01.27.11

Durbin Joins Senate Foreign Relations Committee

Keeps Seats on Appropriations, Judiciary and Rules Committees

[WASHINGTION, D.C.] – Assistant Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) will join the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the panel convenes for the start of the 112th Congress.

 

“I’m pleased to be joining my colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations committee,” Durbin said. “America’s engagement overseas is not only critical for our national security, but it is vital to Illinois’ economy and status as a crossroads for global business and culture.

 

I look forward to the opportunity to advocate for greater US involvement in the world – both through our development goals and using our position as a global leader to help those facing poverty, political oppression, and instability around the world.”

 

Durbin has a long history of working on foreign policy issues, particularly those dealing with human rights, global health and development. In the last few years he’s traveled to Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Haiti.

 

He is the leading cosponsor of the Paul Simon Water for the World Act which seeks to provide 100 million of the world’s poorest people with sustainable access to clean water. For the last four years, Durbin has served as the first Chairman of the Judiciary Committee’s Human Rights and the Law Subcommittee.

 

Durbin is also the author of three bipartisan laws giving the U.S. government more authority to hold accountable human rights abusers: The Human Rights Enforcement Act – creates a new office at the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of serious human rights violations around the world; The Child Soldiers Accountability Act – making it a crime to recruit or use child soldiers; and the Genocide Accountability Act – which closes the legal loophole that prevented the Justice Department from prosecuting individuals in the United States who have participated in genocide in other countries.

 

Durbin will keep his seats on the Senate Appropriations, Judiciary and Rules Committees. Subcommittee assignments will be announced soon.