People ask me about what sacrifices I've made. I always answer: I've made no sacrifices, I've made choices.
Aung San Suu KyiRead
Fundamental violations of human rights always lead to people feeling less and less human.
Interpretation
Violations of human rights diminish the humanity of individuals and communities.
This quote by Aung San Suu Kyi emphasizes the profound impact that the violation of human rights has on individuals' perceptions of themselves and their dignity. When people are subjected to injustice and oppression, they not only lose their freedom but also their sense of identity and humanity, which can lead to widespread societal disconnection and dehumanization.
In practice
In a speech highlighting the importance of human rights advocacy.
People ask me about what sacrifices I've made. I always answer: I've made no sacrifices, I've made choices.
The struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma is a struggle for life and dignity. It is a struggle that encompasses our political, social and economic aspirations.
This was the way I was brought up to think of politics, that politics was to do with ethics, it was to do with responsibility, it was to do with service, so I think I was conditioned to think like that, and I'm too old to change now.
My top priority is for people to understand that they have the power to change things themselves.
If you want to bring an end to long-standing conflict, you have to be prepared to compromise.
Where there is no justice there can be no secure peace.
It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.
While the One Child Policy has been effective in drastically reducing Chinese birth rates, the measures adopted in its name have required exhaustive, violent, insidious and systemic violations of human rights.
Everything a detainee says is classified. Detainees cannot talk to you. They cannot talk to anyone. They cannot challenge, in a meaningful way, their detention. All that is left is for people who survived Guantanamo Bay to speak for people who are left behind, and speak for those who are in so many Guantanamos, plural, in my part of the world.
From the Balkans to Africa, from Asia to the Middle East, we have witnessed the weakening or absence of effective governance leading to the ravaging of human rights and the abandonment of longstanding humanitarian principles. We need competent and responsible states to meet the needs of "we the peoples" for whom the UN was created. And the world's peoples will not be fully served unless peace, development and human rights, the three pillars of the UN, are advanced together with equal vigour.
So on this Human Rights Day, let us rededicate ourselves to the advancement of human rights and freedoms for all, and pledge always to live by the ideals we promote to the world.
AIDS is no longer just a disease, it is a human rights issue.
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