FIRST ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AWARDS PRESENTED DEC. 10
USIA
10 December 1998
TRANSCRIPT: FIRST ELEANOR ROOSEVELT AWARDS PRESENTED DEC. 10
(Bernstein, Lord, Thomas, Lewis get the first awards) (2840)
Washington -- President Clinton presented the first Eleanor Roosevelt
Awards for Human Rights to four outstanding Americans December 10,
"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.
"We will never relinquish the fight to move forward in the continuing
struggle for human rights," the President said. "I am aware that much
of the best work in human rights has been done by those outside
government -- students and activists, 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."
Following is the White House transcript:
(begin transcript)
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
December 10, 1998
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AT HUMAN RIGHTS DAY PRESENTATION
OF ELEANOR ROOSEVELT HUMAN RIGHTS AWARD
Room 450
Old Executive Office Building
THE PRESIDENT: 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 Advisor Berger, Under
Secretary Loy, Assistant Secretary Koh. I welcome Ambassador Nancy
Rubin, the Ambassador of the UN 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, 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, experience 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. 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 UN General Assembly
voted to approve the UN 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 three 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 human kind --it is really the
Magna Carter 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 parenthesis 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.
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 assist 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 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 sub-categories. 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 the 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 in 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 two days, Palestinian 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 commit 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 UN. 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 NGOs 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 abroad. 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.
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, and 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, 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.
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
(The citations are read.)
I'd like to ask the members of the Roosevelt family who are here to
stand. Thank you.
The day the UN delegates voted to approve the Declaration, Eleanor
Roosevelt wrote, "Long job over." One of the few mistakes she ever
made. 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 six 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 prologue 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 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.
(end transcript)