There are always people who will cry halt to innovative projects. There will always be excuses for avoiding controversy and neglecting issues that will upset some people. In my own early days as a lawyer in Australia few indeed were the colleagues who were concerned with the particular human rights of indigenous peoples, of women, of homosexuals and of ethnic minorities. Every generation must have leaders who have the gift to see wrongs before others do and the courage to voice them and to work towards just outcomes. The technology of informatics is also presenting great challenges to human rights.
Many developments demonstrate the constant expansion of the concerns of human rights.
My work for the United Nations in Cambodia taught me that access to clean water is a true subject of human rights. So is the right to education, to work and to basic health care. Its voice must be lifted and its influence brought to bear on those who do not yet see the truth. His courageous and bold initiatives, centred in Budapest in terrible times in the midst of the Holocaust, contain lessons for everyone engaged in human rights education. Reflecting on Raoul Wallenberg's story and on his inspiring achievements affords a cure to hubris.