History - September 11, 2001 and after: no excuse for abuse
"Your role collapsed with the collapse of the twin towers in New York."
This blunt statement to an Amnesty International representative by a senior government official captures the challenges faced by the human rights movement following the horrifying events of September 11, 2001.
The comment suggests that such an attack - combined with media commentary, public concern and government reaction - makes human rights and their advocates irrelevant.
But have human rights really become less relevant today? Or has respect for human rights and human dignity - and the role of human rights defenders - become even more urgent and important?
"A human rights approach - an approach which puts the security of people, rather than states, first ... is the only one that offers any real hope for the way forward."
These are the words of Irene Khan, who became the new head of Amnesty International a month before the attacks on the U.S. She is the first women, the first Asian and the first Muslim to head the almost two-million person global movement.
Khan's core message since September 2001 is one that is critical to Amnesty's work: real security can only be achieved by fully respecting the rights of all people everywhere.
Speaking in the days following the September attacks, Khan reminded the world that "Human rights violations are not committed against the 'other side' but against a mother, a sister, a brother, a son. Our challenge is to [stand] in solidarity with the victims, to know their names, their faces, their identities, their stories."
When Khan lit Human Rights Day candles with Afghan refugee children in Pakistan in 2001, she argued that "The world does not need a war against 'terrorism', it needs a culture of peace based on human rights for all."
Listening to the stories of injured Palestinian and Israeli civilians in the spring of 2002, Khan again stressed that "There is no excuse for human rights abuse, whether in the name of security or in the name of liberation."
Khan goes on to remind us in Amnesty International's 2002 global report that we "must resist the shifting agendas of powerful states. We must reject the subjective yardstick of 'terrorism', by which states condemn the violence of their opponents and condone that of their allies. We must insist on applying only the objective standards of human rights and international law."