I’d like to talk about heroes – and mine are people who defend human rights. They are the people who keep reminding us about the exquisite uniqueness of each individual human being and the need to protect his or her rights and dignity regardless of whatever characteristic may be attached to that person, willingly or not. Human rights are individual rights; they are not the rights of a group. This sounds obvious, yet it seems to get increasingly drowned out in the way we react to crises or events, and not least in the way politics is framed.
Recalling how the international human rights movement emerged in the 1970s– how recent that is – is useful and timely, in the light of the UN report on the genocide perpetrated by the military in Myanmar and the many tributes to the late Kofi Annan. As head of UN peacekeeping missions, Annan failed dismally on human rights in Rwanda, but he later worked hard to try to address this, and that’s where credit is due to him.
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