In general, I don't think that economic, social and cultural rights are primarily a matter of going to court. They are most useful today as commitments which can help ensure effective and equitable policy-making at every level.

In general, I don't think that economic, social and cultural rights are primarily a matter of going to court. They are most useful today as commitments which can help ensure effective and equitable policy-making at every level.

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.

The governments are seen to be less effective than they used to be. The private sector is perceived as being so much more efficient, and so globalization implies a transfer of power to the private sector.

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.

Democracy is about constant vigilance. It's not straightforward, there will always be setbacks and you get particular be it religious fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalism - a partly conservative approach and actually trying to put women in a more traditional role. And we have to resist that.

It is people who go through suffering that have an empathy for the suffering of others.