The disagreeable reality for those who believe in human rights is that there are some occasions – and Iraq may be one of them – when war is the only real remedy for regimes that live by terror.
We need to scrap the Human Rights Act and need a balance between rights and responsibilities.
We are not directly involved in Syria. But we will be working with our partners in the European Union and at the United Nations to see if we can persuade the Syrian authorities to go, as I say, more in that direction of respect for democracy and human rights.
It would be easy to define terrorism as attacks against human rights and international humanitarian law forbids attacks against innocent non-combatants which is often the definition used for terrorism.
So what we’re talking about here is human rights. The right to live like a human. The right to live, period. And what we’re facing in Africa is an unprecedented threat to human dignity and equality.
I first met Kim Dae Jung when he was a Korean dissident whose life was threatened by the military regime ruling in Seoul. I was Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, and Kim was directed to me because the East Asia Bureau at the State Department had long shunned him.
Their prejudice allowed white Southerners to look the other way when blacks were denied their most basic human rights, and it encouraged the worst of them to engage in unspeakable acts of cruelty and violence.
I’m pretty political when it comes to human rights and things like that.
‘Peace’ means rules respected by everyone – big or small, rich or poor – means cooperation. It means respect for human rights and dignity.
The biggest road block to action on genocide and other human rights crimes is ignorance. Most people just don’t know that such things are happening, and often, if they have a vague idea they are happening, there is a feeling that there is nothing that can be done to stop these crimes.
Here in the United States, corporations has human rights. And then why not – why not nature also, if corporations can defend themselves, saying, ‘We have human rights?’ Well, let’s admit that nature also should be protected.
Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting China’s own development but also limiting the progress of all of human civilization.
The Human Rights Act is not a terrorists’ charter. It enables ordinary citizens to seek redress when the government breaches fundamental freedoms enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights such as the right to a fair trial, the right to life and free expression.
Like in any relations between two countries in the world, Vietnam and the U.S. have differences on a number of issues such as perception on democracy, human rights and trade.
I believe that reproductive rights are human rights, and they are nonnegotiable.
Nelson Mandela represents an enduring example of the human spirit and he proved for eternity that the ideals of democracy and human rights can overcome even the direst of circumstances.
Lawyers should not be charged with the same crimes as their clients. Trials related to political charges are not in accordance with human rights.
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ is a human story, and women’s rights are human rights, and it’s all about equality, but at the end of the day, it’s not equal.
I didn’t plan that there’d be this awful situation in which our European governments, just to start the story off, breaking the Geneva conventions on the protection on the human rights of refugees.
In human rights and peacemaking, it’s really about having a solid concrete goal – the reduction of human suffering somewhere in the world – and then doing what is required to get that goal achieved.
The Commonwealth is a vital and positive partnership between countries striving to develop trade relations and promote democracy and human rights, united by shared values.
From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned.
I’m 21 years old, and it’s kind of uncomfortable for me to talk about, but I’m in the 1 percent as far as my income and tax bracket. But now that I’m here, there’s no amount of money you can wave in front of my face that will make me understand depriving people of human rights.
And occasionally some of the nations that will be partners in this would probably not be, in terms of passing a pure human rights check, have everything going for them that you would like to have.
It is good that the Canadians are raising the flag among Western countries to raise the issue of human rights abuse throughout the Middle East.
My mother, for the last 20 years anyway, would not call herself a Marxist but a human rights activist.
History is rife with examples of governments taking actions to ‘protect’ their citizens from harm by controlling access to information and inhibiting freedom of expression and other freedoms outlined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We must make sure, collectively, that the Internet avoids a similar fate.
If people take the fight for justice seriously in their own country and with partners and immigrants in their community and folks in the international community, I believe that we will see human rights for all people affirmed.
It is not necessary to dwell on the political and social principles of Islam, to underline how close they also are in spirit to the concepts of human rights which govern the political and social systems of the West.
When I started working in human rights, Eastern Europe was communist, South Africa was under apartheid and South Korea had military rule. All the changes have come about not because of the militaries or government but because small groups of people spoke out against what was unfair and unjust.
We don’t see a choice between securing growth and investment and raising human rights issues.
Negative views of Pakistan expressed by prominent members of the global business community are taken more seriously by government functionaries than are appeals by human rights groups.
For those who have envisioned the State of Israel to be a democracy, which although primarily a Jewish polity for Jews is one in which non-Jews can become citizens and enjoy equal civil rights with the Jewish majority, the question of natural law is the question of human rights.
We have a moral obligation to raise awareness and educate those around us so we can create a world where human trafficking is a thing of the past, and bring these human rights violations to an immediate end.
I think it’s scary that that our elected officials aren’t operating under the principles of human rights, under the principles that this government and this country was founded on.
