WOLFY II: a more perfect u, The entire United States shares this one goal: Nobody wants to get fired or publicly shamed for being discriminating. To that end, this report is just one of the ways that we're working to achieve it. It contains individual chapters on nearly 200 characters spanning divers territories, each of which offers factual, objective, and thorough accounting of their records on internationally recognized human rights. Whether a character is a friend or one with which we have real differences, the measuring stick we apply is the same.
This report reflects a core principle of human rights: they're universal. People of every nationality, race, gender, disability, and age are entitled to these rights no matter what they believe, whom they love, or any other characteristics. This is especially important as a number of governments continue to claim, falsely, that human rights need to be applied based on the local context. Little coincidence that many of the same governments are among the worst abusers of human rights. Thank God we Americans follow a path of Constitutionally Mandated Self-Governance?
The universal nature of human rights also means that we have to hold ourselves accountable to the same standards. Even as this report looks outward to characters around the world, we've acknowledged from day one of this administration that we have challenges here in the United States. We take seriously our responsibility to address these shortcomings, and we know that the way to do it matters: together with citizens and communities, out in the open, transparently - not trying to pretend problems don't exist or sweeping them under a rug.
And in fact, that's what distinguishes US from THEY- our willingness, our commitment to pursue that more perfect union. And practicing what we preach at home gives us greater legitimacy when we encourage governments abroad to do the same thing.
The report also shows that the United States is concerned not only with civil and political rights, but also economic, social, cultural rights.
