There are numerous issues that governments used to deal with that they now no longer deal with to the same extent: Prisons have been privatized in a number of countries; education and health are becoming privatized. Governments don't have the capacity to deliver - or not in isolation.

Mary Robinson

Categorized in : Country Numbers Government

I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system.

Mary Robinson

being-irish cradle politics

In a society where the rights and potential of women are constrained, no man can be truly free. He may have power, but he will not have freedom.

Mary Robinson

rights justice men

Feel empowered. And if you start to do it, if you start to feel your voice heard, you will never go back.

Mary Robinson

empowered voice feels

If we took away barriers to women's leadership, we would solve the climate change problem a lot faster

Mary Robinson

women climate leadership

Human rights are inscribed in the hearts of people; they were there long before lawmakers drafted their first proclamation.

Mary Robinson

rights heart long

We must understand the role of human rights as empowering of individuals and communities. By protecting these rights, we can help prevent the many conflicts based on poverty, discrimination and exclusion (social, economic and political) that continue to plague humanity and destroy decades of development efforts. The vicious circle of human rights violations that lead to conflicts-which in turn lead to more violations-must be broken. I believe we can break it only by ensuring respect for all human rights.

Mary Robinson

circles rights believe

If you are small and don't particularly want credit for what you are doing, you can achieve a lot.

Mary Robinson

doing-you credit want

Today's human rights violations are the causes of tomorrow's conflicts.

Mary Robinson

rights today war

A culture is not an abstract thing. It is a living, evolving process. The aim is to push beyond standard-setting and asserting human rights to make those standards a living reality for people everywhere.

Mary Robinson

rights reality people

Climate change is the greatest threat to human rights in the 21st century.

Mary Robinson

climate century rights

The whole human rights structure is based on the accountability of governments.

Mary Robinson

accountability government rights

The aim of human rights, if I may borrow a term from engineering, is to move beyond the design and drawing-board phase, to move beyond thinking and talking about the foundations stones - to laying those foundation stones, inch by inch, together.

Mary Robinson

rights moving thinking

The fight for human rights is about speaking truth to power.

Mary Robinson

human-rights fighting rights

Freedom from discrimination for women, ensuring that female children can learn to read, these are human needs for half the human race, not western values.

Mary Robinson

western-values race children

An endless war against terrorism can tend to inflate the terrorists, because being at war is attractive to some angry, unemployed, disaffected youth.

Mary Robinson

terrorism youth war

I want to take human rights out of their box. I want to show the relevance of the universal principles of human rights to the basic needs of health, security, education and equality.

Mary Robinson

principles rights needs

Symbols give us our identity, our self image, our way of explaining ourselves to ourselves and to others. Symbols in turn determine the kinds of stories we tell, and the stories we tell determine the kind of history we make and remake.

Mary Robinson

self writing giving

When I am asked, "What, in your view, is the worst human rights problem in the world today?" I reply: "Absolute poverty." This is not the answer most journalists expect. It is neither sexy nor legalistic. But it is true.

Mary Robinson

sexy rights views

I believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed and developing country approaches to human rights issues. We are collective custodians of universal human rights standards, and any sense that we fall into camps of "accuser" and "accused" is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode.

Mary Robinson

attitude believe country

As Elders, we are fully committed to the principle that all human beings are of equal worth. You will see that we highlight equality for girls and women - not just women's rights. That is important as girls, especially adolescent girls, have been almost invisible in debates on equal rights. Yet it is in adolescence that events can have a huge effect on a girl's life.

Mary Robinson

girl important rights