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.
I believe in a world of justice and human rights for all. A world where girls can grow up free of fear of abuse. A world where women are treated with the respect and dignity that is their right. A world where poverty is not acceptable. My dear young friends, you can make this your world.
All people deserve to be treated with dignity and have their human rights respected, no matter who they are or whom they love.
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.
Everyone—all of us, every last person on God’s earth—deserves decent shelter. It speaks to the most basic of human needs—our home—the soil from which all of us, every last person, either blossom or wither. We each have need of food, clothing, education, medical care, and companionship; but first, we must have a place to live and grow.
What Qatar chose is a system where a worker is owned by his employer. When your employer forces you to live in squalor, makes you work longest hours in extreme heat, doesn't allow you to change jobs, doesn't pay your wages on time, abuses you physically and psychologically, you have no way out, you can't leave. You are trapped.
Women's rights are human rights.
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