Hillary Clinton speaks out about violence against women

While not a Hilary champion to date, I found this piece by Nicholas Kristof encouragiing to say the least. Read on:

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

During Hillary Clinton’s confirmation hearings this morning, she was asked by Barbara Boxer about violence against women. Senator Boxer referred to my column on acid attacks in Pakistan and the column about the Cambodian teenager whose eye was gouged out by a brothel owner, and then declared: “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. 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 legislation to fight this immorality.” Senator Clinton responded:

"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 we have to confront…And it will be my hope to persuade more governments…that we cannot have a free, prosperous, peaceful, progressive world, if women are treated in such a discriminatory and violent way. I’ve also read closely Nick Kristof’s articles, in the last months and especially the last weeks, 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.

So we’re going to have 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 not only in keeping with American values, as we all recognize, but American national security interests as well."

Senator Clinton has indeed been far-sighted on this issue, and I think she gets it. Rumor has it that she’s going to appoint a senior aide for these matters to sit on the seventh floor along with her. One of the problems in the State Department has been that the serious issues are perceived as those relating to nuclear warheads, trade or Middle East peace, and the rest is fluff. In fact, we’re seeing the rise of a new foreign policy agenda — side by side with the old one — consisting of issues like human trafficking, the environment, genocide. They are every bit as important as the traditional agenda, and I write about them a good deal partly because I want to help shape how they’re perceived and partly because I want to help legitimate them as “serious” matters.

If Mrs. Clinton as secretary of state embraces this new agenda (without, of course, dumping the old one), then I’ll take off my hat and cheer.