congressional_record: CREC-1998-12-18-pt1-PgE2341
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| CREC-1998-12-18-pt1-PgE2341 | 1998-12-18 | 105 | 2 | 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 | HOUSE | EXTENSIONS | ALLOTHER | E2341 | E2344 | [{"name": "Tom Lantos", "role": "speaking"}] | 144 Cong. Rec. E2341 | Congressional Record, Volume 144 Issue 154 (Friday, December 18, 1998) [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 erooselvelt@heaven.com, 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) ____________________ |