CLINTONS PRESENT ELEANOR ROOSEVELT HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDS
USIA
10 December 1998
CLINTONS PRESENT ELEANOR ROOSEVELT HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDS
(Four Americans honored at White House ceremony) (620)
By Wendy S. Ross
USIA White House Correspondent
Washington -- On the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the United
Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, President and Mrs.
Clinton presented the first-ever Eleanor Roosevelt Award for Human
Rights to four distinguished Americans.
Receiving the award at the December 10 ceremony were: Robert L.
Bernstein, founder of the Fund for Free Expression as well as Human
Rights Watch and retired chairman of Random House; Bette Bao Lord,
human rights activist, China scholar and novelist; Representative John
Lewis, life-long civil rights leader, and Dorothy Q. Thomas, women's
rights activist responsible for groundbreaking research and advocacy
on human rights violations against women around the world.
Clinton noted that the honorees come from "different backgrounds and
generations" but "they stand, all, in the great tradition of Eleanor
Roosevelt, pioneers in the fight to expand the frontiers of freedom."
He established the award program in memory of the former First Lady
who was the driving force behind the 1948 UN Declaration affirming
universal standards of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
"Today," the President said, "we celebrate the life of this document
and the lives it has saved and enhanced." He noted that since 1948,
the United Nations has adopted legal instruments against torture,
genocide, slavery, apartheid and discrimination against women and
children, but said the world must continue to work to ensure that
these rights become reality everywhere.
"We will never relinquish the fight to move forward in the continuing
struggle for human rights," Clinton said. "I am aware that much of the
best work in human rights has been done by those outside government --
students and activities, NGOs, 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."
Mrs. Clinton said "we have come together to celebrate the progress
that has been made" as a result of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights "and to honor four individuals who have dedicated their lives
to ensuring that the Declaration and what it stands for, continues to
speak on behalf of the downtrodden and silenced and most vulnerable in
our societies."
She said "perhaps the most egregious and systematic trampling of
fundamental human rights" in the world today is taking place against
women in Afghanistan under "the iron rule" of the Taliban.
Women there, she said, are now forbidden to practice medicine, barred
from teaching, and girls are not permitted to go to school.
The Taliban has "even forbidden land mine awareness instruction for
women and older girls, leading to increased injuries from land mine
explosions among the female population," she said.
"We cannot allow these terrible crimes against women and girls -- and,
truly, against all of humanity -- to continue with impunity. We must
all make it unmistakably clear this terrible suffering inflicted on
the women and girls of Afghanistan is not cultural, it is criminal.
And we must do everything we can in our power to stop it."
The audience at the event which was held in the auditorium of the Old
Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House included top
administration foreign policy officials, members of the Roosevelt
family, and leaders in the human rights field from the United States
and from other countries including Nigeria, Bosnia, Guyana, Canada,
Guatemala and two Afghan-born women working on behalf of the women and
girls of Afghanistan.