If we support human rights, we cannot ignore legalized brutality against any group of our global community.
Kerry KennedyRead
In my human-rights work, perhaps the most important thing is gaining the trust of the victims.
Interpretation
Building trust with victims is crucial in human rights advocacy.
Kerry Kennedy emphasizes the importance of establishing a trusting relationship with victims in the field of human rights work. Trust is essential for advocacy because it empowers victims to share their experiences, seek help, and engage in the pursuit of justice and healing, thus ensuring that their voices are heard and their rights defended.
In practice
In a speech at a human rights conference, one might use this quote to underscore the importance of empathy and trust in advocacy work.
If we support human rights, we cannot ignore legalized brutality against any group of our global community.
We owe our children an environment in which they can flourish, and where law enforcement, the justice system, and society as offers them a fresh start, not a jail cell.
My father believed young people are among our nation's most valuable resources, and so we should ensure that every child - including children and youth returning from the justice system - have access to the opportunities we would want for our own children.
For too long, we've allowed ourselves to equate targeted bullying with innocent teasing, or dismissed it as pranks and ignored the torment and long-term impact that an incident like this has on young people.
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.
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.
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.
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world ... Such are the places where every man, woman and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere.
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.
In the Saudi system, women are considered inferior. No matter our age, we have male guardians. We must get permission from men to attend school, to work, to marry, to travel overseas - even to have basic medical procedures.
It takes no compromising to give people their rights. It takes no money to respect the individual. It takes no survey to remove repressions.
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.
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