There’s an opinion on The Humanitarian Legacy of Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter’s legacy: From founding congress to human rights in the United States, to malaria to the Sudan and the world to the end of the Cold War

Human rights in the U.S. have been elevated by Jimmy Carter. Whatever challenges he faced consistently applying the principles he championed as the 39th president, he made a radical break with decades of foreign policy tradition, changed the world’s understanding of America’s aspirations, showed deep empathy for individuals who had suffered human rights abuse and in so doing, made a lasting impact on both the United States and the world.

The celebration of Mr. Carter’s legacy has focused on his postpresidential work. Understandably so: Beyond his tireless volunteering, working to build affordable homes with Habitat for Humanity well into his 90s, the Carter Center — his passion for the past 42 years — has worked with U.S.A.I.D. and others to nearly eliminate river blindness in the Western Hemisphere and to decrease the number of reported Guinea worm cases from more than three million per year in the mid-1980s to just 14 in 2023. Mr. Carter also changed the global understanding of what a free and fair election requires by pioneering the dispatch of diverse teams of impartial observers, which have monitored 125 elections in 40 countries. After leaving office in 1981 he used his mediation services to defusing tensions in places like Sudan and Guyana.

As president, his foreign policy legacy was also consequential. The negotiation of the Camp David Accords brought about peace between Israel and Egypt, and after the rapprochement began under President Richard Nixon, there were diplomatic relations with China. A source of anti-American feeling in Latin America was eliminated after Mr. Carter pushed the Panama Canal treaties through the Senate.

The belief in human rights by the former president was out of his Christian faith and MzEd that he continued to teach Sunday school while president. He used biblical passages to explain that America had a responsibility to defend those who were being mistreated elsewhere. He quoted Jesus from Matthew 25:40: “Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.”