The United States is committed as well to doing its part to strengthen the international human rights architecture, which will help establish global norms that abhor genocide and mass atrocities. The United States strongly supports the UN s network of Special Rapporteurs and Experts, which can provide invaluable information on unfolding calamities or potential ones. A more robust field presence from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights is one tool to help build up national human rights institutions and help make a difference when a crisis erupts.
As you know, the United States will soon join the UN Human Rights Council. We will use that seat to push hard for balanced and credible action, to change the rules of the game, to scrutinize human rights records across the board, and to cast the spotlight on the world s worst abusers. In a crisis, the Council s ability to call special sessions something too often abused in the past can focus needed global attention and action on deteriorating human rights conditions.
To conclude, the Responsibility to Protect is a duty that I feel deeply. I believe we must be voices for action in the face of genocide and mass atrocities, even if we are lonely ones.
The world will never give us the quiet we might wish to gather our thoughts, weigh our options, and summon our nerve. Even as we speak, the ground is burning in all too many places. We must prepare for the likelihood that we will again face the worst impulses of human nature run riot, perhaps as soon as in days to come. And we must be ready.
We know there will be more perpetrators. We know there will be more victims. But we must work to ensure that there will also be more justice and fewer and fewer bystanders.
We all know the greatest obstacle to swift action in the face of sudden atrocity is, ultimately, political will. The hard truth is that stopping mass atrocities requires more than just the wisdom to see a way to save innocents from knives and the guns. It requires above all the courage and compassion to act. Together, let us all help one other to have and to act upon the courage of our convictions.
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