Text of Interview
AT: Do you think that
governments and I guess organizations right now in the affluent
and powerful parts of our world are doing enough? Are they
dismissing responsibility or are they stepping up to the
plate and accepting it?
Hamburg: Half a century
ago, we were very good on that. The reason that Franklin
Roosevelt and the others created the U.N. was to, fundamentally,
prevent World War III or more generally, to prevent wars
to the maximum extent possible. They did have other reasons
as well, but that was at the heart of it. When Eleanor Roosevelt
and others developed the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights in 1948, it has an important parts of its rational
that if you can stop egregious large-scale human rights
violations you will diminish the likelihood of terrible
conflicts between groups.
