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.
I'm not interested in scoring points or being over-critical of the US administration. I want to find the entry points to try and get it back on track so that the United States can get out of the present disastrous situation it's in, and back into being a constructive force for human rights in the world.
All countries are particular and no models are perfect.
The changing climate is a threat to human rights.
Sharing experience and building public support for the full range of rights is more powerful than legal cases.
Companies should increasingly see themselves as major corporate citizens with a wider responsibility to the community. Nothing less than their reputation - their image - is at stake.
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.
We now know that climate change is a driver of migration, and is expected to increase the displacement of populations.
Every government has signed up to a voluntary legal commitment under at least one of the international covenants and conventions based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. But who is holding them to account? Our mission is to make it known that these conventions are good tools for civil society to hold their local authority, their government and businesses accountable.
Young persons, because of their immaturity, may not fully comprehend the consequences of their actions and should therefore benefit from less severe sanctions than adults. More importantly, it reflects the firm belief that young persons are more susceptible to change, and thus have a greater potential for rehabilitation than adults.
There's a worldwide linking of environmental activists, developmental experts and human rights advocates. And they're using the two frameworks, in particular environmental standards and human rights.
Maybe this society, if anything, has become more patriarchal, and that has to be combated.
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.
We have long had emigration in Ireland. But the nature of emigration has changed. With ferries to Britain and the continent, as well as air travel, emigration isn't the cutÂoff it used to be. In addition, some of our young people are being educated to levels beyond our present capacity to provide the jobs they are qualified to do. So they go abroad. Many want to come back, especially when they have children they would want to be raised in the Irish society and in the Irish educational system.
