We need to be prepared to have multi-stakeholder, well-managed partnerships. That can be very effective. We saw this happen at international level with the UN Convention on Landmines, for example, where some governments didn't want to go forward, but enough governments did and with them many NGOs. At international level we need to see this as the 21st century way of doing things.
Mary RobinsonI think that we have refined greatly our notions of sovereignty in the EU. Its members consider themselves to be sovereign governments, but they have ceded a part of their sovereignty to the Union level, and their sovereignty is now penetrated by EU law.
Mary RobinsonAs a citizen of Ireland I have more sovereignty over our government. Because citizens now have more ways of holding the Irish government to account, not just under Irish constitutional law, but under the European system, at Strasbourg and Brussels. This, I believe, is the benefit for individual citizens.
Mary RobinsonI have a sense that South Africa is my other country apart from my native country that I particularly love, [that I] want to see succeed, and I did really want my message to be listened to.
Mary RobinsonI'm coming to a sense of a women's movement which was extraordinarily important in the struggle for freedom in Ireland and immediately afterwards, but then some of those women who were involved in the movement got involved in representative positions and perhaps some of them got a bit distanced from the grassroots issues. But also the women's movement itself seemed to say, "No, we've got our own government, our own parties in power" and they sat back.
Mary Robinson