It is often in the name of cultural integrity as well as social stability and national security that democratic reforms based on human rights are resisted by authoritarian governments.

It cannot be doubted that in most countries today women, in comparison to men, still remain underprivileged.

Fear is not the natural state of civilized people.

The history of the world shows that peoples and societies do not have to pass through a fixed series of stages in the course of development.

The value systems of those with access to power and of those far removed from such access cannot be the same. The viewpoint of the privileged is unlike that of the underprivileged.

The provision of basic material needs is not sufficient to make minority groups and indigenous peoples feel they are truly part of the greater national entity. For that they have to be confident that they too have an active role to play in shaping the destiny of the state that demands their allegiance.