Over the course of two centuries, Americans have discovered that accelerating democratic standards and human privileges assists our deepest standards as well as our functional interests.
That is why the United States stands with the men and women universal who are standing up for these principles. And that is why President Clinton has made strengthening democracy and defending human privileges a pillar of our foreign policy--and a foremost focus of our foreign aid programs.
Democracy is the lesson and strategic imperative for the 1990s. Democracy will construct safeguards for human privileges in every nation. Democracy is the best way to accelerate lasting calm and prosperity in the world.
The origin of flexibility is a basic firm promise for my country. It is furthermore a issue of deep individual conviction for me. I am pleased to have going the U.S. Government's first interagency assembly on human privileges under President Carter, who is with us today. President Carter will be recalled as the first American President to put human privileges on the worldwide agenda. He has assisted to rise the inhabits of persons in every part of the world. Today, we construct upon his achievements-and those of the human privileges action since its inception.
Securing Freedom after the Cold War
The Universal Declaration enshrines a timeless reality for all persons and all nations: "Respect for human privileges and basic freedoms are the base of flexibility, justice and peace" on this earth. The Declaration's drafters contacted the dispute of highly regarding the world's diversity, while mirroring standards that are universal.
Even before the Declaration was taken up, the Cold War had started to cast a chilling shaded between phrase and deed. But the framers of the Declaration wanted that each successive lifetime would reinforce the Declaration through its own struggles. It is for each lifetime to redeem the pledge of the framers' work (Finley, 1973).
The end of the Cold War is the most uplifting happening for human privileges since the first World Conference met. Not only were the Havels and the Sakharovs set free, in large assess by their own motivating demonstrations, but hundreds of millions of commonplace men and women were furthermore issued from oppressive authorities that controlled their lives. Now, in homeland after homeland, they are rotating in the direction of democracy to protect their freshly won freedoms, assurance their human privileges, and contain their authorities accountable.
Nowhere is this large drama playing out on a more centered stage than in the previous Soviet Union.
Democracy and Diversity
In 1993 solely, in supplement to a huge turnout for democracy in Russia, we have glimpsed unprecedented free elections in Cambodia, Yemen, Burundi, and Paraguay. The Truth Commission in El Salvador has accomplished its healing work. And the persons of South Africa have made spectacular advancement in the direction of non-racial democracy.
Around the world, persons are managing the hard, occasionally sore work of construction democracies from the base up. They are producing democracy work not just on Election Day, but every ...