Alexander Downer Quotes

There is a movement to get an international criminal court in the world, voted for by hundreds of states-but with the noticeable absence of the United States of America.

The NATO forces will, to the extent that they have capacity, assist the war crimes tribunal.

The United Nations has become a largely irrelevant, if not positively destructive institution, and the just-released U.N. report on the atrocities in Darfur, Sudan, proves the point.

To have a body of humanitarian law, built up over decades and accepted by the great majority of U. N. member states, without an enforcement mechanism is a fruitless exercise.

The U.N. fiddled while Saddam slaughtered.

We have to work together in order to prove that genocidal campaigns will fail and lead to accountability of the perpetrators and bring justice for survivors.

The U.N. was there to protect other Rwandese.

The United States has done more for the war crimes tribunal than any other country in the world. We're turning over all the information we have, including intelligence information.

If the president of the United States says that attacks on civilians, starvation, and denial of religious freedom in Sudan are important international issues, they become so.

From the beginning of my time as Secretary-General, I have sought to advance a practical, action-oriented vision of the U.N. as the voice of the voiceless and the defender of the defenceless.

So I've gone in and out of the U.N., working on counter-terrorism, on U.N. reform, on peacekeeping, peace and security issues, many things through the years but always with a strong interest in humanitarian issues, and human rights issues as well.

Since Franklin Roosevelt's leadership in setting up the United Nations and the Nuremberg trials, the U.S. has promoted universal legal norms and the institutions to enforce them while seeking, by hook or by crook, to exempt American citizens, especially soldiers, from their actual application.

The United Nations has a critical role to play in promoting stability, security, democracy, human rights, and economic development. The UN is as relevant today as at any time in its history, but it needs reform.

The Czech Republic is a dynamic United Nations Member State, active on the Human Rights Council, contributing to the peaceful settlement of disputes, and helping other countries to achieve a democratic transition.

Mass killing has very clearly not been eliminated, nor has the 'international community' developed a response that will avert it or bring it to a quick end.

The United States has held out against taking part in any of the world consensus that there should be a court of human rights or that there should be an international court of criminal justice.

National crimes demand international law, to restrain, prohibit, punish, best of all, prevent.

The Syrian people deserve much more than complicit silence, or timid criticism from those who have failed to refer the regime to the International Criminal Court despite acknowledgement if its crimes.

Until now, when powerful men committed crimes against humanity, they knew that as long as they remained powerful, no earthly court could judge them.

We tend to think of World War II and all the atrocities that happened, and people say, 'Never again.' But these things are still happening. The Amnesty International files are big.

Those who still believe the United Nations is a human rights organization with the best of intentions are kidding themselves.

Syria is a signature to the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which bans the use of chemical warfare. Syria has violated that international norm. For the United States to act in response is the right thing to do, is a legitimate thing to do, and is necessary in order to uphold this very important international standard.

We need to understand that the Geneva Conventions are not just some historical documents born of another time, created for another purpose.

While Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator and should be tried at the Hague for international war crimes, the United States should not militarily overthrow him.

In the case of non-signatory states like Syria and Iraq, the U.N. Security Council is mandated with enforcement of the International Criminal Court's jurisdictions in matters of genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.