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U.S. Senate testimony of Hillary Clinton Jan 13, 2009:
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. I too have followed the stories that are exemplified by the pictures that you held up. I mean, it is heartbreaking beyond words that, you know, young girls are attacked on their way to school by Taliban sympathizers and members who do not want young women to be educated. It's not complicated! They want to maintain an attitude that keeps women -- as I said in my testimony -- unhealthy, unfed, uneducated and this is something that results all too often in violence against these young women, both within their families and from the outside.
This is not culture. This is not custom. This is criminal. And it will be my hope to persuade more government -- as I have attempted to do since I spoke at Beijing on these issues, you know, 13 and some years ago -- 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.
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