Human rights is not a boutique issue

At the national conference of the Campus Progress organization of the Center for American Progress, hundreds of young college student gathered together to hear a discussion about the “forgotten factor” in foreign policy: human rights. Nancy Rubin, former U.S.ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights urged young adults to take action on human rights.

Rubin said that human rights is in all of our hands and is based on the inherent dignity of people. International human rights laws were created after World War II and we still need it, however the United States has not ratified many of the newer human rights conventions such as the Kyoto Protocol. Rubin said that human rights are fundamental to how we do business around the world.

The United States was a strong, bold, strategic leader in the fight for human rights, but lately “we have fallen behind on ratifications,” Rubin said. The U.S. is a leader in many other things and has a huge potential to create change if youth and others band together and fight for human rights.

Mallika Dutt, founder and executive director of Breakthrough, said that human rights is a complex, complicated issue that covers a myriad of issues from deportation, to immigration, HIV/AIDS, counterterrorism and national security. Dutt also called the youth to action to petition the government and the government of offending nations to respect human rights.