Clinton: "A Commitment to Human Rights starts with universal standards"

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the US' role in protecting human rights:

First, a commitment to human rights starts with universal standards and with holding everyone accountable to those standards, including ourselves.

[snip]

By holding ourselves accountable, we reinforce our moral authority to demand that all governments adhere to obligations under international law; among them, not to torture, arbitrarily detain and persecute dissenters, or engage in political killings. Our government and the international community must counter the pretensions of those who deny or abdicate their responsibilities and hold violators to account.

[snip]

In the end, this isn’t just about what we do; it is about who we are. And we cannot be the people we are – people who believe in human rights – if we opt out of this fight. Believing in human rights means committing ourselves to action, and when we sign up for the promise of rights that apply everywhere, to everyone, that rights will be able to protect and enable human dignity, we also sign up for the hard work of making that promise a reality.

Karen Ocamb@ LGBTPOV has the entire transcript.
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