WEBVTT 00:00:00.481 --> 00:00:02.015 As a matter of fact, 00:00:02.015 --> 00:00:05.287 I was trying to think about my career since I left the White House, 00:00:05.287 --> 00:00:09.583 and the best example I have is a cartoon in The New Yorker a couple of years ago. 00:00:09.583 --> 00:00:11.742 This little boy is looking up at his father, 00:00:11.742 --> 00:00:15.787 and he says, "Daddy, when I grow up, I want to be a former president." NOTE Paragraph 00:00:15.787 --> 00:00:17.477 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:00:17.477 --> 00:00:21.193 Well, I have had a great blessing as a former president, 00:00:21.193 --> 00:00:23.620 because I have had an access 00:00:23.620 --> 00:00:26.277 that very few other people in the world have ever had 00:00:26.277 --> 00:00:29.923 to get to know so many people around this whole universe. 00:00:29.923 --> 00:00:33.545 Not only am I familiar with the 50 states in the United States, 00:00:33.545 --> 00:00:38.421 but also my wife and I have visited more than 145 countries in the world, 00:00:38.421 --> 00:00:42.670 and the Carter Center has had full-time programs in 80 nations on Earth. 00:00:42.670 --> 00:00:44.866 And a lot of times, when we go into a country, 00:00:44.866 --> 00:00:47.076 we not only the meet the king or the president, 00:00:47.076 --> 00:00:51.424 but we also meet the villagers who live in the most remote areas of Africa. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:51.424 --> 00:00:54.930 So our overall commitment at the Carter Center 00:00:54.930 --> 00:00:56.927 is to promote human rights, 00:00:56.927 --> 00:01:01.639 and knowing the world as I do, I can tell you without any equivocation 00:01:01.639 --> 00:01:05.530 that the number one abuse of human rights on Earth 00:01:05.530 --> 00:01:11.369 is, strangely, not addressed quite often, is the abuse of women and girls. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:11.369 --> 00:01:14.657 (Applause) NOTE Paragraph 00:01:14.657 --> 00:01:19.890 There are a couple of reasons for this that I'll mention to begin with. 00:01:19.890 --> 00:01:25.360 First of all is the misinterpretation of religious scriptures, holy scriptures, 00:01:25.360 --> 00:01:28.983 in the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, Quran and so forth, 00:01:28.983 --> 00:01:36.246 and these have been misinterpreted by men who are now in the ascendant positions 00:01:36.246 --> 00:01:38.875 in the synagogues and the churches and in the mosques. 00:01:38.875 --> 00:01:42.706 And they interpret these rules to make sure that women 00:01:42.706 --> 00:01:46.960 are ordinarily relegated to a secondary position 00:01:46.960 --> 00:01:49.848 compared to men in the eyes of God. NOTE Paragraph 00:01:50.558 --> 00:01:54.780 This is a very serious problem. It's ordinarily not addressed. 00:01:54.780 --> 00:01:56.891 A number of years ago, in the year 2000, 00:01:56.891 --> 00:02:00.454 I had been a Baptist, a Southern Baptist for 70 years -- 00:02:00.454 --> 00:02:02.936 I tell you, I still teach Sunday school every Sunday; 00:02:02.936 --> 00:02:04.807 I'll be teaching this Sunday as well -- 00:02:04.807 --> 00:02:09.222 but the Southern Baptist Convention in the year 2000 decided 00:02:09.222 --> 00:02:11.823 that women should play a secondary position, 00:02:11.823 --> 00:02:13.889 a subservient position to men. 00:02:13.889 --> 00:02:16.606 So they issued an edict, in effect, 00:02:16.606 --> 00:02:22.510 that prevents women from being priests, pastors, deacons in the church, 00:02:22.510 --> 00:02:24.802 or chaplains in the military, 00:02:24.802 --> 00:02:27.960 and if a woman teaches a classroom 00:02:27.960 --> 00:02:30.142 in a Southern Baptist seminary, 00:02:30.142 --> 00:02:33.555 they cannot teach if a boy is in the room, 00:02:33.555 --> 00:02:35.576 because you can find verses in the Bible, 00:02:35.576 --> 00:02:38.600 there's over 30,000 verses in the Bible, 00:02:38.600 --> 00:02:41.410 that say that a woman shouldn't teach a man, and so forth. 