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When I am asked, What, in your view, is the worst human rights problem in the world today? I reply: Absolute poverty. This is not the answer most journalists expect. It is neither sexy nor legalistic. But it is true.

Mary Robinson

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Mary Robinson
Age: 80
Born: 1944
Born: May 21
Barrister
Feminist
Former President Of Ireland
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County Mayo
Máire Bean Mhic Róibín
Mary Bourke
Mary Therese Winifred Robinson
Mary Therese Winifred Bourke
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Her Excellency Mary Robinson
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More quotes by Mary Robinson

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It is necessary to ensure that the requirement to combat terrorism is not used to clamp down on freedom of expression, legitimate dissent, freedom of association and so on.
Mary Robinson
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Christian fundamentalists seek to roll back women's right to choose in the United States, and then also insist that money against Aids must not go to organisations that help people obtain their reproductive rights. These are extremely worrying trends.
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We need more emphasis on linking jobs and economic progress with environmental issues, and not allowing environmentally damaging industries to be brought into the country simply to provide employment. It's not easy to balance.
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Climate change is the greatest threat to human rights in the 21st century.
Mary Robinson
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Many people today in the developed countries are so far removed from poverty and suffering and starvation that they lack empathy for the sufferings of others.
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If we want to make progress in key areas now, we have to build a multi-stakeholder process, harnessing the appropriate energies. So not only the politicians but also business, the wider civil society, and the trade union movement all have a contribution to make, whether it is at national or at international level.
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I'm struck by how very few people outside a rarefied world of true believers understand what you mean when you say human rights - that includes development experts and economists who are very keen to implement the UN Millennium Development Goals. They've told me quite frankly, that they don't know exactly what a human rights approach is.
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Finance ministers must realize that the health budget can save them money if it's applied well.
Mary Robinson
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If we took away barriers to women's leadership, we would solve the climate change problem a lot faster
Mary Robinson
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I'm a very wide reader. I read serious books and I read airplane, forgettable books. I never have fewer than four or five books beside my bed at night. I particularly enjoy reading about people who have gone through a personal growth.
Mary Robinson
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We will not let governments off the hook. We will look to civil society to help us, to pin governments, to what they have committed to here. And we will report on it.
Mary Robinson
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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.
Mary Robinson
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One of the richest countries in the world - the United States of America - is facing a real ethical dilemma in terms of providing equitable access to health care.
Mary Robinson
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I agree with those who argue that it is possible to distil from the religions of the world their common values and relevance. As far as I'm concerned I am involved in a complementary process with people who have a moral or spiritual commitment to human rights.
Mary Robinson
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The fight for human rights is about speaking truth to power.
Mary Robinson
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An endless war against terrorism can tend to inflate the terrorists, because being at war is attractive to some angry, unemployed, disaffected youth.
Mary Robinson
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The fifth province is not anywhere here or there, north or south, east or west. It is a place within each of us. It is that place that is open to the other, that swinging door which allows us to venture out and others to venture in.
Mary Robinson
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The aim of human rights, if I may borrow a term from engineering, is to move beyond the design and drawing-board phase, to move beyond thinking and talking about the foundations stones - to laying those foundation stones, inch by inch, together.
Mary Robinson
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I don't like a bipolar or a unipolar world. I like a multipolar world but on many occasions people have been surprised that South Africa has not seemed, internationally as well as internally, to take a decision that affirms the true values of your Constitution and the vision of those who were there at the beginning - Madiba himself and others.
Mary Robinson
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You can convene a wider cross-section if you have no turf to defend, because then you don't cut across anyone else's agenda and you can achieve a great deal.
Mary Robinson