Pope Benedict XVI Quotes

When human rights are systematically abused, it raises the question whether it may be legitimate in some circumstances for the international community to intervene within individual states as well as in conflicts between states.

The principal cause of suffering during humanitarian crises is insufficient respect of applicable rules of international humanitarian law.

I believe the only time when we can call for intervention is when there is an ongoing genocide.

Abuse of human rights and international law demand resolution - whoever is responsible.

In the '90s, there was scant presidential leadership and insufficient domestic political mobilization for foreign policy grounded in human rights.

The sovereignty of states is a fairly archaic notion. If the rulers abuse their power and the people, what do you do then. The must be an international duty to protect.

That's one of the things that I'm going to talk about, is the need for the Human Rights Council to actually deal with human rights. We've got countries on the Human Rights Council right now like Venezuela and Cuba.

Not enough countries, not enough armies, not enough armed groups are abiding by the fundamental human values enshrined in the Geneva Conventions.

Human rights in China should absolutely play a role in broader U.S. policy toward China. When we look the other way on fundamental issues of human rights, we are also responsible.

I care about people's human rights and, as a country, we have a very proud record indeed. But I'm also realistic about what we can do... we can raise those issues with leaders and we can talk about those issues, and we do that.

If there's a clear genocide somewhere, don't we really want to positively impact that kind of a situation? Isn't that what we're all about? Isn't that what we've always been about?

With a foreign policy appropriately rooted in some sense of humanitarian decency, the Central African crisis will not be easily ignored by American policymakers. It screams for remedy.

I refer to calls for humanitarian intervention in the affairs of another state - a new idea, this - even when they are made under the pretext of defending human rights and freedoms.

Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the 'international community' developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.

The United Nations has become a largely irrelevant, if not positively destructive institution, and the just-released U.N. report on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, proves the point.

There is no military government on earth that does not have human rights abuses.

National sovereignty is never an excuse for slaughtering your own people

There are millions of people all over the world, right now, who are looking to the United Nations for protection and redress against the violation of their rights and deprivation of their freedoms.

It is both wrong and short-sighted to believe that we can better protect our national security interests by ignoring or sidelining human rights.

We tend to think of World War II and all the atrocities that happened, and people say, 'Never again.' But these things are still happening. The Amnesty International files are big.

The 'responsibility to protect' is a very important concept.

Promoting and protecting human rights internationally is not just a matter of principle or morality - doing so also serves our national security interests.

Well, human security is a concept that I am very committed to enshrining in American foreign policy.

Big global players like China need to do a better job of respecting human rights.

The young, the old, women, the disabled, the sick and the wounded are entitled to protection under international law. Too often, the ICRC's calls for those laws to be respected are ignored.