International Human Rights Day

On December 10, 1948, world leaders gathered at the United Nations General Assembly and affirmed the inherent dignity and inalienable rights of all people. In adopting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the international community committed to building a world where all people are “born free and equal in dignity and rights” and are entitled to liberty, equality, and justice under the law. As we celebrate Human Rights Day more than six decades after the adoption of this cornerstone document, we reaffirm our commitment to promoting and protecting its fundamental truths.

We do so by advancing the universal freedoms enshrined in the UDHR, including the freedom to speak, the freedom to assemble, and the freedom to worship. When governments seek to deny these liberties through repressive laws and blunt force, we stand against this oppression and with people around the world as they defend their rights. These rights are complementary and mutually reinforcing. As I said in Dublin, religious freedom is about people being able to practice their faith, but it is also about the right of people to think what they want, say what they think, associate with others, and assemble peacefully without the state looking over their shoulders or prohibiting them from doing so. It is neither necessary nor acceptable to sacrifice one right in the name of another.

We seek to protect these rights at home and advocate for them abroad because doing so is central to our identity, a source of our influence in the world, and essential to our national interests. As President Obama and I have said, governments that respect human rights and reflect the will of their people are more stable, secure and prosperous over the long run, and better allies for the United States. Human rights cannot be disconnected from other priorities. They are inextricably linked with all of the goals we strive for at home and around the world. The Universal Declaration is not just a catalog of rights and government obligations. It is a time-tested blueprint for successful societies.

We celebrate Human Rights Day every December, but advancing freedom and human rights is our daily work. Those of us lucky enough to live in countries like the United States have an extra responsibility, first, to remain vigilant in ensuring that we honor and implement our own commitment to human rights at home, and second, to help others gain what we have - the chance to live in dignity. We will continue to uphold and advance these fundamental freedoms both on and offline; we will continue to speak out about oppression wherever it occurs; we will continue to foster tolerance; and we will continue to work toward building a more just and peaceful world.

Making Human Rights a Human Reality

Making Human Rights a Human Reality
Remarks By:
Hillary Rodham Clinton
US Secretary of State
Dublin City University
Dublin, Ireland
December 6, 2012


Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. It is wonderful to be here at DCU and back in Dublin. I want to thank you, President MacCraith, for that kind introduction. I’m delighted to be joined here by a number of officials and dignitaries, including your Chancellor, Martin McAleese, whom I have had the pleasure of meeting before when he was the spouse of a president. (Laughter.) We had a lot in common. I was once a spouse of a president as well. Your Minister for Education, Minister Quinn; your Minister for Children and Youth Fitzgerald; your Minister for Social Protection Burton, and the Lord Mayor of Dublin – we are grateful to have all of you here, but I’m particularly pleased there are so many students and young people here in this auditorium.

This university is renowned, not just for your world-class academics but also your engagement with in the world – your international student body, your commitment to help solve urgent global problems through study and innovation, and your new Institute for International Conflict Resolution and Reconstruction, which I can assure you will have a busy agenda ahead of it. Because you are absolutely right that the lessons learned here in Ireland about how to build peace could be of great use to other peoples and nations. And I commend the university for your global service, which has such ramifications far beyond the academic world.

Now, it goes without saying that for millions of Americans who have family ties to Ireland, including my husband and daughter, and President Obama, this nation is often seen as a second homeland. And over the years, Ireland has made enormous contributions to America’s progress. Several of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence were born in Ireland, as were many of the soldiers who fought in our revolution. The Irish helped build America’s canals and railroads, overcame suspicion and bigotry to earn their livings and educate their children, and rose over time to become leaders in every field of endeavor.

Now, people around the world often speak of and believed in the American dream, but I think it is fair to say that no people have done more to build that dream and make it real than the Irish. The United States, my country, would not be the country it is today were it not for this nation and its people. And that close kinship, not just a relationship between nations and governments, but a friendship rooted in relationships between people, is as strong as ever.

Ireland and the United States work side by side to fight global hunger, to prevent the kind of suffering that Ireland endured during the Great Famine. We are helping women across the world, particularly in Malawi, gain access to clean cookstoves. We’re working together in Afghanistan to try to make long-term stability possible for a people that has known very little of that. And Ireland has shown an unsurpassed commitment to preventing war by protecting peace. It’s an astonishing fact, but for more than 50 years, not a single day has gone by in which an Irish peacekeeper has not stood a post somewhere in the world.

So I know that Ireland is going through hard times now. I understand the painful sacrifice that so many families have had to make. But I want you to know that, not just in the United States, but people everywhere look to Ireland and see a resilient nation. Yes, a generous nation, one dedicated to peace and justice because you know from your own history how precious that is and how important it is for all of us to stand up for those values and protect them. And it is that struggle that joins our two countries, on behalf of human dignity and freedom, that brings me here today.

This is likely to be my last official visit to Ireland as the United States Secretary of State. And I want to mark this occasion by speaking with you about a foreign policy priority that represents our two nations’ most cherished values, and which is central to how we confront the world’s challenges – human rights.

Now, human rights don’t always occupy the headlines, but they are often what lie just behind and underneath them. And the future that awaits the students and young people today will be shaped, in large part, by how well leaders live up to their human rights responsibilities.

During my first year as Secretary, I celebrated Human Rights Day by giving a speech at a university, Georgetown, in Washington, DC. I said there and then that in the 21st century, America’s goal must be to make human rights a human reality, building upon what was accomplished in the 20th century, through the heroic efforts of leaders like Eleanor Roosevelt and many others, when the international community established human rights as the God-given entitlement of every person, and embedded those rights into international law along with governments’ responsibilities to protect them.

So I’m often asked, where do human rights fit into American foreign policy? Now, there are some – they’ve often been called idealists – who say that when we tackle foreign policy challenges, we should be governed first and foremost by the end goal of advancing our values, because that is how you build a better world.

There are others – they’ve been called realists – who point out that ideals are not always easily reconciled in a world where bad actors exist and bad things happen. And therefore, shorter-term interests must be given more weight in the here and now.