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madamab's picture
Submitted by madamab on Thu, 12/10/2009 - 1:07pm
Departments: 
Department of The Happy Dance
Thread: 
Good Deeds
Heroines and Heroes
Dems Who Don't Suck
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hillary clinton
feminism
Eleanor Roosevelt Lifetime Achievement Award
Mo Sochua
Vital Voices
women's rights are human rights

Today on International Human Rights Day, VitalVoices.org is honoring three SHERos with the Eleanor Roosevelt Lifetime Achievement Award.

Guess who one of them is?

Renewing our commitment to public service, women’s leadership, and human rights, The Courage to Lead: A Global Summit for Women Leaders honors women who have championed human rights. The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Project will on December 10 present U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with the Eleanor Roosevelt Lifetime Achievement Award in Human Rights for her commitment to ensuring that women’s rights are recognized as human rights. Vital Voices Global Leadership Award honoree and Cambodian Member of Parliament Mu Sochua will join Somali Peace Activist Asha Hagi in receiving the Eleanor Roosevelt Human Rights Leadership Award.

More on Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights here.

May I just say that I am so happy for these women, and especially for Hillary, who broke new ground in China in 1995 when she declared, "Women's rights are human rights."

Brava, brava to the SHERos honored today!

About Mo Sochua

About Asha Hagi

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BDBlue's picture
Submitted by BDBlue on

On the one hand, Clinton has done a lot to raise the issue of women's rights. Her Beijing speech was very important and she has elevated women's rights as a worthy and critical part of U.S. policy, instead of a side issue.

On the other hand, given the two wars we're currently waging, which have taken incredible tolls on all of the people in Iraq and Afghanistan including women, as well as the recent U.S. practices of torture and preventive detention, I have roughly the same feelings about the U.S. Secretary of State getting a Human Rights award as I have about the U.S. President getting a peace award.

madamab's picture
Submitted by madamab on

I can't help thinking the good outweighs the bad in her case. She has decades of work on women's rights behind her, and despite her wrongness on war in general (which I am 100% in agreement with you about), is still using her new SOS status to constantly promote investment in women. No other SOS has ever been so effective in raising the issue of women's rights as she has been, in less than a year in her position.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazi...

What has Obama done in his life to outweigh the bad he's doing by deciding to extend the war in Afghanistan indefinitely? How many decades of service to anyone but himself?

If you think about it, it's not really a fair parallel, is it?

gqmartinez's picture
Submitted by gqmartinez on

I don't follow her every move anymore, but one very appealing aspect of her candidacy was her work and advocacy on microcredit. Specifically, as a means to help empower women in developing countries.

madamab's picture
Submitted by madamab on

From the New York Times article I linked:

Q: In your travels as secretary of state, you’ve focused heavily on the role of microlending. Is there a reason in these early days that you’ve tended to emphasize the economic over the political?

Clinton: It’s interesting: it’s partly because of where I’ve gone. It’s also because I’ve worked on microcredit since 1983, going back to Arkansas and projects that I worked on with my husband there.

I am also struck by every international public-opinion poll I’ve ever seen, that the No. 1 thing most men and women want is a good job with a good income. It is at the core of the human aspiration to be able to support oneself, to give one’s children a better future. Microenterprise is uniquely designed to empower women because — through the trial and error of its development, going back to Muhammad Yunus’s invention of it in Bangladesh — women are much greater at investing in future goods than the men who have participated in microcredit have turned out to be. And they are also very reliable in paying back, because they are so eager to have that extra help and recognition that microcredit provides.

So, I don’t make a distinction between economic empowerment and political, social empowerment; I think it’s fair to say both need to go hand in hand.

S Brennan's picture
Submitted by S Brennan on

BDBlue your absolutism may be right, but the Nuremberg trial came to a very different conclusion with just that question. And that was when the victor judge the vanquished

I must have missed it BDBlue, but I did not hear either Clinton advocating an Iraq war during their stay in the White House. Nor did the Clinton's escalate the Somalia conflict once it became clear that we could not prevail without massive bloodshed. They did intervene after much prodding in the Balkins, something I thought was long overdue...but then I am the same as Bush...because "if you support one war, you support all wars"...even though I did everything to that I could to prevent the war I am the same...see... a distinction without a difference. A simple thought for simple people. Because we should endeavor never to make distinctions should we? Every German was a Nazi right?

Warlords everywhere will be glad you have blurred the lines of responsibly, they will be so much safer if every supporter is the same as the leader. I mean, thanks to you if everybody is to blame equally then nobody really can be blamed...right?

BDBlue keep up the absolutism, after all Hitler and Roosevelt are really the same right? Every John Bircher will agree with that...and with you! Good luck out there!

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