High Commissioner launches 2024 Annual Appeal, calling for ‘deepened resolve’ on human rights

Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

A very warm welcome to everyone here today.

We all aim to start each new year with hope.

Despite the challenges and hardships, we look ahead, with new opportunities, new ideals, and new vision.

At the end of last year, my Office promised to develop a forward-looking narrative on human rights.

A narrative that would lay the roadmap for a better and more just future.

In 2023, our Human Rights 75 initiative made concrete progress to advance human rights.

We received almost 800 pledges to take game-changing action on rights, including from Member States, civil society, UN entities, the private sector and others.

Some 153 States – that’s nearly eighty percent of the world’s nations - made promises on women’s rights and gender equality. On climate. On the rights of people with disabilities. Of children and young people. To eradicate extreme poverty. To ensure universal healthcare. To improve access to justice and to tackle impunity. And many more. Crucially, States made a total of 41 pledges to ratify core international human rights treaties, binding them to translate human rights into a legal reality.

It was an important year of collective reflection, of renewed commitment to reclaim our rights and freedoms, and a shared desire to change course. I thank you once again for your engagement.

Excellencies,

More than ever, we need this deepened resolve to help bring the world back from the brink.

Because right now, we are living through profoundly divided times.

Conflict continues to spiral in many parts of the world, most recently in the Middle East. These wars are etching deep scars – breeding grievances that, without justice, will greatly harm the future of entire nations, driving more polarisation, and creating deeper fractures.

Last year, the hottest on record, is further proof that we are not acting well enough and quick enough to prevent our children and future generations inheriting an unrecognizable and uninhabitable planet.

Everywhere, we are seeing severe economic pain, reversing years of progress. Hunger, poverty and inequalities of such towering dimensions not only harm individuals: they profoundly undermine social harmony and peace.

And digital technology continues its rapid growth, bringing with it both significant opportunities and massive human rights risks. We must remain cautious of disinformation for example, as millions go to the polls this year to vote in some 70 elections scheduled to take place around the world.

Excellencies,

Ultimately, my Office’s commitment – its mandate – is to work with you to support solutions to these challenges and to effect meaningful changes in people’s lives.

We aim to be an effective, reliable, trustworthy partner that delivers.

In 2023, we saw the direct impact of the work of our 1,962 staff working in 91 countries.

My Office’s advocacy contributed to the release of some 13,476 detainees.

Our staff undertook some 3,664 human rights monitoring missions, and monitored at least 1,088 trials.

In total, they documented around 27,804 situations of human rights violations.

With the support of our Slavery and Torture Funds, organizations provided direct support to 12,130 survivors of contemporary forms of slavery and their families, and assisted 59,389 survivors of torture and their families.

My Office’s advocacy around the world also strongly contributed to an estimated 43 countries significantly improving their legislation or policy in line with international human rights standards.

In 2023, at least 19 countries established National Human Rights Institutions – crucial bodies to oversee a nation’s efforts to protect human rights – or increased their existing institutions’ compliance with international standards.

Over the past five years, countries have made a total of 116 ratifications of international human rights treaties.

And in line with the vision of a human rights economy, our staff have now implemented more than 65 country projects towards advancing social security, health, water, housing and other rights, while contributing to national development plans and strategies.

All these achievements are due to – and depend on – your support.

In 2023, Member States and other funding partners generously donated 283.2 million USD in voluntary contributions to the work of my Office.

I want to thank in particular our five largest contributors: the European Union, the United States of America, Sweden, Germany and Norway.

And to all our 96 donors, large and small. Your support is indispensable in allowing us to advance human rights globally.

Yet - we are still falling drastically short of the funding we need to provide human rights solutions that are more effective and wider-reaching. Solutions that we desperately need in today’s world marked by breakneck pace shifts and persistent, urgent challenges.

Less than one third of last year’s contributions were unearmarked. As you know, this funding approach severely limits our capacity to allocate resources where they are most needed.

