Quotes About Human rights

Contrary to the myth that the U.K. respects decisions of the Strasbourg court but many other adherent states do not, the convention and Strasbourg court judgements have proved a highly effective tool in protecting and developing human rights in countries with no tradition of the rule of law.

Waterboarding should never be used as an interrogation tool. It is beneath our values.

Getting rid of the Magnitsky Act is one of the top, if not the top, priorities of the Putin regime.

We are a million miles from the Tories. While we promote international co-operation and human rights abroad, they pull up the drawbridge.

Governments that block the aspirations of their people, that steal or are corrupt, that oppress and torture or that deny freedom of expression and human rights should bear in mind that they will find it increasingly hard to escape the judgement of their own people, or where warranted, the reach of international law.

Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy.

This is not to condone torture, which is still prohibited by the Torture Convention and federal criminal law.

The Bush administration will go down in history as the Torture Team.

Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without charge, under torture, which is what solitary confinement is.

I don't believe that we should limit waterboarding - or, quite frankly, any other alternative torture technique - if it means saving Americans' lives.

I abhor anything that constitutes torture. Water-boarding, it's perfectly clear to me it is torture. I never supported extraordinary rendition to torture, always said that Guantanamo should be closed. There is no clash of ideals and pragmatism there.

Torture is illegal, both in the U.S. and abroad. So - and that is true for the Bush administration and for any other administration.

I maintain the importance of an absolute prohibition against torture, while acknowledging that even absolute prohibitions can sometimes be broken. If that is a contradiction, it is a contradiction that ethics has to embrace, or else it becomes like glass: hard, clear, but fatally inflexible.

Torture fails to make us safe, but it certainly makes us less free.

Acknowledgment of torture is not accountability for it.

There's just no doubt in my mind - under any set of rules - water boarding is torture.

We do not need torture as an available instrument of interrogation.

Obama was late to affirm the Egyptian revolution as a democratic movement, and even then he was eager to have installed those military leaders who were known for their practices of torture.

America does not torture. We never have, and we never will.

There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or freedom of conscience.

No conditions justify torture.

If you back out of a convention... you can't dodge your obligation. Torture is still not acceptable.

My feminism does not demand that a woman have an equal opportunity to torture, alongside men. Torture is no less wrong because a woman, not a man, carries it out.

Thousands of people's lives improved in this country through human rights laws. Individual people taking on the all-powerful state and winning. You'd think a very Tory thing to do. Sadly not, under Cameron's leadership.