there were some way for every American citizen to imagine how they 
would feel if the people Hillary just discussed were their daughters. I 
hope we can do more.
    We are sponsoring these awards today and announcing them because, as 
all of you know so well, 50 years ago in Paris the U.N. General Assembly 
voted to approve the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was 
a watershed moment for what was then a very young United Nations; a new 
chapter, however, in a much, much older story, the unending striving of 
humanity to realize its potential in the life of every person.
    For its time, the Universal Declaration was quite bold. If you look 
at the way the world is going today, it's still quite a bold document. 
Like all great breakthroughs, it was an act of imagination and courage, 
an opening of the heart and the mind with spare elegance. It served 
notice that for all our differences, we share a common birthright.
    You know, it's easy for us to forget, but if you think back to 1948, 
it might not have been particularly easy to affirm faith in mankind's 
future. After all, it was just 3 years after a cataclysmic war and the 
Holocaust; the cold war was beginning to blight the postwar landscape; 
millions and millions more would die just in the Soviet Union under the 
terror of Stalin.
    But this document did reaffirm faith in humankind. It is really the 
Magna Carta of our humanity. Article I states that: ``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.'' There are no commas or parentheses in this sentence, no 
qualifications or exceptions, just the power of affirmation.
    Other articles assert the freedom to worship, to work, to assemble, 
to participate in a life of meaning and purpose. Those words have now 
been translated into every language of the United Nations. Though 50 
years old, they still ring free, fresh, and powerful, don't they? They 
resonate today, because today human dignity is still under siege, not 
something that can be taken for granted anywhere.
    We all know how much the Declaration owed to the remarkable 
leadership of Eleanor Roosevelt. She rose to every challenge. She 
defended American idealism. She honestly admitted our own imperfections. 
She always called on the best from each delegate, and she called on it 
again and again and again. Indeed, a delegate from Panama grew so 
exhausted by the pace that he had to remind Mrs. Roosevelt that the 
delegates had human rights, too. [Laughter]
    Today we celebrate the life of this document and the lives it has 
saved and enhanced. Mrs. Roosevelt worried that it would be hard to 
translate ideas on paper into real places, into kitchens and factories 
and ghettos and prisons. But words have power. Ideas have power. And the 
march for human rights has steadily gained ground.
    Since 1948, the United Nations has adopted legal instruments against 
torture, genocide, slavery, apartheid, and discrimination against women 
and children. As nations grow more interdependent, the idea of a unified 
standard of human rights becomes easier to define and more important 
than ever to maintain.
    Obviously, all nations have more work to do, and the United States 
is no exception. We must improve our own record. We must correct our own 
mistakes, even as we fulfill our responsibility to insist on improvement 
in other nations--in totalitarian states, like North Korea; in military 
dictatorships, like Burma; in countries where leaders practice the 
politics of ethnic hatred, like Serbia and Iraq; in African nations

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where tribal differences have led to unimaginable slaughter; in nations 
where tolerance and faith must struggle against intolerant 
fundamentalism, like Afghanistan and Sudan; in Cuba, where persons who 
strive for peaceful democratic change still are repressed and 
imprisoned; in China, where change has come to people's daily lives, but 
where basic political rights are still denied to too many.
    Some suggest today that it is sheer arrogance for the President or 
for the United States to discuss such matters in other countries. Some 
say it is because we are not perfect here at home. If we had to wait for 
perfection, none of us would ever advance in any way. Some say it is 
because there are Asian values or African values or Western values 
dividing the human race into various subcategories. Well, let's be 
honest: There are. There are genuine cultural differences which 
inevitably lead to different political and social structures. And that 
can be all to the good, because no one has a corner on the truth. It 
makes life more interesting.
    The Universal Declaration of Human Rights does not say there are no 
differences among people. It says what we have in common is more 
fundamental than our differences, and therefore, all the differences 
must be expressed within certain limits beyond which we dare not go 
without violating our common humanity.
    This is a phony attack on those of you who fight every day for human 
rights. None of us want everyone to be the same; none of us want to have 
all the same religious practices; none of us want to have all the same 
social and political structures; none of us say we know exactly how life 
should be organized everywhere under all circumstances and how every 
problem should be solved. We say we have a common humanity and whatever 
you think should be done differently must be done within the limits that 
respects our common humanity.
    Now, that means a lot to us on the verge of a new century, where 
freedom and knowledge and flexibility will mean more to people than ever 
before, where people in the poorest villages on every continent on this 
Earth will have a chance to leapfrog years and years and years of the 
development process simply because of the communications revolution, if 
we respect universal human rights. The Vice President said so well 
recently, in Asia, that we believe the peaceful democratic process that 
we have strongly endorsed will be even more essential to the world on 
the threshold of this new millennium.
    Throughout 1998, old fears and hatreds crumbled before the healing 
power of honest communication, faith in the future, a strong will for a 
better future. Today in Oslo--I'm happy about this--today in Oslo, two 
leaders from Northern Ireland, John Hume and David Trimble, are 
receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts on the Good Friday 
accord. In the Middle East, where I will go in 2 days, Palestinians and 
Israelis are struggling to bridge mutual distrust to implement the Wye 
accords. In Kosovo, a serious humanitarian crisis has been averted, and 
the process toward reconciliation continues in Bosnia. All these 
breakthroughs were triumphs for human rights.
    Today we recommit ourselves to the ideas of the Universal 
Declaration, to keep moving toward the promise outlined in Paris 50 
years ago.
    First, we're taking steps to respond quickly to genocidal 
conditions, through the International Coalition Against Genocide I 
announced during my visit to Africa and a new genocide early warning 
center sponsored by the Department of State and the CIA. We will provide 
additional support to the U.N. Torture Victims Fund and genocide 
survivors in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Cambodia. We will continue assistance 
to women suffering under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. And USAID 
will provide up to $8 million to NGO's to enhance their ability to 
respond more rapidly to human rights emergencies.
    Second, we must do more for children who have always been especially 
vulnerable to human rights violations. This year I sought and Congress 
provided dramatic new support for the fight against child labor with a 
tenfold increase in United States assistance to the International Labor 
Organization. Today the Immigration and Naturalization Service is 
issuing new guidelines for the evaluation of asylum claims by children, 
making the process better serve our youngest and most vulnerable asylum 
seekers.
    Third, we must practice at home what we preach aboard. Just this 
morning I signed an Executive order that strengthens our ability to 
implement human rights treaties and creates an interagency group to hold 
us accountable for progress in honoring those commitments.

