Vladimir Putin Quotes

The Baltic republics have invented something totally new. Do you know what? They use the word 'non-citizens' for people who have been living for decades in the territory of Baltic states and have been deprived of a number of political rights. They cannot participate in the election campaigns; they have limited political and social rights. Everybody keeps quiet about it, as if this is the way it should be. Of course, this cannot but cause a certain reaction.

Human rights are praised more than ever - and violated as much as ever.

The world is full of nations that are part of the community of nations that don't respect rights.

The implementation measures of both Covenants, but especially those of the Covenant concerning civil and political rights, were considerably weakened to the point where they assumed an optional character.

if any government does not acknowledge the rights of the human person or violates them, it not only fails in its duty, but its orders completely lack juridical force

The greatest crime of the War…. All of the terrible inequities of the past year and a half, including the crowning iniquity of the wholesale slaughter of the Armenians, can be traced to the … criminal responsibility of Germany (which) must be shared by the neutral powers headed by the United States for their failure to protest when the initial wrong was committed.

There is an urgent necessity that our system of international law not allow heads of state to violate the fundamental rights of their citizens or their neighbor with impunity. But a consistently amoral U. S. foreign policy has made this necessity all the more difficult to address.

German equality of rights is the prerequisite for any participation on Germany's part in international conventions and agreements.

I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate.

Unfortunately, the United States and a few other governments have used the war on terrorism as a way of violating human rights. I am referring to the case of the Guantánamo Bay prisoners. This violation of the rights of prisoners has been so unbelievable that the United Nations has reminded the United States repeatedly that the treatment of prisoners should take place according to the preestablished conventions of the United Nations.

Well, the United States has said that the disarmament of Iraq is the top priority, but we have also noted that there are many other United Nations Security Council Resolutions which are on the books, including the necessity to respect the human rights of all the citizens of Iraq that we're very interested in.

It's monstrous that Europe, which is fighting for human rights, refused seriously sick Slobodan Milosevic treatment.

Rights are either God-given or evolve out of the democratic process. Most rights are based on the ability of people to agree on a social contract, the ability to make and keep agreements.

One cannot have a trade union or a democratic election without freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly. Without a democratic election, whereby people choose and remove their rulers, there is no method of securing human rights against the state. No democracy without human rights, no human rights without democracy, and no trade union rights without either. That is our belief; that is our creed.

International law now grants rights to all human beings, not only to citizens.

Israel does not respect the principles or purposes of the United Nations charter nor the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

North Americans do not understand that you do not throw down human rights like bombs on the Iraqis.

Since 9/11 the United States has been followed by countries with bad records, such as the former Soviet Union countries, into erosions of human rights. Because the United States has changed its standards it is undermining civil liberties elsewhere.

It is the policy of the United States not to engage in torture, and there are federal criminal laws that prohibit torture.

The United States was founded on the idea that all people are endowed with inalienable rights, and that principle has allowed us to work to perfect our union at home while standing as a beacon of hope to the world. Today, that principle is embodied in agreements Americans helped forge - the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, and treaties against torture and genocide - and it unites us with people from every country and culture.

A United Nations that will not stand up for human rights is a United Nations that cannot stand up for itself.

In the areas which have been disturbed people are living cordially with the Security Forces. In areas like Gulu people are living peacefully. There is scrupulous respect of human rights.

It is a great problem for the true international agenda of human rights that the United States, uniquely among industrialised countries, has not ratified three main instruments, has not ratified the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or the Convention on the Rights of the Child, or the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women, and we could have so much richer a debate and dialogue on international human rights standards if the superpower would sign up to the agenda.

If there are rights or duties of people which are not guaranteed because they're part of a [de facto] union and not of a family, there will be the need of a legislative action to remove the disparity. Obviously, when talking about people I refer to everyone [including homosexuals].

People look at rights as if they were muscles — the more you exercise them, the better they get.