Sergei Lavrov Quotes

The values that we talked about, the values democracy and free speech and international norms and rule of law, respecting the ability of other countries to determine their own destiny and preserve their sovereignty and territorial integrity. Things are not something that we can set aside.

What makes the United Nations an appropriate source of legitimacy for intervention is that it is the only place where the claims of the strong are put through the test of justification in front of the weak.

The international community unfortunately did take sides in Libya, and we would never allow the Security Council to authorise anything similar to what happened in Libya.

Newly emerging states are challenging settled opinion on transnational justice and humanitarian intervention, which they often interpret as victor’s justice and regime change.

The United States, whenever it comes to any region in the world where there are tensions, asks for people to observe the rule of law, respect for human rights, respect for international norms. We ask people to maintain peace and security and direct dialogue.

The statesmen still say that we should not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations and yet it is not possible any longer not to interfere, even when we do not mean to do so.

There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America.

The U.N. guards the vital principles entrenched in its charter, notably the sovereign equality of states and the inadmissibility of interference in their internal affairs. It is precisely because the U.N. is the chief guardian of both these sacrosanct principles that it alone is allowed to approve derogations from them.

It's all very well for us to sit here in the West with our high incomes and cushy lives, and say it's immoral to violate the sovereignty of another state. But if the effect of that is to bring people in that country economic and political freedom, to raise their standard of living, to increase their life expectancy, then don't rule it out.

Consider in 1945, when the United Nations was first formed, there were something like fifty-one original member countries. Now the United Nations is made up of 193 nations, but it follows the same structure in which five nations control it. It's an anti-democratic structure.

On one hand, it is very important that democracy and human rights be defended across borders. But it is also very important to respect the right of each country to choose its own path.

I think no one knows what humanitarian intervention means. If I were a person who was non-American, I would think humanitarian intervention is just another name for United States imperialism.

It is one thing to be against unilateralism and against nonhumanitarian interventionism - but it is quite another thing to be against humanitarian interventionism.

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.

The Czech Republic is a dynamic United Nations Member State, active on the Human Rights Council, contributing to the peaceful settlement of disputes, and helping other countries to achieve a democratic transition.

Nothing in the constitutions of Western states requires them to get involved in every foreign conflict.

International law is a fiction abused callously, or ignored ruthlessly by those nations that, unlike the Western Democracies, never took it seriously in the first place..

We are pursuing what I trust is a correct course from the point of international law, and we are not intervening in the internal affairs of this country …

Multilateralism is the democracy of international society.

Nations have lost their traditional exclusive jurisdiction over their treatment of their citizens.

We must face the fact that the United Nations is not yet the international equivalent of our own legal system and the rule of law.

We do not have the God-given right to intervene in any country in which we feel like intervening.

The League of Nations must never break the sacred support of the minority-rights.[

When America rejected the League, she had deliberately chosen to rest solely upon treaties with the sanction of public opinion alone…

International institutions like the UN can only be as effective as its members allow it to be.