Human rights attorney Amal Clooney urged an audience at the Texas Conference for Women Wednesday to remain banded together in the wake of Donald Trump’s historic presidential election earlier this month.
The 38-year-old activist and wife of Hollywood A-lister George Clooney challenged women to carry out “everyday acts of feminism” and commit to supporting each other in every area of life.
“The worst thing that we can do as women is not stand up for each other, and this is something we can practice every day, no matter where we are and what we do — women sticking up for other women, choosing to protect and celebrate each other instead of competing or criticizing one another,” Clooney said, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The attorney, whose husband was a vocal critic of Trump’s presidential campaign, also warned that the President-elect’s policies could violate international human rights laws.
“[Trump’s comments] that there should be a religious test imposed on entering the U.S. or the fact that there should be state-sponsored torture or that families of suspected terrorists should all be killed — all of those things are violations of international human rights law and the values that underlie that,” Clooney told the audience at the annual conference in Austin, Texas.
Trump never proposed a “religious test” for Muslims looking to enter the United States. In July, then-vice presidential candidate Mike Pence told CNN: “Trump does not support banning all foreign Muslims from entering the U.S. but instead would ban Muslims from ‘terror states’.”
“I think there’s some concern from abroad as to are these things actually going to happen, or is the U.S. going to lose some of the moral standing that it has internationally,” Clooney added.
However Clooney remained optimistic about the prospect that a Trump presidency would produce progress in the fight against the terrorist group ISIS. The attorney is representing ISIS kidnap survivor Nadia Murad in a legal case against the Islamist terrorist group.
“We have to hope for the best,” Clooney said. “The president-elect has said that fighting ISIS is actually a priority … so it may be that there can be progress.”
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