PROCLAMATION 4542—DEC. 9, 1977
91 STAT. 1781
It is a lesson of history that no enumeration of rights, however eloquent, can alone ensure their protection in practice. We Americans struggled, sometimes bloodily, to make the rights promised in our founding documents a reality for all our people. That experience of successful struggle for human rights in our own country was both painful and ennobling, and it propelled us into a leading role in the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. As a people, we believe what the Declaration says: that the promotion of respect for human rights is the shared responsibility of the world community. We call on the governments of other nations to join us in discharging this responsibility. Everywhere on earth, men and women have made great personal sacrifices, even to the laying down of their lives, in the long struggle for justice and human dignity. By their sacrifices, they have already hallowed the human rights anniversaries I proclaim today. NOW, THEREFORE, I, JIMMY CARTER, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim December 10, 1977, as Human Rights Day and December 15, 1977, as Bill of Rights Day, and call on all Americans to observe Human Rights Week beginning December 10, 1977. Let us reflect on the significance of the Bill of Rights, which has given purpose to our national life, and of the Universal USC prec. title 1. Declaration of Human Rights, which holds the promise of greater liberty in the lives of all the inhabitants of our planet. Let us recommit ourselves, as individuals and as a Nation, to the realization of these rights, the guarantee of which we hold to be the essential purpose of the civil order. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of December, in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred seventy-seven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and second. JIMMY CARTER
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