The United States must do more to protect the victims of international sex trafficking, Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said during a panel discussion on human rights Tuesday in Gaston Hall.

The Bipartisan Conference on Human Rights: Uncommon Leadership for Common Values, which included several leading political figures, was convened by Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and Georgetown professor and former Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

In addition to encouraging action among students, the conference highlighted the importance of finding bipartisan solutions to human rights crises. Each of the four expert panels focused on a human rights issue and included one Republican and one Democratic speaker.

Brownback and Clinton, who participated in the first panel on human trafficking, addressed the sexual exploitation of women and girls across the world. Clinton said that the United States must enforce laws against the sex trade and work to extend protections to its victims.

“Any country that doesn’t treat their women and children with dignity and respect is a country the United States is likely to have a problem with,” she said.

She added that in many countries, trafficking and other exploitive practices are seen as cultural mainstays and not crimes, and that the United States must make it clear that those practices are unacceptable in the modern world.

“We have to turn public opinion in these countries against slavery,” Clinton said.

Brownback, who co-authored the Trafficking Victims Protection Act with the late Senator Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), said that sex trafficking occurs in the United States as well as overseas, and called on students in the audience to actively oppose it.

“I want to urge you to action now,” he said. “I don’t want you to be comfortable at this conference.”

He said that students could take “impact trips” to areas of the globe such as South Asia where human trafficking is especially troublesome and meet with local leaders and non-governmental organizations there to speak out against slavery.

“You will create a powerful wave of change,” he said.

In the second panel, devoted to refugees and the displaced, Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.) said that the United Nations must be reformed following the refugee crises in Bosnia, Rwanda and currently in the Darfur region of Sudan. He also said that the United States must raise its ceiling for the number of refugees allowed in the country each year, which is currently at 70,000.

Albright, herself a Czech refugee, said that she met personally with thousands of refugees as Secretary of State.

“Every humanitarian challenge is connected to another,” she said.

Albright said that the plight of refugees is linked not only to natural disasters, but also to the perpetrators of violence across the world, and that the United States must address these causes to end the oppression of refugees.

The third panel, which discussed instances of genocide across the world, had added significance for many Georgetown students participating in Students Taking Action Now: Darfur, a group started at Georgetown last year dedicated to ending the genocide in that region.

General Wesley Clark, former supreme commander of allied NATO forces, talked about his role in the failure of the United States to respond to Rwandan genocide, which killed more than 800,000 people in 1995, and the U.S. intervention against Slobodan ilosevic’s “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo. He said that in both cases he encountered resistance to action from Congress.

Clark said that in order to address genocide the United States must first develop a framework for international action, and then must be willing to commit military forces. With regard to Darfur, Clark said that the country must commit to putting between 15,000 and 20,000 troops in Africa.

“If this nation wants to stop ethnic cleansing in Darfur, it takes a small commitment, small relative to our resources,” he said.

The final panel addressed the protection of religious freedoms around the world.

Each of the panels emphasized the need for bipartisan solutions human rights abuses around the world.

Albright noted that in convening the conference with Brownback, she had formed the “ultimate political odd-couple.”

“Regardless of party we are united behind the principle that every individual counts,” she said.

Adding to the bipartisan spirit, Clinton and Brownback, who are often mentioned as potential presidential candidates for their respective parties in 2008, repeatedly praised each other during their time alongside one another on stage.

“This is not about politics. This not about the United States. This is about what we all share,” Clinton said.

“Everybody’s got a good heart in this system,” Brownback said. “Everyone wants to do what’s right.”

The conference was co-sponsored by the Aspen Institute and Georgetown’s Mortara Center for International Studies and the School of Foreign Service.