The Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium
Washington, DC
May 10, 2006
SECRETARY RICE: Well, thank you very much. I cannot thank you enough for this
tremendous honor. I want to thank all involved with it and all of you for
coming. That was quite an extraordinary little film. I have to get that and
show it to my family. They'll like it. (Laughter.)
I want to thank Ted Olson for that kind introduction as well as Jean Johnson
Phillips, my good friend who was so involved in putting this together. I know
what a force Jean is and I can see that Jean did a terrific job. Thank you for
that.
The International[1] Women's Forum is stronger than ever today and much of its
success is due to the inspired leadership of my dinner partners, Heather
Higgins and Michele Bernard. I can't believe that Michele just had kids. Thanks
so much for coming and thanks so much for your leadership of this great
organization.
This is an organization that is promoting individual responsibility and
economic liberty and democracy and it's making a true difference in the lives
of women around the world, especially the women in places like Iraq and
Afghanistan. And I want to acknowledge the work that this organization has done
on Iraq, where the Iraqi Women's Educational Institute, founded just two years
ago, has grown into a hopeful force for women's inclusion in the new Iraq. I
thank you all for this important work in these exciting times.
There are members of Congress here and distinguished guests and good friends,
many familiar faces, thank you for joining us tonight. I'm deeply honored to
receive this year's Woman of Valor Award and this honor is all the more
meaningful to me personally because it carries with it the name and the memory
of Barbara Olson, who was a beloved friend to so many of us: Barbara's loss was
not only felt personally by Ted, though of course it was felt most expressly by
Ted, but widely by those who knew her charm and her intelligence and her grace.
The attacks of September 11th robbed us of much more than just our sense of
security, they robbed us of many of our fellow citizens, people who were
contributing to this country, people who were the very definition of patriot,
people like Barbara who were making a valuable contribution to our society.
America has honored those who were lost by moving forward with purpose and with
valor. From a day of terror, I think that this country has indeed summoned a
vision of hope and President Bush has forged a foreign policy that rejects the
false dichotomy of ideals and interests and recognizes that security is only
achieved when people, especially those on the margins of society, gain freedom
and justice and opportunity within their countries and when democracy is on the
march.
We understand, of course, that different peoples will build democracies that
reflect their own cultures, of course they will. They'll build democracies that
reflect their own traditions and their own experiences, just as we in America
did. America is not trying to impose democracy. Indeed, you don't have to
impose democracy; you have to impose tyranny. Democracy lives and breathes,
liberty lives and breathes, in the heart of every human being. (Applause.)
President Bush has called these aspirations the non-negotiable demands of human
dignity and he has defined them as the rule of law and limits on state power,
free speech and tolerance of difference, freedom of worship, equal justice and
property rights and finally, but not last, respect for women. It is that last
point that I'd like to speak to tonight here in the presence of this great
organization that is doing so much to promote the rights of women.
When we talk about respect for women, we are referring to a moral truth. Women
are free by nature, equal in dignity and entitled the same rights, the same
protections and the same opportunities as men. This is a standard that, quite
frankly, we in the United States have fallen short of in our history. It took
our country 130 years before we interpreted the phrase "All men are created
equal," flexibly enough to let ladies vote.
We Americans are, to be sure, an imperfect people, but we are fortunate to be
guided by ideals that summon us to become even nobler and indeed to pursue our
perfect union. Those same ideals lead America into the world to combat the
dehumanization of women in all its forums, especially the international evil of
human trafficking, a modern form of slavery for millions of women.
I know it sounds impossible, slavery in the 21st century, but it's very real.
And the stories of young girls preyed upon and smuggled as freight, beaten and
bought and sold for sex are stories that are tragic enough to break even the
hardest of hearts. And under President Bush's leadership, the United States is
leading a new abolitionist movement to eradicate human trafficking worldwide.
(Applause.)
In a few weeks, I'm going to release our annual Department of State Report on
Human Trafficking and that report probes even the darkest places, calling to
account any country, friend or foe, that is not doing enough to combat human
trafficking. Though many complain, the power of shame has stirred many to
action and sparked unprecedented reforms. Defeating human trafficking is a
great moral calling and we will never subjugate it to the narrow demands of the
day.
This call of conscience also leads us to help the survivors of the genocide in
Darfur, many of whom are women. I have visited Darfur. I have spoken with the
women in the Abu Shouk refugee camp. They've told me their personal stories of
rape, of beatings and of other unspeakable horrors that no human being should
have to endure. Many of these women are widows charged with raising their
children by themselves, and it is the fate of Darfur's children that moves us
most because no boy or girl should live a life in a refugee camp.
The United States is doing more than any nation to help the mothers of Darfur
build lives of hope for their children. We provide nearly all the food that now
sustains the people of Darfur and we are offering care and counseling to many
women who have survived violence and rape. The signing of the Darfur Peace
Agreement last week now offers a hope for peace.
Yesterday in New York -- I think it was yesterday -- (laughter) -- I addressed
the Security Council and urged them to get UN peacekeepers into Darfur to help
implement this agreement. We have a momentous opportunity to bring real peace
to the men and women of Darfur and we will not let this pass.
Whether it is assistance to women in Darfur or the fight against human
trafficking, the United States champions respect for women because it is
morally right. But we also recognize that respect for women is a prerequisite
for success of countries in the modern world. In the dynamic 21st century no
society can expect to flourish with half its people sitting on the sidelines,
with no opportunity to develop their talents, to contribute to their economy or
to play an equal part in the lives of their nations.
