DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF UNOG AND HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS PARTICIPATE IN LAUNCH OF UN STAMP ON HUMAN RIGHTS EDUCATION DECADE

16 November 2004

Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva, and Louise Arbour, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, today participated in the launch of a series of United Nations postal stamps marking the end of the United Nations Decade on Human Rights Education (1995 – 2004).

The United Nations Postal Administration took the initiative of launching the special six-stamp series of United Nations postal stamps dedicated to the theme of human rights and to the Decade of Human Rights Education. The stamps were designed by artist Yuri Gevorgian.

In his welcoming remarks, the Director-General said that it was very appropriate that the stamps were appearing as the Decade came to a close as this signified that efforts to strengthen education for human rights would not come to an end as the Decade concluded. On the contrary, the important message and the lessons of the Decade would continue to be transmitted to all corners of the world and to all peoples. The key to bringing this message across was continuous communication, so issuing these stamps was in every way a most fitting gesture to mark the Decade.

Mr. Ordzhonikidze said that although we lived in an era of instant communication, a letter could still offer an occasion for reflection that was not always possible with rapid e-mail exchanges. These stamps would provide their many recipients and collectors with another opportunity for further thought that could, at times, be difficult with computerized contact. The stamps would not only enable communication, they themselves were messengers for human rights. He noted that the artist had elegantly captured the connection between the enjoyment of human rights, on the one hand, and peace, security and development, on the other.

The Director-General said this close link was recognized by the founding fathers of the United Nations. In the preamble to the United Nations Charter, the peoples of the United Nations reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and the worth of the human person. In the year 2000 in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, world leaders had resolved to strive for the full protection and promotion of all human rights for peace and progress.



In 2005, the Director-General said that the United Nations would mark both the sixtieth anniversary of the signing of the Charter and the first five years since the adoption of the Millennium Declaration, which would provide welcome opportunities to highlight the continued importance of respect for human rights. With these stamps, the UN had made a head start in this regard.

The High Commissioner for Human Rights thanked the United Nations Postal Administration and the artist on behalf of the entire UN human rights programme for creating such compelling, inspiring and exciting artwork. In that connection, she invoked Article 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which explicitly guaranteed the exercise of the right “to enjoy the arts”. The United Nations had over the years faced much difficulty in defining human rights in a visual sense but Mr. Gevorgian had managed to express on canvas some of the most fundamental human rights, as well as the human wrongs that blight them, said Mr. Arbour.

“In the past ten years of the UN Decade for Human Rights Education, we have seen many creative efforts to bring the language of human rights to the public at large. These postage stamps, adorned with human rights images, will certainly prove to be among the most effective, as they find their way across the globe to homes, schools and places of work”, Mrs. Arbour added.

On 10 December, International Human Rights Day, the General Assembly would devote a plenary session to human rights education to mark the end of the Decade and to consider the recommendation to proclaim a World Programme for Human Rights Education, continued Mrs. Arbour. The first three years of this Programme, from 2005 to 2007, would focus on human rights education within the primary and secondary school systems. The High Commissioner stressed the difficulty of not only integrating human rights issues into the curriculum, but also changes in the educational process and teaching methods and, most importantly, in the environment within which education takes place.

“Yet, it is an incredibly important task to ensure that each new generation is fully aware that as human beings they are born with a set of inalienable rights, among them, the right to health, to education, to food, to housing, to marry and found a family, to participate in public life, to be free from torture, arbitrary arrest and detention -- in short, all the rights one needs to enjoy freedom from fear, freedom from want”, concluded the High Commissioner.

At the ceremony, the Director-General and the High Commissioner as well as their guests were presented with commemorative sets of the stamps.