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    Fourth, I am concerned about aliens who suffer abuses at the hands 
of smugglers and sweatshop owners. These victims actually have a built-
in disincentive--their unlawful status here--that discourages them from 
complaining to U.S. authorities. So I'm asking the Department of Justice 
to provide legislative options to address this problem. And I know the 
Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder, and the Deputy Secretary of Labor, 
Kitty Higgins, are here, and I trust they will work on this, because I 
know they care as much about it as I do.
    Finally, I'd like to repeat my support for two top legislative 
priorities, an employment nondiscrimination act that would ban 
discrimination against gays and lesbians in the workplace, and a hate 
crimes prevention act. Last year, the entire Nation was outraged by the 
brutal killings of Matthew Shepard, a young gay student in Wyoming, and 
James Byrd, an African-American in Texas. All Americans are entitled to 
the same respect and legal protection, no matter their race, their 
gender, their sexual orientation. I agree with something President 
Truman once said, ``When I say Americans, I mean all Americans.''
    We will never relinquish the fight to move forward in the continuing 
struggle for human rights. I am aware that much of the best work in 
human rights has been done by those outside government: students and 
activists, NGO's, brave religious leaders, people from all backgrounds 
who simply want a better, safer world for their children. Many have done 
so in the face of great adversity, the imprisoned members of the 
Internal Dissidents Working Group in Cuba, the political prisoners of 
the National League for Democracy in Burma, the imprisoned dissidents in 
China. We make common cause with them all.
    That is why today we are presenting the first Eleanor Roosevelt 
Award for Human Rights to four outstanding Americans, not only for their 
own efforts but because we know that, by working together, we can do 
more. From different backgrounds and generations, they stand, all, in 
the great tradition of Eleanor Roosevelt, pioneers in the fight to 
expand the frontiers of freedom: Robert Bernstein, a pathbreaker for 
freedom of expression and the protection of rights at home and abroad; 
Bette Bao Lord, the head of Freedom House, a prolific author and 
campaigner; Dorothy Thomas, a champion of women's rights, the voice of a 
new generation committed to human rights; and John Lewis, a veteran in 
the civil rights struggle, now serving his Congress with great 
distinction in the House of Representatives.
    I would like to ask the military aide to read the citations.

[At this point, Lt. Comdr. Wesley Huey, USN, Naval Aide to the 
President, read the citations, and the President presented the awards.]

    I'd like to ask the members of the Roosevelt family who are here to 
stand. [Applause] Thank you.
    The day the U.N. delegates voted to approve the declaration, Eleanor 
Roosevelt wrote, ``Long job over.'' [Laughter] One of the few mistakes 
she ever made. [Laughter] She left us and all our successors a big job 
that will never be over, for the Universal Declaration contains an 
eternal promise, one embraced by our Founders in 1776, one that has to 
be reaffirmed every day in every way.
    In our country, each generation of Americans has had to do it: in 
the struggle against slavery led by President Lincoln, in FDR's Four 
Freedoms, in the unfinished work of Martin Luther King and Robert 
Kennedy, in the ongoing work here in this room.
    I have learned in ways large and small in the last 6 years that 
there is within every person a scale of justice and that people can too 
easily be herded into hatred and extremism, often out of a belief that 
they have absolute truth and, therefore, are entitled to absolute power, 
that they can ignore any constitution, any laws, override any facts. 
There will always be work to be done. And again, I would say to you that 
this award we gave to these four richly deserving people is also for all 
of you who labor for human rights.
    In the prolog of John Lewis's magnificent autobiography, ``Walking 
With the Wind,'' he tells a stunning story that has become a metaphor 
for his life and is a metaphor for your work, about being a little boy 
with his brothers and sisters and cousins in the house of a relative, 
that was a very fragile house, when an enormous wind came up. And he 
said he was told that all the children had to hold hands, and one corner 
of the house would blow up in the wind and all the children would walk, 
holding hands, to the corner, and it would go down. And then another 
would come up, and all the children would hold hands again and go to the 
other

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corner until the house came down. And by walking with the wind, hand-in-
hand, they saved the house and the family and the children.
    John says that that walk is a struggle to find the beloved 
community. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to 
individuals, but it can only be achieved by our common community.
    Thank you, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 10:39 a.m. in Room 450 of the Old Executive 
Office Building. In his remarks, he referred to Ulster Unionist Party 
leader David Trimble and Social Democratic Party leader John Hume of 
Northern Ireland. The Executive order on implementation of human rights 
treaties and the Human Rights Day proclamation of December 10 are listed 
in Appendix D at the end of this volume.