The Refugee Convention of 1951 was a major breakthrough, outlining the rights of those displaced across borders as well as the legal obligations of states to protect them.

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

Usually, when you look around the world, people are killing each other, fighting over scarce resources.

The report produced by my commission, the Global Commission on Elections, Democracy and Security, in 2012 showed the corrosive impact of money in US politics, for example, which undermines the legitimacy of the democratic system in citizens' eyes. Such perceptions partly explain the rise of a phenomenon like the success of Donald Trump.

It is tragic that so few young people in Western democracies vote. They have forgotten that their ancestors fought for the right to choose and change their leaders. They don't realise that their votes are more important than their tweets or Facebook posts.

The death toll from small arms dwarfs that of all other weapons systems — and in most years greatly exceeds the toll of the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of the carnage they cause, small arms, indeed, could well be described as 'weapons of mass destruction'.

literacy is at the heart of sustainable development