A friend of mine in New Hampshire caught an interview with Richard Holbrooke the other day, where he talked about a speech Hillary had given at the UN in 2000 as a follow-up to the conference in Beiging in 1995. When Hillary finished speaking they gave her a standing O and sang We Shall Overcome. Holbrooke was right on in his description. From a New York Times article on June 6, 2000 When she finished her speech...
They sang, clapped and grasped for her hand as they stormed the podium -- a display that no other speaker is likely to enjoy.
More than 10,000 women, and some men, from more than 180 countries are in New York for the session and dozens of related events.
snip
''We are committed to making this journey together,'' Mrs. Clinton told a cheering audience invited by Unifem, the United Nations development program for women.
Make the jump – there’s more...
Richard C. Holbrooke, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, said Mrs. Clinton had laid out the administration's position forcefully. ''It was Hillary saying, do not erode the gains of Beijing,'' he said.
It’s an interesting article. I dug around and found a bit more about this event on the UN site, and what I’ve learned was very enlightening. In her speech, Hillary talked about the progress that had been made in the advancement of women's rights around the globe since the Beijing conference (where she boldly declared that women’s rights are HUMAN rights), as well as the work that still needed to be done. She said...
"We have come to the UN not only because we believe that all women and girls should be treated with dignity and respect. But also because no country today will ever get ahead if half of its citizens are left behind."
That last bit is the money quote for me – "No country today will ever get ahead if half of its citizens are left behind." Powerful stuff.
She talked about all the voices she heard from so many places where women were working to advance peace and economic, political and social progress from Northern Ireland to Kuwait, and from Bosnia to South Africa.
She also talked about the need to stand up, speak out and keep working, and spoke of the ongoing challenges from HIV/AIDS and human trafficking to economic marginalization.
She focused in great detail on micro credit, which she had championed throughout her years as First Lady as one of the most effective tools for women's economic progress (in fact, that was the panel she took part in). She told several stories of women she’d met around the world from Chile to Uganda who were now economically independent because of the micro and small businesses they had created, thanks to micro loans and training.
She mentioned her trip to India in 1995 and her visit to the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) where she met with hundreds of women, (some of whom had walked for 12-14 hours), to come and see Ela Bhatt (the head of SEWA) and Hillary, and talk about what micro credit had meant in their lives. She mentioned a small room where great big books were kept, where the loans and deposits are recorded. She talked of how she’d also heard about how micro credit had changed a woman's life - how she could finally afford to support her own family, send a child to school, and stand up to a husband or a mother-in-law - of how she finally felt like she was worth something in the eyes of the people around her.
Hillary asked the women who came out to hear her what micro credit had done for them and one woman stood up and very proudly said, "I am no longer afraid. I am not afraid of the police, I am not afraid of my husband and I am not afraid of my mother-in-law." These women were the poorest of the poor and they had been lifted up economically and were now able to support themselves and their families.
Each and every one of them had paid back their loans. Micro credit is not a hand out.
Hillary finished her recollection of her visit to SEWA this way:
"When our meeting ended, this incredible, beautiful sea of some of the most elegant women I have ever seen anywhere, dressed in pink, red and purple saris began singing to the tune of We Shall Overcome. An inspirational message that traveled from the fields of American slavery to Gandhi's India back to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's struggles and finally back to India once again. That is the message we have to carry with us into the future."
Hillary then went on to close her speech to the UN. She said,
"It is up to us. We can redeem the promises of Beijing -- for our daughters and granddaughters, if we are committed to making the journey for equality together. I believe we will and I'm grateful for what every one of us is doing."
When she finished, she received a standing ovation from the hundreds of women from all over the world who were gathered there at the UN in NY to hear her mark the fifth anniversary of the Beijing conference. As they applauded her, several of the women spontaneously started to sing We Shall Overcome and the chorus grew louder and louder until everyone in the room was singing.
This all ties in nicely with an article written by Lissa Muscatine and Melanne Verveeron Huffington Post recently. They talk about Hillary’s amazing work as our nation’s good will ambassador around the world, and of her passion for getting at the truth of what life was like for the people of each of the nations she visited.
Anyone who doubts Hillary Clinton's impact on the world stage might want to check with the top political leaders in Northern Ireland, who cite her work to end sectarian violence there and help secure a lasting peace.
They might talk to women - from the Philippines to Latin America to the Middle East - who can vote, own property, or go to school, because Hillary Clinton helped start a global women's movement for women's rights. Or they might travel to Africa and Asia, where Hillary Clinton visited countless remote villages to show how the poorest of the poor could become entrepreneurial and self-sufficient when given access to small loans.