Last year a group of Kuwaiti suffragettes sent me a T-shirt and it makes that
point very well. It says, "Half a democracy is not a democracy." That was the
slogan that the women of Kuwait used to demand and to win their right to vote.
(Applause.)
In all my travels as Secretary, I've had the opportunity to meet women around
the world who are leading in fields of human endeavor. Two that I've met
recently are literally leading their nations, Michelle Bachelet of Chile and
Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, the new President of Liberia, the first woman head of
state in African history. I was honored to attend both of their inaugurations
this year. They are empowering their countries, not just the women of their
countries.
And tonight, I would like to talk about some names that perhaps you do not know
as well, who are also empowering their countries. In Mexico, I met with women
entrepreneurs who are transforming their businesses with U.S.-backed loans. One
of these women is a seamstress, named Maria Theresa Rojas.
In years, Maria Theresa could not find a bank to loan her money. She wanted to
do more than stitch school uniforms. All that recently changed. As a part of a
U.S.-led effort to triple the amount of credit available to small and
medium-size businesses, Maria Theresa finally got the loan she needed. And
she's investing in new technology and expanding her business and making nicer
clothing for profit. This will create jobs in the Mexican economy and make life
better for Maria and her family and her village.
In Afghanistan, I met the young players of a girls' soccer team. It was quite a
striking contrast from the Afghanistan that just four years ago -- in which
four years ago the Taliban turned soccer stadiums given to them by the
international community into killing fields and condemned women to death for
learning to read.
You know, when they want to suppress people, they always go after the right to
read. Slaves were not allowed to read, because if you can read, you know what
your horizons are. And so that women in Afghanistan are now being taught to
read openly and supported by their government is an amazing fact and shows that
Afghanistan is progressing. (Applause.)
Finally, in Iraq, I had the opportunity at the end of last year to meet women
political leaders who are active in a group called Ahd al-Iraq, or fittingly,
Iraq's future. These women have seized freedom's opportunities and created the
first issue-based organization in Iraqi history. They are working to ensure
equal rights and equal opportunity for all Iraqis, men and women. The Iraqi
people understand the role that women can and must play in their country's
future. Iraq's democratic constitution which Iraqis freely wrote and ratified
last year, accords women respect and equal rights.
The challenge now for the
Iraqi people is to build institutions that can protect those rights and make
their new democracy effective. At this crucial time in Iraq's history, it is
important that there are also courageous Iraqi women who raise their voices for
tolerance and for moderation. And I want to thank the International[2] Women's
Forum for helping them do that. (Applause.)
When I meet women like Maria Theresa or Afghan soccer girls or the women of Ahd
al-Iraq, or for that matter when I see Kuwaiti women gain the right to vote or
when a country like Morocco sets an example for its entire region by passing
landmark reforms of family law, as it did recently, granting women basic legal
rights like the ability to divorce and inherit property.
When I see these kinds of events and meet these kinds of women, I believe we
are witnessing something very extraordinary indeed: the unfolding of moral
progress. We must not be reluctant to speak of moral progress. I would do so in
this way. Progress is humankind's ability to view more and more of our
differences, whether of race or religion or ethnicity or agenda, not as a
license to kill or as a cause for repression, but as a source of strength.
Progress never unfolds in a determined way or on its own accord. It requires
human agency, always and everywhere dedicated individuals who are committed to
helping others, men and women alike, to secure the basic human rights that
define our common human nature.
And it requires something else. It requires optimism and it requires a sense of
historical perspective. I know that there are times when we view on our
television screens the violence in Iraq or in Afghanistan, or when we read the
reports of the trafficking in women or of the camps in Darfur, that it must
seem that this world is making no progress at all. But when I have those
moments, I think back on other historical times when it must have seemed quite
impossible to imagine human progress.
I spent my summer reading the biographies of America's Founding Fathers. They,
of course, were quite fortunate, most of them, to have founding mothers
alongside them, but of course the biographies have been written mostly of
Jefferson and Adams and Hamilton and Washington. And when you read those
biographies, you think that there was no earthly reason that the United States
of America should ever have come into being.
From Washington's failure after
failure after failure as a military commander; to the tremendous rivalry
between Jefferson and Hamilton that led Jefferson, thinking Washington too
influenced by Hamilton, to spread rumors that Washington was indeed senile --
(laughter); to the fact that our Founding Fathers, trying to create a perfect
union for We the People, couldn't quite find a way to deal with slavery. And so
instead, they left my ancestors to be three-fifths of a man.
But some hundred plus years later, I stand before you as a descendent of those
people who were three-fifths of a man and I ask, "Would anybody have thought it
possible?" (Applause.) Now, perhaps in some number of years, we will think it
just inevitable. Time and time again, historical events -- our own Civil War,
World War II, the end of Communism, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
freedom of Eastern Europe -- seemed like impossible dreams.
A day when France
and Germany would never fight again seemed like an impossible dream. A
democratic Japan, a democratic Korea, seemed like impossible dreams. And now,
we take them for granted; we think of them as inevitable.
I do believe that with enough moral courage, with enough optimism and with
enough human agency by people like those who make up the International[3]
Women's Forum that there will come a day when we will look back on Iraq and
Afghanistan and Sudan and troubled spots of the world, and we will ask, "Who
could have ever doubted that liberal democracy would take hold there?"
Indeed,
what sometimes today might seem impossible will seem quite inevitable. Thank
you very much. (Applause.)
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