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QUESTION: Thank you. I am wondering what you see the role of artists doing in helping to promote human rights. I had the privilege earlier this summer to hear the playwright Lynn Nottage speak in one of the Senate buildings after she advocated for women’s rights in the Congo, and I wonder how you see creative practice accompanying and amplifying policy.
 
SECRETARY CLINTON: That is a wonderful question because I think the arts and artists are one of our most effective tools in reaching beyond and through repressive regimes, in giving hope to people. It was a very effective tool during the Cold War. I’ve had so many Eastern Europeans tell me that it was American music, it was American literature, it was American poetry that kept them going. I remember when Vaclav Havel came to the White House during my husband’s administration, and we were having a state dinner for him. And I said, “Well, who would you like to entertain at the state dinner?” And I didn’t know what he was going to say. And he said, “Lou Reed.” (Laughter.) “It was his music that was just so important for us – in prison, out of prison.”
 
Well, you could name many other American artists who have traveled. We’re going to try to increase the number of artistic exchanges we do so that we can get people into settings where they will be able to directly communicate. Now, with communication being what it is today, you can download them and all the rest, but there’s something about the American Government sending somebody to make that case which I think is very important to our commitment.
 
Also, artists can bright to light in a gripping, dramatic way some of the challenges we face. You mentioned the play about women in the Congo. I remember some years ago seeing a play about women in Bosnia during the conflict there. It was so gripping. I still see the faces of those women who were pulled from their homes, separated from their husbands, often raped and left just as garbage on the side of the road. So I think that artists both individually and through their works can illustrate better than any speech I can give or any government policy we can promulgate that the spirit that lives within each of us, the right to think and dream and expand our boundaries, is not confined, no matter how hard they try, by any regime anywhere in the world. There is no way that you can deprive people from feeling those stirrings inside their soul. And artists can give voice to that. They can give shape and movement to it. And it is so important in places where people feel forgotten and marginalized and depressed and hopeless to have that glimmer that there is a better future, that there is a better way that they just have to hold onto.
 
So I’m going to do what I can to continue to increase and enhance our artistic outreach, but this is also a great area for private foundations, for NGOs, for artists themselves, for universities like Georgetown to be engaged in. It’s interesting, in today’s world we are deluged with so much information. I mean, we are living in information overload time. And so we need ways of cutting through all of that. We’re also living in an on-the-one-hand-this and on-another-hand-that sort of media environment. I always joke that if a television station or a newspaper interviews somebody who is claiming that the earth is round, they have to put on somebody from the Flat Earth Society because that’s balance, fair and balanced coverage. (Laughter and applause.)
 
And so part of what we have to do is look for those ways of breaking through all of that. And I think that the power of the arts to do that is so enormous, and we can’t ever forget about the role that it must play in giving life to the aspirations of people around the world.

Hosted by AFHR at the home of Anne Archer, Founder of Artists for human Rights, the event was attended by over 100 people, and written up in the Los Angeles Times.  Jose Ramos Horta is the President of East Timor, and co-recipient of the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his non-violent work towards East Timor’s independence from Indonesia. 

Ramos-Horta's remarks centered on the Zones of Peace program which places activists where they can work on behalf of human rights, nonviolence, literacy, small business and other building blocks to peace in small regions devastated by conflict.

Hope and Human Rights Speaker Series - June 2009

This salon, hosted and produced by AFHR, marked the hugely successful launch of the Hope and Human Rights Speaker Series. The event was highly anticipated and received a write-up in the LA Times announcing the launch and the importance of Kevin Bales’ work in ending slavery.   Over 50 people attended the event held at Anne Archer’s home and were galvanized to become involved and active on this issue..

Kevin Bales is the co founder and President of Free the Slaves and author of Disposable People -nominated for 1999 Pulitzer Prize.  He is also co-author of Slavery: A Global Investigation –Winner of the 2000 Peabody Award and two 2005 Emmy Awards.

Mr. Bales spoke eloquently and articulately about slavery today, the nature of it, the history of it, and what we can do to eradicate it.  He made a key point of how basic education and human rights education are essential to the removal of slavery in any culture.

Visit www.freetheslaves.net

Hope and Human Rights Speaker Series

Artists for Human Rights hosted its 3rd Hope and Human Rights Speaker Series, an evening  with John Prendergast devoted to addressing the issue of “conflict minerals” in the Congo. Co-founder of the Enough Project and Raise Hope for the Congo, whose purpose is to end genocide and crimes against humanity and empower and protect Congolese women against sexual violence, addressed a packed house of over 125 people at the home of Anne Archer.  

John’s dedicated work and career as an activist, advocate and humanitarian for Africa, includes Director of African Affairs at the National Security Council and Special Advisor at the Department of State during the Clinton Administration, working for members of Congress, the United Nations, humanitarian aid agencies, and authoring eight books on Africa, including Not on Our Watch, a New York Times bestseller and NAACP non-fiction book of the year that he co-authored with actor Don Cheadle. 

The conflict in eastern Congo, the deadliest in the world since World War II, is being fueled by a multi-million dollar trade in minerals that go into our electronic products from cell phones to digital cameras. Over five million people have died as a result of the war, and hundreds of thousands of women have been raped in eastern Congo over the past decade. The armed groups that are perpetuating the violence generate an estimated $144 million each year by trading in four main minerals, the 3 Ts and gold: Tin, Tantalum, Tungsten and gold. These metals are used in every electronic device we use today, cell phones, computers, digital cameras, and iPods … just about anything you can think of. The same groups that profit from the mines regularly commit sexual atrocities against the women of Eastern Congo.

Enough's activist paper, written by Enough Co-founder John Prendergast, explains the connection between consumer appetites and violence against Congolese women and girls and lays out practical steps that policymakers, electronics companies, and ordinary Americans can take to help break this vicious cycle. 

Find out what you can do to change the supply chain for these necessary minerals. Help end the genocide and rape of women as a tool of war. Go to the Hope for the Congo: http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org/special-page/conflict-minerals or Enough Project: www.enoughproject.org

Artists for Human Rights Founder Anne Archer and President Donna Isham attended the  6th Annual Human Rights Summit held for the first time in Geneva, Switzerland, the headquarters of the United Nations Human Rights Council. AFHR’s Advisory board member and invited guest Allida Black, Eleanor Roosevelt’s official biographer and Founder of the Eleanor Roosevelt Project, gave the keynote speech for the Summit.

Her call to action focused on the responsibilities of young leaders in the human rights arena to show courage by following the example of Eleanor Roosevelt who never waivered from her commitment to make human rights a reality for all.

Artists for Human Rights also met with Navanethem Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and discussed effective ways in which to utilize art and artists in getting the human rights message out.