HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS ENDS VISIT TO RUSSIAN FEDERATION

14 February 2005


United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour announced Sunday she had been invited by Russian authorities to visit Chechnya and that her Office would establish a presence in Russia.

Speaking at the end of a four-day visit to Moscow, Mrs. Arbour said President Vladimir Putin had invited her to visit the Northern Caucasus, including Chechnya, during her next visit to Russia, which she hoped to make “in the near future”.

The High Commissioner said a solid platform to enhance cooperation with the Russian Government had been achieved, citing an agreement with authorities to introduce a presence of her Office within the United Nations Country Team in Russia.

“Through our now closer contact with the Government of Russia, we hope to work on developing a series of concrete, practical programmes designed to bring about tangible benefits to the enjoyment of human rights in this country”, she said. “Such programmes will need to focus on the whole range of human rights: not simply the civil and political but also the economic, social and cultural”.

The High Commissioner added that she had also had extensive discussions related to counter-terrorism. “The people of Russia have suffered acutely from terrorist acts and they deserve both sympathy and support in addressing this problem”, she said. “They have the right to expect from their Government legitimate and effective action in confronting this threat.

But she said action ceases to be legitimate, and often becomes ineffective, when it steps over the clearly articulated bounds set by international human rights law. “When law enforcement officers abuse their powers with impunity and when civilians have no true remedies for violations of their rights by state agents, society is doubly victimized”, she said.

The High Commissioner reiterated her willingness to support initiatives aimed at strengthening respect for human rights in the area of law enforcement and in social and economic rights. “The reconstruction of such regions as Chechnya will be critical both in restoring the dignity of its people and also in ending the violence”, she said, adding her Office was stood ready to help and that she hoped to pursue those discussions in greater detail in the future.

In addition to the situation in Chechnya, Mrs. Arbour said she had discussed a wide range of pressing economic and social challenges facing Russians. We talked of the HIV/AIDS crisis facing the world and from which Russia is not exempt. We spoke, in particular, of the disturbing increase in rates of infection among women – a consequence, in part, of the continuing subordination of women in many parts of the world, both in the home and in society at large”, she said.