Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

  • Author: Navanethem Pillay

Navanethem Pillay on what human rights are for

I was born a non-white in apartheid South Africa. My ancestors were sugarcane cutters. My father was a bus driver. We were poor. At age 16 I wrote an essay which dealt with the role of South African women in educating children on human rights and which, as it turned out, was indeed fateful.

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