00:02:41.410 --> 00:02:44.445 But the basic thing is the scriptures are misinterpreted 00:02:44.445 --> 00:02:46.906 to keep men in an ascendant position. 00:02:46.906 --> 00:02:48.996 That is an all-pervasive problem, 00:02:48.996 --> 00:02:53.872 because men can exert that power 00:02:53.872 --> 00:02:59.886 and if an abusive husband or an employer, for instance, wants to cheat women, 00:02:59.886 --> 00:03:03.670 they can say that if women are not equal in the eyes of God, 00:03:03.670 --> 00:03:05.862 why should I treat them as equals myself? 00:03:05.862 --> 00:03:10.320 Why should I pay them equal pay for doing the same kind of work? NOTE Paragraph 00:03:10.320 --> 00:03:12.247 The other very serious blight 00:03:12.247 --> 00:03:16.264 that causes this problem is the excessive resort to violence, 00:03:16.264 --> 00:03:20.858 and that is increasing tremendously around the world. 00:03:20.858 --> 00:03:23.787 In the United States of America, for instance, we have had 00:03:23.787 --> 00:03:27.967 an enormous increase in abuse of poor people, 00:03:27.967 --> 00:03:33.261 mostly black people and minorities, by putting them in prison. 00:03:33.261 --> 00:03:35.815 When I was in office as governor of Georgia, 00:03:35.815 --> 00:03:39.181 one out of every 1,000 Americans were in prison. 00:03:39.181 --> 00:03:44.290 Nowadays, 7.3 people per 1,000 are in prison. 00:03:44.290 --> 00:03:46.310 That's a sevenfold increase. 00:03:46.310 --> 00:03:47.958 And since I left the White House, 00:03:47.958 --> 00:03:51.279 there's been an 800 percent increase in the number of women 00:03:51.279 --> 00:03:53.856 who are black who are in prison. 00:03:53.856 --> 00:03:56.380 We also have [one of the only countries] on Earth 00:03:56.380 --> 00:04:00.334 that still has the death penalty that is a developed country. 00:04:00.334 --> 00:04:03.701 And we rank right alongside the countries that are most abusive 00:04:03.701 --> 00:04:07.205 in all elements of human rights in encouraging the death penalty. 00:04:07.555 --> 00:04:10.411 We're in California now, and I figured out the other day 00:04:10.411 --> 00:04:13.406 that California has spent four billion dollars 00:04:13.406 --> 00:04:17.818 in convicting 13 people for the death penalty. 00:04:17.818 --> 00:04:22.653 If you add that up, that's 307 million dollars it costs California 00:04:22.653 --> 00:04:25.601 to send a person to be executed. 00:04:25.991 --> 00:04:29.474 Nebraska this week just passed a law abolishing the death penalty, 00:04:29.474 --> 00:04:33.940 because it costs so much. (Applause) 00:04:34.861 --> 00:04:39.087 So the resort to violence and abuse of poor people and helpless people 00:04:39.087 --> 00:04:43.185 is another cause of the increase in abuse of women. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:43.475 --> 00:04:47.979 Let me just go down a very few abuses of women that concern me most, 00:04:47.979 --> 00:04:51.880 and I'll be fairly brief, because I have a limited amount of time, as you know. NOTE Paragraph 00:04:51.880 --> 00:04:56.130 One is genital mutilation. 00:04:56.360 --> 00:05:00.474 Genital mutilation is horrible and not known by American women, 00:05:00.474 --> 00:05:04.219 but in some countries, many countries, 00:05:04.219 --> 00:05:08.525 when a child is born that's a girl, very soon in her life, 00:05:08.525 --> 00:05:15.235 her genitals are completely cut away by a so-called cutter 00:05:15.235 --> 00:05:19.227 who has a razor blade and, in a non-sterilized way, 00:05:19.227 --> 00:05:23.170 they remove the exterior parts of a woman's genitalia. 