As a harbinger of the current state of human rights, I could have mentioned the 106 schoolgirls poisoned by a mysterious gas in Afghanistan who were ignored by the mainstream media, or the increasing incidents of female genital violence mutilation in Guinea which has not yet appeared on the front page of any major Western newspaper. If you can take anything from tonight's speech, please ensure that many of the people who experience the injustices we work so hard to eradicate do not recognize them as injustices. They have been led to view their circumstances as natural occurrences for people everywhere. To me, this is the greatest threat to human rights in the 21st century. But I believe we now have something to combat this threat. In the 21st century we have a tool perhaps more powerful than any tangible tool our ancestors could have created to help us educate people about the injustices they live among.
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