Below is an excerpt from the transcript of the exchange between Senator Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton at Clinton’s confirmation hearing yesterday. The entire transcript is a worthy and in places worrisome read, but I thought this bit in particular regarding women’s human rights worth noting. The good news–at least we are talking about it. The first bad news–the topic was left to the women Senators to chitchat about, not a topic the self-important white boys wanted to address. But it is what they said that is most disheartening:
BOXER: Senator Clinton, I’m so excited to see you here today. As you know, I was very much in favor of your saying yes to this opportunity.
You’re a dedicated public servant, and I think by nominating you President-elect Obama has sent a message that world peace and stability trumps politics and ego. And I think by accepting this position, Senator Clinton, you are sending the same message, because you are working with your toughest rival, and you’ve set your ego aside for world peace, world stability and for the good of the country. I mean that sincerely. You know I do.
I wanted to pick off a few of the issues that I care about. I’m going to do it very quickly because there are so many — just to make my voice heard on those — and then ask you a question on a topic you raised, and we’ve discussed it before, the status of women in the world — in particular, violence against women in the world. And Nicholas Kristof has written a series of articles on this, and I’ve spoken with our great new chairman, and I think his concern certainly lies in this direction along with yours.
So let me just say you face unbelievable challenges, you and the president-elect. Six years later, we still have 140,000 troops in Iraq. Seven years later, after the brutal attack of 9/11, we’re fighting a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. Al Qaida poses a great threat to us on that safe haven border of the Afghan-Pakistan border. The outrageous terrorist attack in Mumbai significantly heightened tensions between India and Pakistan.
And the outbreak of violence in Gaza reminds us that Israel continues to face grave threats to its very existence from never- ending rocket attacks. Our leadership is sorely needed there to protect the innocent, not just in the short term but in the long term where we hope to seek a very good solution for all sides.
In Iran we face defiance, in North Korea the same. And due to our own inaction, we continue to be dependent on oil and gas whose revenues line the pockets of hostile regimes. And this dependence has slowed our fight against global warming.
And I’m so proud that you mentioned global warming in your talk and that Senator Kerry, our chairman, is going to be so dedicated to helping you lead the charge in terms of a solution internationally. And as chairman of the Environment Committee, I will be by his side in that international treaty issue.
HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis — Africa, Asia, Latin America need our attention.
So that’s the list, and now I want to get to my questions.
I have a few pictures to share with all of us. And they’re brutal pictures. And I’m not showing them for shock value. I want to show them because I don’t think we can look away from the plight in women in the world.
And as I said, Nicholas Kristof confronts these issues in a series of compelling articles. In one, he tells us about the recent acid attack against young girls in Afghanistan, where they’re going to school with their teachers. And we have a photo of one of the victims to show you on that. I’m just going to do these very quickly. OK.
He profiles a story in a second picture, I’ll show that, of a Pakistani woman who was viciously burned by her husband with acid because she dared to divorce him. This is what we’re talking about. This is Ms. Azar. OK.
Thousands of women have suffered similar attacks throughout Asia, and no prosecutions, senator. Kristof tells us the story of a Vietnamese girl named Sina Vann who was kidnapped at age 13; she was sold into sex slavery in Cambodia. When she refused to see customers, she was tortured brutally with electric shocks and locked in a coffin full of insects.
And Kristof illustrates an act of horrific brutality in a piece called “If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?” in which a young Cambodian girl had her eye gouged out by her brothel owner after taking time off to recover from a forced abortion. This is a picture of that, just very beautiful, young woman.
Count me as one of the people that appreciate the fact that Kristof regularly devotes his very valuable journalistic real estate on the Op Ed page of the New York Times to reporting about violence against women and women’s human rights, BUT the fact of the matter is that women and women-run organizations throughout the world have been documenting these issues and advocating for change and doing the hard work to make those changes happen on an ongoing basis for a very long time. They rarely get the credit for that work and are rarely listened to in the discussion of foreign policy. And while I appreciate Kristof’s efforts, it is so disheartening that in the few instances when these issues are brought to the table, credit for the awareness goes to white guys on their shiny steed.