00:05:23.170 --> 00:05:27.591 And sometimes, in more extreme cases but not very rare cases, 00:05:27.591 --> 00:05:31.405 they sew the orifice up so the girl can just urinate or menstruate. 00:05:31.405 --> 00:05:34.784 And then later, when she gets married, the same cutter goes in 00:05:34.784 --> 00:05:37.400 and opens the orifice up so she can have sex. 00:05:37.400 --> 00:05:41.415 This is not a rare thing, although it's against the law in most countries. 00:05:41.415 --> 00:05:43.347 In Egypt, for instance, 00:05:43.347 --> 00:05:47.000 91 percent of all the females that live in Egypt today 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:49.560 have been sexually mutilated in that way. 00:05:49.560 --> 00:05:52.950 In some countries, it's more than 98 percent 00:05:52.950 --> 00:05:57.246 of the women are cut that way before they reach maturity. 00:05:57.246 --> 00:05:59.846 This is a horrible affliction 00:05:59.846 --> 00:06:03.515 on all women that live in those countries. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:03.515 --> 00:06:07.299 Another very serious thing is honor killings, 00:06:07.299 --> 00:06:10.625 where a family with misinterpretation, again, of a holy scripture -- 00:06:10.625 --> 00:06:13.313 there's nothing in the Quran that mandates this -- 00:06:13.313 --> 00:06:17.500 will execute a girl in their family 00:06:17.500 --> 00:06:19.377 if she is raped 00:06:19.377 --> 00:06:23.112 or if she marries a man that her father does not approve, 00:06:23.112 --> 00:06:26.223 or sometimes even if she wears inappropriate clothing. 00:06:26.223 --> 00:06:29.251 And this is done by members of her own family, 00:06:29.251 --> 00:06:31.456 so the family becomes murderers 00:06:31.456 --> 00:06:35.808 when the girl brings so-called disgrace to the family. 00:06:35.808 --> 00:06:39.155 An analysis was done in Egypt not so long ago by the United Nations 00:06:39.155 --> 00:06:43.197 and it showed that 75 percent of these murders of a girl 00:06:43.197 --> 00:06:48.580 are perpetrated by the father, the uncle or the brother, 00:06:48.580 --> 00:06:52.032 but 25 percent of the murders are conducted by women. NOTE Paragraph 00:06:52.032 --> 00:06:53.994 Another problem that we have in the world 00:06:53.994 --> 00:06:56.732 that relates to women particularly is slavery, 00:06:56.732 --> 00:06:59.147 or human trafficking it's called nowadays. 00:06:59.147 --> 00:07:03.565 There were about 12.5 million people sold from Africa into slavery 00:07:03.565 --> 00:07:07.784 in the New World back in the 19th century and the 18th century. 00:07:07.784 --> 00:07:11.639 There are 30 million people now living in slavery. 00:07:11.639 --> 00:07:17.281 The United States Department of State now has a mandate from Congress 00:07:17.281 --> 00:07:19.603 to give a report every year, 00:07:19.603 --> 00:07:24.246 and the State Department reports that 800,000 people are sold 00:07:24.246 --> 00:07:27.893 across international borders every year into slavery, 00:07:27.893 --> 00:07:30.841 and that 80 percent of those sold are women, 00:07:30.841 --> 00:07:32.977 into sexual slavery. 00:07:32.977 --> 00:07:35.531 In the United States right this moment, 00:07:35.531 --> 00:07:39.385 60,000 people are living in human bondage, or slavery. 00:07:39.385 --> 00:07:42.171 Atlanta, Georgia, where the Carter Center is located 00:07:42.171 --> 00:07:44.772 and where I teach at Emory University, 00:07:44.772 --> 00:07:50.079 they have between 200 and 300 women, people sold into slavery every month. 00:07:50.672 --> 00:07:53.781 It's the number one place in the nation because of that. 00:07:53.781 --> 00:07:55.987 Atlanta has the busiest airport in the world, 00:07:55.987 --> 00:08:01.234 and they also have a lot of passengers that come from the Southern Hemisphere. 00:08:01.234 --> 00:08:03.858 If a brothel owner 00:08:03.858 --> 00:08:06.877 wants to buy a girl that has brown or black skin, 00:08:06.877 --> 00:08:09.523 they can do it for 1,000 dollars. 