We need to reverse urgently the historic underfunding that has marred human rights: one of the three pillars of the United Nations.

We also need to acknowledge the massive and serious liquidity crisis that the entire United Nations System is facing. As you know, the UN Secretary-General alerted Member States a few days ago of the deteriorating financial situation of our regular budget operations. He has also reminded Member States that responsibility for the United Nation’s financial health rests with them.

To enable my Office to deliver effectively on its extensive mandate, we need predictable, flexible and sustainable funding.

I am appealing today for 500 million USD to boost considerably our ability to support you and other partners to address some of the biggest human rights challenges humanity is facing now, and will face in the future.

Excellencies,

As you know, we are actively working to strengthen the effectiveness of the Office to meet these challenges.

Our Management Plan over the next four years has been shaped by broad consultations with Member States, civil society, the private sector, the UN System and other stakeholders.

Six pillars will continue to guide our work:

• To foster participation
• To fight discrimination
• To embed human rights in peace and security efforts
• To ensure human rights are central to development
• To enhance accountability
• To increase support to the human rights ecosystem

We will reinvigorate a global movement for human rights that proposes solutions to our many pressing challenges, and that revives trust.

We will foster inclusion and equality, recognizing and respecting all people in all their diversity, and ensuring space for them to participate in the decisions affecting their lives.

We will step up our prevention and early warning systems to prevent and mitigate human rights violations, conflict and humanitarian disasters before they escalate.

We will advance the concept of human rights-based economies, to rescue the Sustainable Development Goals, and to fight inequalities.

We will continue to promote environmental action based on human rights, that ensures the voices of those most affected by the triple planetary crisis are heard, that they are empowered, and that their demands are acted upon.

And we will help the world move rapidly towards sound, effective governance of digital technologies, anchoring them in human rights to minimise harms and maximise benefits.

To achieve all of this, we need a UN Human Rights Office that is fit for the future. I have embarked on a change initiative, that I mentioned earlier.

This means significant changes in our organizational design -- shifting existing resources to where they are most needed and adding new capabilities, at the global, regional and country levels.

Looking to the future means investing in innovation: whether that be digital technology, data-driven analysis, behavioural science or strategic foresight methods. It means expanding our support to the human rights ecosystem.

And nurturing our partnerships to make a lasting impact on human rights worldwide.

Distinguished delegates,

Our Human Rights 75 Initiative underscored that we have a powerful global constituency for rights. That rights are universal. That they are the greatest connector and bridge builder we have – cutting across all cultures and nations - and a powerful conduit for rebuilding trust and driving change.

But we must maintain this momentum for change. We must resolve to put rights at the centre of all policies and decisions and governance. To fully embrace all rights – giving as much weight to economic, social and cultural rights as we do to civil and political rights. To eliminate impunity. And to end once and for all the cycles of injustice and inequality that have defined our societies for too long.

In the coming weeks, I will issue a vision statement encapsulating the outcomes of our Human Rights 75 initiative, to guide us through the human rights challenges of the next 25 years, and as a contribution to this year’s Summit of the Future. I hope it will assist to develop a blueprint for action as we navigate the next decades.

The future of the world’s children and young people depends greatly on the steps we choose to take next.

So I would like to leave you with their vision – set out in the powerful Youth Declaration delivered at our high-level event in December last year. Because it is young people who will shoulder the burden of the choices we make, or we don’t make, today.

They appeal for a new human rights agenda.

“A world where human rights are not an abstract aspiration but an everyday obligation that must be upheld; a world without discrimination, where diversity is embraced, and everyone has equal access to opportunities and resources; a world where human dignity, human rights, and our planet are not sacrificed for the profit of a few in power.”

My Office wholeheartedly supports this Declaration. And we count on your support to listen to – and act on – its crucial demands.

Thank you.

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Read the 2024 Annual Appeal