The human rights policy of the United States has been an integral part of
our overall foreign policy for the past several years. This policy serves
the national interest of the United States in several important ways: by
encouraging respect by governments for the basic rights of human beings, it
promotes peaceful, constructive change, reduces the likelihood of internal
pressures for violent change and for the exploitation of these by our
adversaries, and thus directly serves our long-term interest in peace and
stability; by matching espousal of fundamental American principles of
freedom with specific foreign policy actions, we stand out in vivid
contrast to our ideological adversaries; by our efforts to expand freedom
elsewhere, we render our own freedom, and our own nation, more secure.
Countries that respect human rights make stronger allies and better
friends.
Rather than attempt to dictate what system of government or institutions
other countries should have, the U.S. supports, throughout the world, the
internationally recognized human rights which all members of the United
Nations have pledged themselves to respect. There is more than one model
that can satisfy the continuing human reach for freedom and justice:
1980 has been a year of some disappointments, but has also seen some
positive developments in the ongoing struggle for fulfillment of human
rights throughout the world. In the year we have seen:
--Free elections were held and democratic governments installed in Peru,
Dominica, and Jamaica. Honduras held a free election for installation of a
constituent assembly. An interim government was subsequently named pointing
toward national presidential elections in 1981. Brazil continues on its
course of political liberalization.
--The "Charter of Conduct" signed in Riobamba, Ecuador, by Ecuador,
Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama and Spain, affirms the
importance of democracy and human rights for the Andean countries.
--The Organization of American States, in its annual General Assembly,
approved a resolution in support of the Inter-American Human Rights
Commission's work. The resolution took note of the Commission's annual
report, which described the status of human rights in Chile, El Salvador,
Paraguay and Uruguay; and the special reports on Argentina and Haiti, which
described human rights conditions as investigated during on-site
inspections to these countries.
--The awarding of the Nobel Prize for Peace to Adolfo Perez Esquivel of
Argentina for his non-violent advocacy of human rights.
--The United States was able to rejoin the International Labor
Organization after an absence of two years, as that U.N. body reformed its
procedures to return to its original purpose of strengthening
employer-employee-government relations to insure human rights for the
working people of the world.
The United States, of course, cannot take credit for all these various
developments. But we can take satisfaction in knowing that our policies
encourage and perhaps influence them.
Those who see a contradiction between our security and our humanitarian
interests forget that the basis for a secure and stable society is the bond
of trust between a government and its people. I profoundly believe that the
future of our world is not to be found in authoritarianism: that wears the
mask of order, or totalitarianism that wears the mask of justice. Instead,
let us find our future in the human face of democracy, the human voice of
individual liberty, the human hand of economic development.