Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, Jose W. Fernandez, delivers remarks on Arab Spring on July 23, 2012.  [Go to http://video.state.gov for more video and text transcript.]

The 19^th Session of the Human Rights Council underscored the importance of robust engagement at the Council, where the United States continues to work with a diverse range of countries from all regions of the world to address urgent human rights concerns.

U.S. leadership kept the Council at the forefront of the international effort to promote and protect human rights in the Middle East as the Arab Spring continues to transform the region. U.S. engagement has resulted in significant improvements to the Human Rights Council (HRC) over the past two and a half years, making it a more effective and credible multilateral forum for promoting and protecting human rights.

At the same time, the Council’s biased and disproportionate focus on Israel continues to be a major challenge, as exemplified by the annual Item 7 resolutions. Through engagement at the Council, the U.S. continues to vigorously oppose this biased treatment. MORE

About the Author: Jeffrey Feltman serves as Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs.

When I served as Political-Economic Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Tunisia in the late 1990s, noisy and crowded diplomatic events — dinners, receptions, national day parties — were the best place to meet with Tunisians who assumed that President Ben Ali’s mukhabarat had bugged all offices. They believed the safety of the noise and crowds at diplomatic events protected candid conversations. But sometimes, even diplomatic receptions didn’t work out as planned: one night, my wife and I hosted a reception at our residence in Gammarth, where a large number of human rights and civil society activists showed up, probably to the horror of the few Tunisian government officials who dared attend. At the end of the reception, the mukhabarat arrested a number of guests whom we had gathered in one location, inadvertently facilitating a crackdown.

Foreign diplomats cynically nicknamed… more »

About the Author: Melanne Verveer serves as Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues.

Women are half the world’s population, yet hold less than one fifth of the positions of power in national governments. While it is certainly true that women today have made tremendous gains in reaching the highest rungs of leadership — Brazil, Costa Rica, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia and Bangladesh are among the countries with female presidents — overall the gains remain uneven. Furthermore, the contributions women have made toward achieving peace, prosperity, governance, and civil society in many parts of the globe too often go unrecognized; their inclusion in the political processes of their countries remains limited.

This week, coinciding with the Community of Democracies Ministerial in Vilnius, Lithuania, prominent female leaders representing government and civil society came together in a special conference to redress this imbalance and to commit to increasing support… more