BOXER: So I’m introducing some legislation. One is a companion piece of Representative Carolyn Maloney. Another one is the Afghan Women Empowerment Act, which many on this committee have worked with us on. And that’s just the beginning. No woman or girl should ever have to live in fear or face persecution for being born female.
And, senator, I know how deeply you feel about this. And so I wanted you to take a little more time to talk about your commitment to this particular issue. And, obviously, I would be so pleased if you would commit to help us work on a legislation to fight this immorality.
CLINTON: Well, senator, you have been such a leader. And I have been honored to be your colleague and your partner in a number of these efforts that have been undertaken on behalf of women around the world.
And I want to pledge to you that as secretary of state I view these issues as central to our foreign policy, not as adjunct or auxiliary or in any way lesser than all of the other issues that we have to confront.
I, too, have followed the stories that are exemplified by the pictures that you held up. I mean, it is heartbreaking beyond works that, you know, young girls are attacked on their way to school by Taliban sympathizers and members who do not want young women to be educated. It’s not complicated: They want to maintain an attitude that keeps women, as I said in my testimony, unhealthy, unfed, uneducated.
And this is something that results all too often in violence against these young women, both within their families and from the outside. This is not culture. This is not custom. This is criminal. And it will be my hope to persuade more governments, as I have attempted to do since I spoke at Beijing on these issues, you know, 13 and some years ago, that we cannot have a free, prosperous, peaceful, progressive world if women are treated in such a discriminatory and violent way.
I have also read closely Nick Kristof’s articles over the last many months, but in particular the last weeks, on the young women that he has both rescued from prostitution and met who have been enslaved and abused, tortured in every way: physically, emotionally, morally.
And I take very seriously the function of the State Department to lead our government through the Office on Human Trafficking to do all that we can to end this modern form of slavery. We have sex slavery, we have wage slavery, and it is primarily a slavery of girls and women.
So I look also forward, senator, to reviewing your legislation and working with you as a continuing partnership on behalf of these issues we care so much about.
And finally, the work that the women of the Senate did in connection with First Lady Laura Bush on behalf of the women of Afghanistan has been extremely important. That program was started in the State Department. It was midwifed by a group that I helped to start back in the Clinton administration called Vital Voices. Mrs. Bush has been outspoken on behalf of the plight of Afghan women, on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, and other women facing oppression around the world. And I’m very pleased that that project will be spun off to Georgetown where it will continue under Mrs. Bush’s sponsorship.
CLINTON: So we’re going to have a very active women’s office, a very active office on trafficking. We’re going to be speaking out consistently and strongly against discrimination and oppression of women and slavery in particular, because I think that is in keeping not only with American values, as we all recognize, but American national security interests as well.
BOXER: Well, I couldn’t have asked for a better answer.
Well I sure could have. We’re going to have “a very active women’s office” but yet we’re pawning off the rights of the Afghan women we supposedly liberated to a group under Laura Bush’s leadership? And aside from lipservice, what exactly have Mrs. Bush, let alone the U.S. government done for Aung San Suu Kyi? If this is Clinton’s idea of championing women’s human rights, it would appear that we are in for 4 more years of women’s lives being endangered by U.S. foreign policy.
BOXER: I wanted to note, Mr. Chairman, that even the most conservative historians have said that if women in the world could be allowed to live up to their potential it would bring the whole world forward. A lot of the problems we face really come from this mindset that half of the population doesn’t matter and can be abused. And they’re ignored or hurt and can’t contribute. So I think it’s a key matter.
Indeed, it is a key matter and that means that you don’t pawn off women’s human rights to a women’s office let alone suggest that it be handled by private organizations. You make it a central part of foreign policy and indeed as Boxer suggests, you “bring the whole world forward.” That is the kind of states-womanship we would like to see from Clinton rather than what very much sounds like more of the same when it comes to women’s rights.
