The human rights community has focused very narrowly on political and civil rights for many decades, and with reason, but now we have to ask how can we broaden the view.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the need to expand the focus of human rights discourse beyond just political and civil rights.
Paul Farmer highlights the historical focus of the human rights community on political and civil rights, acknowledging the importance of this focus. However, he urges a shift in perspective to consider broader human rights issues, suggesting that the community must expand its understanding and approach to encompass a wider range of human rights challenges, beyond the traditional scope.
In practice
During a human rights conference, this quote can be cited to encourage discussion on broader rights issues.
If any country was a mine-shaft canary for the reintroduction of cholera, it was Haiti - and we knew it. And in retrospect, more should have been done to prepare for cholera... which can spread like wildfire in Haiti... This was a big rebuke to all of us working in public health and health care in Haiti.
I recommend the same therapies for all humans with HIV. There is no reason to believe that physiologic responses to therapy will vary across lines of class, culture, race or nationality.
With rare exceptions, all of your most important achievements on this planet will come from working with others- or, in a word, partnership.
It is clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not, by any stretch of the imagination, doing enough to ensure that the poor have access to adequate medical care.
The poorest parts of the world are by and large the places in which one can best view the worst of medicine and not because doctors in these countries have different ideas about what constitutes modern medicine. It's the system and its limitations that are to blame.
There is nothing wrong with underlining personal agency, but there is something unfair about using personal responsibility as a basis for assigning blame while simultaneously denying those who are being blamed the opportunity to exert agency in their lives
When you single out any particular group of people for secondary citizenship status, that's a violation of basic human rights.
What is the fate of my people in Kurdistan and Sinjar Mountain? What must be done so Yazidis can have their rights?
On the question of comfort women, when my thought goes to these people, who have been victimized by human trafficking and gone through immeasurable pain and suffering beyond description, my heart aches. And on this point, my thought has not changed at all from previous prime ministers.
I believe in human rights for everyone, and none of us is qualified to judge each other and that none of us should therefore have that authority.
Twenty-five million people who live in North Korea are denied freedom in every respect of their lives. In short, they are hostages. Imagine 25 million hostages.
If resources become scarce, people tend to fight for them. This is increasing the number of people on the move and the number of people forced to move. They're not refugees, according to the legal definition, but they represent a major humanitarian and human rights challenge, as well as a major challenge for world politics.
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