Quotessence
Home / Authors / Payam Akhavan Books

Payam Akhavan Books

Author

Related Quotes

“Today we demand justice for the oppressed. We no longer accept atrocities as the inescapable fate of the defenceless. We desire and expect a better future. But when confronted with the enormity of injustice and what it demands of us, we retreat into the familiar ritual of intellectualization and moral posturing, recycling lofty liberal ideals from a safe distance. We avoid the intimate knowledge of suffering without which we will never understand the imperative of human rights.”

InjusticeHuman RightsOppressionAbstractionDistancingIntellectualizationTheorizing
Book:In Search of A Better World: A Human Rights Odyssey
Create image

“Storytelling is very important. It is through context and relations that we understand the importance of human dignity. The concept means nothing as an abstraction. It's important for us to understand why people do the things they do, including the monsters - the suicide bomber and the war criminal. Understanding is not acceptance. Understanding is exploring the human psyche. If we want to put an end to violence, we need to have the sort of conversation I had with the teenage suicide bomber.”

PeopleMeanImportantWarUnderstandingViolenceAcceptanceDignityImportanceRelationSuicideStorytellingExploringTeenageHuman Dignity
Author:Payam Akhavan
Create image

“I hate the tribal hatred thesis - in Yugoslavia and Rwanda and places like that they kill each other because that's just what people do there. I think it's profoundly ignorant. I was astonished when Samuel Huntington wrote his famous clash of civilizations essay in response to the Yugoslavian war. I was on the streets in Sarajevo and every other person I met came from a mixed marriage. And here is Professor Huntington from Harvard writing this is a clash of civilizations. That was absurd.”

PeopleThinkingWritingWarHateHatredI HateResponseIgnorantAbsurdEssaysClashThesisRwanda
Author:Payam Akhavan
Create image

“When I joined the UN War Crimes Tribunal, it was a realization of the dream of justice, that finally after Nuremberg, the UN is going to put the accused on trial again! And I still believe that accountability that eradicates impunity is very, very important for transforming the sordid culture of politics and power that we see in the world. But we need to be humble about the fact that justice will not bring back the dead.”

WorldBelieveImportantWarDreamCultureJusticeCrimeHumbleRealizationAccountabilityAccusedBe HumbleI Still Believe
Author:Payam Akhavan
Create image

“In Yugoslavia we were told we were not only naive idealists in wanting war criminals to be prosecuted but that we were actually standing in the way of a ceasefire which would save more lives. The idea was that, by giving amnesty to these ruthless warmongers, you would give them an incentive to stop killing. I found that incredibly naive, never mind cynical. Having been on the ground and having met with these ruthless killers, I knew the only thing they understood was the language of force.”

GivingMindWarLanguageKillingCynicalIdealist
Author:Payam Akhavan
Create image

“Criminal trials are fundamentally about individual accountability whereas truth commissions are less about the guilt of the perpetrator and more about the suffering of the victim. A criminal trial is only incidentally a therapeutic or cathartic process for victims. But truth commissions, as we saw in South Africa, have the advantage of giving tens of thousands of people the opportunity to tell their stories, and not only does that contribute to healing but it also contributes to reconciliation, especially when perpetrators also come and express contrition.”

PeopleGivingSufferingOpportunityIndividualHealingVictimGuiltAccountabilitySouth AfricaReconciliation
Author:Payam Akhavan
Create image