Authoritarian regimes abuse the principle of sovereignty to bar intervention to support those who are denied freedom. Liberals insist that human rights are indivisible and universal, and do not depend on citizenship of a specific state, or on membership of a particular ethnic or social group, gender, religion or political party. Adequate sanctions should be found by the international community against governments which refuse to observe the principles of an open international society. The challenge of poverty and social exclusion. Poverty, unemployment, and social exclusion blight the lives of men and especially of women, children and the elderly, and present major dangers to civil society.
Poverty breeds despair and despair breeds extremism, intolerance and aggression.
The central question in the alleviation of poverty is how to provide people with the means to fight poverty themselves, to lift themselves out of poverty. We call for an active policy, creating opportunity for education and employment, assistance for those who cannot help themselves, resting upon a partnership between public and private provision. Public institutions and welfare systems must be as flexible and as locally administered as possible, aiming to promote individual responsibility and respond to individual circumstances. The challenge of lean government. The age-old misconception that it is government's business to organise people's happiness is heading for crisis, if not collapse, all over the world.