TomMalinowski

For better or worse, that's how the United Nations works -- it's an organization of member countries, some of which respect human rights and some of which don't. But every country has an obligation to respect the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and by the various human rights treaties that most countries in the world have signed -- treaties that ban torture, that require protection of civilians in war time, that provide for freedom of expression, religion, assembly, etc. Those norms don't change just because a country like Saudi Arabia joins the Human Rights Council. And the US will continue to ask Saudi Arabia to do more to protect the human rights of its people -- for example, by releasing peaceful dissidents and bloggers from prison, and avoiding indiscriminate airstrikes in Yemen.

That there are three ways to measure the highest mountain in the world. Most people measure from sea level, which gets you Mt. Everest. But the only right way is by distance from the center of the earth, which gives you Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. Which I tried to climb once. And failed. :-(

I get asked all over the world about what's happening in the United States, and yes, when political candidates say something that's not consistent with the values we try to project around the world, it reflects on all of us. I explain that we have many voices in the United States, and this is far from the first time in our history when some of them have seemed intemperate or even extreme. Our democratic system has a way of exposing the frustrations and divisions in our country, but then moderating them, and leading us back to a measured consensus, without violence and conflict. Sometimes it isn't pretty. But I actually think that even in such moments, it offers a good model for other countries. In dictatorships, where there is no free press, or right to protest, or free elections, the people who are least empowered are the ordinary, reasonable, moderate people who depend on such freedoms to be heard. The extremists willing to use violence become the only force that can break through.

As you can imagine that's a hard one for me to answer. There is Syria, of course, given the horrific harm the Assad regime has done to the people of that country, and the impact it is having on the whole world. There is the terrible plight of the people of North Korea. I would never say that any one human rights crisis is more important than others, or that our duty to help people in trouble in one place is somehow smaller than in others.

But if I could mention one thematic issue, it would be corruption. For many people around the world, the human rights abuse they experience most often in their daily lives is a demand for a bribe to get a kid into school, to get justice from the courts, or to get any basic service to which they are entitled. Corruption is part of the core operating software of authoritarian governments, and the reason why many dictators cling to power for so long. But it is also a huge political vulnerability for such governments -- some of them can muster passable justifications for just about anything, from cracking down on dissent to persecuting a minority group (even if their arguments are bad), but no leader in any country or society can justify stealing. For this reason, the Obama administration has made the fight against global corruption a much bigger priority in our foreign policy. We've been pushing for more transparency in the global financial system, so that it's harder for corrupt leaders and their enablers to hide dirty money. We are supporting civil society organizations around the world that are taking advantage of this new transparency to dig up evidence of high level corruption. And our Justice Department has been dedicating more resources to act on such evidence and to prosecute those responsible, when the proceeds of their corruption touch the US financial system.

How about getting declared "Persona Non Grata" from a country via Twitter!