Statement by Mr. Ivan Simonovic, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights to the Member States Briefing on “Rights Up Front” Thursday, 27 February

Thank you for inviting me to brief you on a recent initiative of the Secretary-General - “Rights up Front.”

“Rights up Front” is an idea, as well as the Secretary-General’s action plan.  But, let me say something about its history.  In November 2012, the Secretary-General publicly released the report of his Internal Review Panel on UN Action in Sri Lanka.  The Panel concluded that there had been a “systemic failure” in UN action during the final stages of that conflict.

It also concluded that Member States did not provide the UN Secretariat and Funds and Programmes with the support needed to carry out the responsibilities which the Member States themselves had set for the Organization.

The report made recommendations to strengthen the UN response to similar situations. The Secretary-General established a High Level Working Group and asked the Deputy Secretary-General to oversee the development of a set of actions to implement the reports’ recommendations addressed to the UN system - the Secretariat, Programmes and Funds.  The result is the Rights Up Front Action Plan.

The Secretary-General made reference to this initiative when he addressed the opening of the current General Assembly on 24 September, and the Deputy Secretary-General briefed a dedicated session on this on 19 December.

In essence, the Plan is about is an internal exercise about re-organizing and improving our existing work so that we better meet the responsibilities set by the Charter and Member States. An important aspect of Rights Up Front is better preparedness by the UN. 

Specifically, Rights up Front involves six actions:

• First, the Secretary-General has renewed our commitment to “We the peoples” of the UN Charter and to the UN’s core purpose of promoting and encouraging respect for Human Rights.
• There will be actions to emphasize this aspect of the Charter and relevant General Assembly resolutions to staff through existing training, induction and mentoring programmes.

• Second, underpinning all these activities will be better information management on threats and risks to populations, both for planning operational activities and for sharing with Member States.

• Third, we must better organize our specialized human rights staff and offices.
• They must be able to identify situations where there is risk of serious violations of human rights or international humanitarian law that could lead to atrocities; and they must advise the wider UN system accordingly and in a coherent fashion.
• Increasingly they must be a part of the response.

• Fourth, we will do better at meeting our core responsibility to provide Member States with the information you need in order to respond to human rights concerns.
• This means first and foremost that we will work with the local authorities where violations are occurring.
• This commitment extends to national authorities, regional organizations and the wider UN membership when appropriate.

• Fifth, on the ground, we will be more attuned to situations where there is a risk of serious human rights violations and abuses or violations of international humanitarian law targeting civilian populations.
• Wherever there is a UN presence already on the ground we have to ensure that it is fully equipped for the responsibilities that such crises create.
• We must also offer national authorities better UN responses to support their efforts.

• Sixth, at Headquarters, we will adopt a more coherent approach to our coordination of the UN response.  
• This will strengthen our engagement with Member States, the Security Council, the Human Rights Council and General Assembly.
• We will provide better and more coherent support to our teams on the ground.  We will respond early, before a crisis emerges.
• When a crisis cannot be avoided, we will respond decisively and our response will be guided by serious risk to civilians and to their human rights.  Above all, we will respond as “one UN”.

We are still in the process of rolling-out Rights Up Front. I can, nevertheless share with you a few examples of how it is beginning to make a difference.

• In December, the Deputy Secretary-General led senior staff in emergency discussions on the situation in CAR. As a result, the analysis of events and UN strategy was significantly altered. It was determined, among other things, that it was crucial to address a message of accountability to key actors in the violence and to try to prevent the deepening of the religious divide.  The Secretary-General subsequently issued radio messages delivering both sets of messages.  The decision to strengthen human rights monitoring and reporting capacity is also being implemented. OHCHR has also been working on the establishment of the Commission of Inquiry set up by the Security Council, while also supporting the work of the Independent Expert mandated by the Human Rights Council.

• In late December and January, as the situation in South Sudan worsened, many people were at imminent risk of violence. UNMISS had limited capacity to conduct patrols. In an extremely volatile situation, we used a Rights Up Front approach to determine that we had a special responsibility to provide a safe haven to people seeking shelter at our bases. As you know, tens of thousands sought shelter in and around our camps. In some instances, camps with just a few dozen peacekeepers were providing shelter to hundreds of civilians while thousands of armed men threatened their safety.

These are some of the more dramatic examples of Rights Up Front in action. Less visible, but just as importantly, it is changing the working culture of the organization. The human rights focus of our actions are not new. What is different is that we are now more likely to react earlier and in a ‘one UN’ manner to serious violations, before they escalate. As always, our first and primary response is to raise concerns with national authorities. In this regard, strengthening national capacity will be given even greater prominence.

While Rights Up Front is a system-wide initiative, there are high demands on OHCHR to support its implementation.  These range from strengthening UN staff’s understanding of human rights through training, to producing timely and sound human rights information and analysis to support adequate responses by Member States and by the UN system; from strengthening policy guidance and support to UN teams on the ground, to deploying, when needed, human rights staff to work with national authorities and the UN system to assist in preventing and responding to violations.  This will require a comprehensive effort in Geneva, New York and in the field.

We don’t underestimate the expectations with regard to OHCHR contribution to the successful implementation of the course set by the SG in Rights Up Front, and have started acting in a number of areas.  In addition to the enhanced operational deployment and support to which I referred, we are stepping up our work to provide human rights guidance and training to Resident and Humanitarian Coordinators and other senior officials, and we are, together with other UN departments and offices, reviewing the variety of ways in which the UN gathers and analyses human rights information to be able to provide more comprehensive analysis and early warning of serious violations. In this regard, the Rights Up Front Plan offers a renewed opportunity to capitalize on the work of the UN human rights mechanisms, including Special Procedures, treaty bodies and the UPR – an opportunity that we will fully seize.