00:08:09.523 --> 00:08:13.610 A white-skinned girl brings several times more than that, 00:08:13.610 --> 00:08:17.000 and the average brothel owner in Atlanta and in the United States now 00:08:17.000 --> 00:08:21.504 can earn about $35,000 per slave. 00:08:21.504 --> 00:08:26.613 The sex trade in Atlanta, Georgia, exceeds the total drug trade in Atlanta, Georgia. 00:08:26.613 --> 00:08:31.458 So this is another very serious problem, and the basic problem is prostitution, 00:08:31.465 --> 00:08:35.459 because there's not a whorehouse in America 00:08:35.459 --> 00:08:37.688 that's not known by the local officials, 00:08:37.688 --> 00:08:41.659 the local policemen, or the chief of police or the mayor and so forth. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:41.659 --> 00:08:44.386 And this leads to one of the worst problems, 00:08:44.386 --> 00:08:48.635 and that is that women are bought increasingly and put into sexual slavery 00:08:48.635 --> 00:08:50.586 in all countries in the world. NOTE Paragraph 00:08:50.586 --> 00:08:53.140 Sweden has got a good approach to it. 00:08:53.140 --> 00:08:56.762 About 15 to 20 years ago, Sweden decided to change the law, 00:08:56.762 --> 00:08:59.316 and women are no longer prosecuted 00:08:59.316 --> 00:09:02.100 if they are in sexual slavery, 00:09:02.100 --> 00:09:07.675 but the brothel owners and the pimps and the male customers are prosecuted, 00:09:07.675 --> 00:09:12.463 and -- (Applause) -- prostitution has gone down. 00:09:12.463 --> 00:09:15.477 In the United States, we take just the opposite position. 00:09:15.477 --> 00:09:21.664 For every male arrested for illegal sex trade, 00:09:21.664 --> 00:09:27.120 25 women are arrested in the United States of America. 00:09:27.120 --> 00:09:31.230 Canada, Ireland, I've already said Sweden, 00:09:31.230 --> 00:09:35.150 France, and other countries are moving now towards this so-called Swedish model. 00:09:35.150 --> 00:09:37.309 That's another thing that can be done. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:37.309 --> 00:09:40.680 We have two great institutions in this country that all of us admire: 00:09:40.680 --> 00:09:44.511 our military and our great university system. 00:09:44.511 --> 00:09:48.830 In the military, they are now analyzing how many sexual assaults take place. 00:09:48.830 --> 00:09:53.219 The last report I got, there were 26,000 sexual assaults 00:09:53.219 --> 00:09:55.564 that took place in the military -- 00:09:55.564 --> 00:09:57.200 26,000. 00:09:57.210 --> 00:10:02.420 Only 3,000, not much more than 1 percent, are actually prosecuted, 00:10:02.420 --> 00:10:06.590 and the reason is that the commanding officer of any organization -- 00:10:06.590 --> 00:10:10.842 a ship like my submarine, or a battalion in the Army 00:10:10.842 --> 00:10:12.978 or a company in the Marines -- 00:10:12.978 --> 00:10:17.103 the commanding officer has the right under law to decide 00:10:17.103 --> 00:10:19.688 whether to prosecute a rapist or not, 00:10:19.688 --> 00:10:22.869 and of course, the last thing they want is for anybody to know 00:10:22.869 --> 00:10:26.306 that under their command, sexual assaults are taking place, 00:10:26.306 --> 00:10:28.210 so they do not do it. 00:10:28.210 --> 00:10:30.752 That law needs to be changed. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:31.472 --> 00:10:34.664 About one out of four girls who enter American universities 00:10:34.664 --> 00:10:37.451 will be sexually assaulted before she graduates, 00:10:37.451 --> 00:10:39.737 and this is now getting a lot of publicity, 00:10:39.737 --> 00:10:41.943 partially because of my book, but other things, 00:10:41.943 --> 00:10:46.131 and so 89 universities in America are now condemned 00:10:46.131 --> 00:10:48.816 by the Department of Education under Title IX 00:10:48.816 --> 00:10:53.529 because the officials of the universities are not taking care of the women 00:10:53.529 --> 00:10:55.480 to protect them from sexual assault. 