Page 413 - 100 Reflections that Crafted Geneva International_V-Petrovsky_private special edition

Bringing the Concept to Life

there would be no just governance, the UN could not exist, and human rights
would be impossible to enforce. It is easy to take democracy for granted,
especially if you have known nothing else, but in many places in the world it is
something people are struggling everyday to achieve. Therefore, I ask those of
you who have it, to value your democratic right to vote, by using it.

Democracy cannot exist without rule of law. Law upholds democracy as a
skeleton holds up the human body. I am sure there are some amongst you are
intending to go on and work in the legal profession. But the law is not just
something for lawyers — it affects all aspects of all of our lives. If we bend the
law in our personal and business dealings, how then can we expect others to
respect it? Ultimately, undermining the law undermines democracy. For
without a legal system which works for every member of society equally, there
can be no democracy. And without democracy what kind of world would we
have?

A democracy is only as good as the individuals who belong to it. We can
only move closer to a better, safer, fairer world, once the individuals who make
up our global population recognize how inter-dependent our lives are; we are
dependent upon one another for our future well-being and happiness; and the
embetterment of the lives of all the people who share this planet, is in all of our
interests.

If you may allow me, I would like briefly to address those of you in the
audience who are Russian-speaking.

* * *

To the Russian graduates, for whom, accordingly to their literary tradition
our challenging life is often compared with the life on other planets, I would
like to cite the famous Russian poet, Nocolas Zabolotsky, in Russian:

“Дух полный разума и воли,
Лишенный сердца и души, Кто о
чужой не страждет боли, Кому
все средства хороши…"

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