As First Lady and now as a two-term senator who represents the most ethnically diverse state in the nation and who sits on the Armed Services Committee, Hillary Clinton has become a fixture on international issues over the past 15 years. She has traveled to more than 80 countries, going from barrios to rural villages to meetings with heads of state. She has consulted with dozens of world leaders - Nelson Mandela, King Abdullah, Tony Blair among them -- on matters as diverse as America and NATO's roles in Kosovo, eradicating poverty in the Third World, and the plight of women living under the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Her historic speech at the UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995 not only galvanized women around the world, it helped spawn a movement that led to advances politically, legally, economically, and socially for women in many countries over the next decade. Among other initiatives, she spearheaded the Clinton Administration's efforts to combat the global crisis of human trafficking. She persuaded the First Ladies of the Americas to use their collective power to eradicate measles and improve girls' education throughout the western Hemisphere. And she is widely credited with helping women in Kuwait finally win the right to vote.
While American First Ladies historically have made great (and often overlooked) contributions to our nation, Hillary Clinton's wide-ranging experience on international issues as First Lady is unprecedented. Indeed, she is the only First Lady to have delivered foreign policy addresses at major gatherings of the United Nations, the World Bank, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the World Economic Forum.
Over the past seven years, she has amplified her experience through her work in the Senate on military and national security issues, leading efforts to combat nuclear proliferation, end the genocide in Darfur, and ensure that American troops are properly equipped when they go to war and properly cared for when they return home.
Please - do yourself a favor and go read the entire op-ed. It really does shed light on the amazing work Hillary's done all around this world, and will give you some idea as to how much respect she has from the people of the nations she's visited over the years.
Hillary's rivals dismiss her work as insignificant to foreign policy. But that's not only dishonest and wrong, it trivializes the important global issues of human rights, democracy, and international development that are so central to strengthening American values and influence overseas, and these have been a major focus of her tireless work around the world.
Now, Lissa Muscatine and Melanne Verver touched on Hillary's work in Northern Ireland while she was First Lady. I followed the peace process in the North of Ireland very closely in the 90's, and even built a website with info, reports, links to peace groups, and updates regarding the Good Friday Agreement, and the effort to get that ratified by the people of the North in 1998. I knew a guy whose father was blown up by an IRA car bomb, and another whose dad was killed by the Loyalists (car bomb). Another friend’s mother died of a heart attack during marching season when the ambulance couldn’t get down their street to help her. Bombs blew up school children in Omagh (29 killed - one family lost three generations in the bombing: a 65-year-old grandmother, her 30-year-old daughter pregnant with twins and the woman's 18-month-old baby.), and Loyalists burned 3 children to death (Jason, Mark, & Richard Quinn) by tossing a petrol bomb through the window of their home simply because their parents were from different backgrounds (Catholic and Protestant). This was an extremely difficult conflict to sort out, and - as noted above - Hillary played a part in its resolution. Vital Voices has a report on it's front page about a conference Hillary spearheaded, and the work that followed when home rule was re-established this May...
May 8, 2007 marked a historic Devolution Day in Northern Ireland that highlighted the important role that women leaders played in bringing peace to the country. The day marked the return of home rule to Northern Ireland and the reconvening of the Northern Ireland Assembly with 18 women members and four women in ministerial posts.
Vital Voices has a long history working with women leaders in Northern Ireland. In 1998 Vital Voices, under the leadership of former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, sponsored a landmark conference in Belfast, which brought together over 400 women from Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Since then, women have been instrumental in the implementation of the 1998 Good Friday Peace Accords. Women have also played an active role in the political life of the country; increasing numbers of women have stood for the New Northern Ireland Assembly.
Hillary, Martin McGuiness & Ian Paisley (two of the participants in the Good Friday Agreement talks and now members of the new government) during their recent visit to the US to drum up investment in the North of Ireland.
This isn’t all just talk and parties you guys – Hillary’s experience on the world stage is very real and it’s substantive. She’s brilliant and driven – how anyone can expect me or anyone else who’s paying attention to believe that she’d traveled to over 80 nations just to shake a few hands and eat some rubber chicken is beyond me. Her intelligence and passion go much, much deeper than that and I think we all know it.
Hillary is respected around the world for the leadership she has brought to advancing the progress of women and girls wherever they live. And as the mother of a young girl, I can’t even begin to tell you what that means to me.
(For more information on Hillary's foreign policy experience, you can check out my earlier diary on this issue (which by the way made it up to the Rec List!) at this link...
Why Hillary's Experience As First Lady Matters
As the update shows, Hillary's still going strong and has made a LOT of trips oversease in her 7 years in the US Senate. Check it out - you just might learn something ;o)