The Human Rights Party is a small political party in New Zealand. It focuses on what it sees as social justice, believing that insufficient emphasis is placed on people's economic, social and cultural rights. The party believes that liberals are in error by pursuing only civil and political freedoms, saying that without a just society, the disadvantaged cannot exercise these freedoms.
In the 2002 elections, the Human Rights Party stood one candidate, Anthony van den Heuvel. He won 66 votes. In the 2005 elections, van den Heuvel stood again, and was joined by Anthony Ravlich. The two gained a total of 66 votes between them. In the 2008 election, the party stood three candidates, gaining 222 votes. One of its candidates, Anthony Ravlich, was subsequently convicted and fined $200 for refusing to file the required return of electoral expenses
The party contested the 2009 Mt Albert by-election, gaining 13 votes.
The party is standing a single candidate in the 2011 election: Anthony van den Heuvel in Auckland Central.
Famous quotes containing the words human, rights and/or party:
“Knowing how beleaguered working mothers truly are—knowing because I am one of them—I am still amazed at how one need only say “I work” to be forgiven all expectation, to be assigned almost a handicapped status that no decent human being would burden further with demands. “I work” has become the universally accepted excuse, invoked as an all-purpose explanation for bowing out, not participating, letting others down, or otherwise behaving inexcusably.”
—Melinda M. Marshall (20th century)
“I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, “that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living”: that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“This will not be disloyalty but will show that as members of a party they are loyal first to the fine things for which the party stands and when it rejects those things or forgets the legitimate objects for which parties exist, then as a party it cannot command the honest loyalty of its members.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)