00:10:55.480 --> 00:10:59.148 The Department of Justice says that more than half of the rapes 00:10:59.148 --> 00:11:02.631 on a college campus take place by serial rapists, 00:11:02.631 --> 00:11:05.209 because outside of the university system, 00:11:05.209 --> 00:11:08.227 if they rape somebody, they'll be prosecuted, 00:11:08.227 --> 00:11:12.255 but when they get on a university campus, they can rape with impunity. 00:11:12.255 --> 00:11:14.298 They're not prosecuted. 00:11:14.298 --> 00:11:17.642 Those are the kinds of things that go on in our society. NOTE Paragraph 00:11:17.642 --> 00:11:23.214 Another thing that's very serious about the abuse of women and girls 00:11:23.214 --> 00:11:28.207 is the lack of equal pay for equal work, 00:11:28.207 --> 00:11:30.296 as you know. (Applause) 00:11:30.296 --> 00:11:37.133 And this is sometimes misinterpreted, but for full-time employment, 00:11:37.133 --> 00:11:40.480 a woman in the United States now gets 23 percent less than a man. 00:11:40.480 --> 00:11:43.369 When I became president, the difference was 39 percent. 00:11:43.369 --> 00:11:47.246 So we've made some progress, partially because I was president 00:11:47.246 --> 00:11:53.160 and so forth -- (Applause) (Laughter) -- 00:11:53.160 --> 00:11:56.568 but in the last 15 years, there's been no progress made, 00:11:56.568 --> 00:11:59.424 so it's been just about 23 or 24 percent difference 00:11:59.424 --> 00:12:01.699 for the last 15 years. 00:12:01.699 --> 00:12:03.627 These are the kind of things that go on. 00:12:03.627 --> 00:12:06.710 If you take the Fortune 500 companies, 00:12:06.710 --> 00:12:09.849 23 of them have women CEOs, 00:12:09.849 --> 00:12:11.660 out of 500, 00:12:11.660 --> 00:12:14.795 and those CEOs, I need not tell you, 00:12:14.795 --> 00:12:16.792 make less on an average 00:12:16.792 --> 00:12:19.910 than the other CEOs. 00:12:19.910 --> 00:12:22.388 Well, that's what goes on in our country. NOTE Paragraph 00:12:22.388 --> 00:12:24.872 Another problem with the United States 00:12:24.872 --> 00:12:28.564 is we are the most warlike nation on Earth. 00:12:28.564 --> 00:12:32.790 We have been to war with about 25 different countries 00:12:32.790 --> 00:12:35.251 since the Second World War. 00:12:35.251 --> 00:12:37.782 Sometimes, we've had soldiers on the ground fighting. 00:12:37.782 --> 00:12:39.802 The other times, we've been flying overhead 00:12:39.802 --> 00:12:41.775 dropping bombs on people. 00:12:41.775 --> 00:12:45.537 Other times, of course, now, we have drones that attack people and so forth. 00:12:45.537 --> 00:12:48.210 We've been at war with 25 different countries 00:12:48.210 --> 00:12:50.993 or more since the Second World War. 00:12:50.993 --> 00:12:53.370 There was four years, I won't say which ones, 00:12:53.370 --> 00:12:54.964 where we didn't -- 00:12:54.964 --> 00:13:00.722 (Applause) -- we didn't drop a bomb, we didn't launch a missile, 00:13:00.722 --> 00:13:02.464 we didn't fire a bullet. 00:13:02.464 --> 00:13:06.860 But anyway, those kinds of things, the resort to violence 00:13:06.860 --> 00:13:09.476 and the misinterpretation of the holy scriptures 00:13:09.476 --> 00:13:14.770 are what causes, are the basic causes, of abuse of women and girls. NOTE Paragraph 00:13:14.770 --> 00:13:18.369 There's one more basic cause that I need not mention, 00:13:18.369 --> 00:13:23.710 and that is that in general, men don't give a damn. 00:13:23.710 --> 00:13:26.751 (Applause) That's true. 00:13:26.751 --> 00:13:31.777 The average man that might say, I'm against the abuse of women and girls 00:13:31.777 --> 00:13:36.130 quietly accepts the privileged position that we occupy, 00:13:36.130 --> 00:13:39.570 and this is very similar to what I knew when I was a child, 00:13:39.570 --> 00:13:41.797 when separate but equal had existed. 