Courtesy of Karin Ryan
- Karin Ryan has worked alongside former US President Jimmy Carter for more than 30 years.
- She's been most touched by his faith in the goodness of others and his unwavering commitment to peace.
- He has high expectations and has always been more demanding of those closest to him.
In my more than 30 years of working with former US President Jimmy Carter, I've been most touched by his deep faith in people — his belief that, given the chance, everyone has the capacity for good.
He's always been confident that even the most vulnerable and persecuted can rise above any challenge if they have adequate resources and support, and he built The Carter Center to help fill this need. He's approached the powerful — be they warlords or heads of state — with a presumption that an appeal to reason, communicated with respect, might bear fruit.
I've sometimes heard him called naïve. This is wrong: His beliefs and actions have always been well informed. It's with eyes wide open that he chooses optimism, possibility, and faith over cynicism and arrogance.
It's been a constant inspiration to me.
I wanted to be part of something life-changing
I was drawn to The Carter Center after moving to Atlanta in 1987. During a visit to the Center's museum, I was captivated by exhibits showcasing the Camp David peace talks and the success of Carter's Panama Canal Treaty.
Encountering the determination of this American president who was so deeply devoted to peace was a life-changing experience, and I wanted to be a part of it.
So when an entry-level position in the newly established Human Rights Program opened up at the Center, I jumped at the chance to apply. I organized meetings, took phone messages (this was before voicemail!), and eventually got to help research cases of political prisoners and draft letters for Carter on their behalf.
Carter liked to work through memos instead of frequent meetings so we had to present our ideas in brief paragraphs and learn to draft letters that he might have written as president — short and to the point.
I cannot count how many drafts came back from him with notes in the margin saying things like "too verbose," or "I'm not Amnesty International!" He didn't want strident activist language in his letters; moral persuasion from a former President required something different.
Courtesy of Karin Ryan
He appreciated my focus on human rights activists as key agents of democratic movements and began to ask me for input during his various forays into diplomacy. Once, he asked me to join the team that would observe the first democratic elections in Haiti in 1990 so that I could find leading dissident voices and journalists with whom he could meet.
The discussions he had on that trip were deep and intense, a departure from the usual predictable official meetings. At the conclusion of our stay in Haiti, Carter turned to me before stepping into his ride to the airport, saying "You did a good job here." I was thrilled.
Belief in the inherent goodness of others
That experience became a model for our future work together: The Carter Center has continued to bring together frontline activists for those tough but transformative conversations — the hard work of advancing human rights and democracy in all corners of the world.
Carter's belief in the inherent goodness of people has never faded, despite the grave disappointments and turmoil of recent years — the Iraq invasion, America's abuses in the "war on terror," and the global erosion of democracy and human rights.
If anything, his faith in humanity — the root of his commitment to human rights — has seemed to grow stronger as he's aged.
During decades at The Carter Center, he's written countless letters on behalf of victims of abuse, especially human rights activists persecuted for their brave work. A letter he wrote to the king of Nepal resulted in hundreds of people being released from prison.
President Carter once dropped into my office asking why I hadn't sent him any cases recently. He wanted to use his voice and his name to help people in trouble. He often kept his personal interventions on behalf of political prisoners private, because he believed that would make them more effective.
And while he was prepared to criticize foreign governments, he has been sometimes even more critical of human rights abuses in his own country.
He and his wife, Rosalynn — who was often intimately involved in his peacemaking and human rights efforts — wrote many letters on behalf of Americans facing execution, rarely successfully. He has also made public appeals to governors to abolish the death penalty in their states, sometimes successfully.
He issued scathing condemnations of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and of human rights violations by the US government.
His tireless efforts to end or avoid war sometimes meant that he would not speak publicly about human rights abuses committed by warring parties, seeking instead an end to the violence first.
In the wake of his peacemaking efforts in North Korea, Bosnia, and Haiti in 1994, we organized a closed-door discussion with U.S.-based human rights leaders critical of his engagements with human rights violators. During the contentious discussion, the Carters made their case for avoiding withholding public condemnations that could derail efforts to bring leaders like Kim Il Sung, Radovan Karadzic, and Raoul Cédras to the peace table. Ultimately, he agreed that the peace process should never preclude holding human rights violators accountable.
He went on to become a vocal supporter of U.N. negotiations to establish an independent International Criminal Court, publicly opposing a U.S. proposal to give the United Nations Security Council a veto over the actions of the independent chief prosecutor.
Soul of an activist, mind of a pragmatist
Jimmy Carter has the soul of an activist and the mind of a pragmatist. Every situation has required a balancing of objectives, though his calculations were always informed by his ideas about the value of human freedom.
It was a remarkable thing to witness.
He could be so positive and encouraging one moment, and stern and insistent the next. In 2009, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Israeli Knesset peppered Carter with questions, suggesting he supported Hamas because he met with their leaders.
He gently but firmly pushed back, reminding committee members that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had personally approved of Hamas candidates running in the 2006 elections. His focus was simple: peace and human rights for all, which requires speaking with all parties.
As a Cold War president, Carter walked a tightrope of managing relationships with world leaders while speaking out against human rights abuses.
Within the Soviet Union, he navigated a nuclear-arms reduction while standing with dissidents, sending a hand-written letter of support to embattled physicist Andrei Sakharov. He threatened Latin American Soviet allies like Argentina with an end to military assistance if they persisted with human rights abuses — a move that bolstered democratic movements across the region.
In China, he pressured the government to allow a measure of religious freedom, student exchanges and political prisoner releases. And while he has succeeded in forging a lasting peace between Israel and Egypt, he has also dedicated himself and The Carter Center to the pursuit of equal human rights for the Palestinian people, which he calls the unfinished business of the Camp David Accords. When quiet diplomacy failed to achieve this aim, he became increasingly critical of both Israeli violations of human rights and the failure of the U.S. to exert its influence to stop them.
Jimmy Carter is a mentor that's most demanding of those closest to him
His greatest hope for his own country is that the people of the United States will realize that our great blessings could allow us to be a generous, justice-oriented, and peace-loving nation.
Courtesy of Karin Ryan
I have never had the feeling that this was just wishful thinking.
It is a matter of faith. Many of us who know him and have worked by his side are deeply inspired by this conviction and his refusal to stop trying.
He's always encouraged us to be bold and to maintain high expectations for ourselves and others. In fact, he could be more demanding of those closest to him — whether it was his staff or his successors in the White House — than those over whom he had less influence.
Like a firm but loving father, he pushed those he believed had the greatest potential for influence.
He was also the best leader and mentor one could have.
Karin Ryan is senior advisor on human rights and special representative on women and girls at the nonprofit Carter Center.