00:13:41.797 --> 00:13:47.440 Racial discrimination, legally, had existed for 100 years, 00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:50.573 from 1865 at the end of the War Between the States, the Civil War, 00:13:50.573 --> 00:13:53.417 all the way up to the 1960s, 00:13:53.417 --> 00:13:56.134 when Lyndon Johnson got the bills passed 00:13:56.134 --> 00:13:58.107 for equal rights. 00:13:58.107 --> 00:14:00.847 But during that time, there were many white people 00:14:00.847 --> 00:14:04.214 that didn't think that racial discrimination was okay, 00:14:04.214 --> 00:14:06.373 but they stayed quiet, 00:14:06.373 --> 00:14:11.507 because they enjoyed the privileges of better jobs, 00:14:11.507 --> 00:14:14.918 unique access to jury duty, 00:14:14.918 --> 00:14:17.169 better schools, and everything else, 00:14:17.169 --> 00:14:19.330 and that's the same thing that exists today, 00:14:19.330 --> 00:14:22.975 because the average man really doesn't care. 00:14:22.975 --> 00:14:29.320 Even though they say, "I'm against discrimination against girls and women," 00:14:29.320 --> 00:14:32.770 they enjoy a privileged position. 00:14:32.770 --> 00:14:35.142 And it's very difficult to get the majority of men 00:14:35.142 --> 00:14:38.188 who control the university system, 00:14:38.188 --> 00:14:40.852 the majority of men that control the military system, 00:14:40.852 --> 00:14:44.350 the majority of men that control the governments of the world, 00:14:44.350 --> 00:14:49.584 and the majority of men that control the great religions. NOTE Paragraph 00:14:49.584 --> 00:14:52.997 So what is the basic thing that we need to do today? 00:14:52.997 --> 00:14:55.528 I would say the best thing that we could do today 00:14:55.528 --> 00:14:59.840 is for the women in the powerful nations 00:14:59.840 --> 00:15:02.563 like this one, and where you come from, 00:15:02.563 --> 00:15:07.532 Europe and so forth, who have influence and who have freedom to speak and to act, 00:15:07.532 --> 00:15:12.558 need to take the responsibility on yourselves 00:15:12.558 --> 00:15:15.623 to be more forceful in demanding 00:15:15.623 --> 00:15:20.265 an end to racial discrimination against girls and women 00:15:20.265 --> 00:15:21.626 all over the world. 00:15:21.626 --> 00:15:24.527 The average woman in Egypt 00:15:24.527 --> 00:15:26.693 doesn't have much to say about her daughters 00:15:26.693 --> 00:15:30.101 getting genitally mutilated and so forth. 00:15:30.101 --> 00:15:32.175 I didn't even go down to detail about that. 00:15:32.175 --> 00:15:34.234 But I hope that out of this conference, 00:15:34.234 --> 00:15:38.748 that every woman here will get your husbands to realize 00:15:38.748 --> 00:15:42.870 that these abuses on the college campuses and the military and so forth 00:15:42.872 --> 00:15:45.411 and in the future job market, 00:15:45.411 --> 00:15:49.860 need to protect your daughters and your granddaughters. NOTE Paragraph 00:15:49.860 --> 00:15:55.622 I have 12 grandchildren, four children, and 10 great-grandchildren, 00:15:55.622 --> 00:15:57.546 and I think often about them 00:15:57.546 --> 00:16:00.611 and about the plight that they will face in America, 00:16:00.611 --> 00:16:04.396 not only if they lived in Egypt or a foreign country, 00:16:04.396 --> 00:16:06.602 in having equal rights, 00:16:06.602 --> 00:16:08.935 and I hope that all of you will join me 00:16:08.935 --> 00:16:12.662 in being a champion for women and girls around the world 00:16:12.662 --> 00:16:14.217 and protect their human rights. 00:16:14.217 --> 00:16:17.189 Thank you very much. 00:16:17.189 --> 00:16:21.189 (Applause)