In Austria, Türk calls on humanity’s capacity to connect and cooperate, in the face of turmoil

Leaders of the Vienna School of International Studies,
Distinguished guests,
Dear students, 

For 270 years, this Institute has been engaged in international affairs. Its history spans the European Enlightenment, which questioned traditional obedience to church and monarch and inspired widespread political, social and economic change. The Industrial Revolution, with its economic advances – and exploitation. It spans centuries of slavery and searing colonial oppression – but also the powerful advance of people's movements for equality and freedom. From the Moghul, Russian, Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires to the Qing Dynasty, the Tokugawa Shogunate, the coastal Kingdoms of West Africa and far beyond, students from this school have accompanied humanity through great pain and much progress.

Today, our world faces another wave of historic challenges. And rarely have we so sorely needed sound leadership as we do now. 

A series of wars, brutal and reckless, is tearing up lives and futures – from Gaza, Israel and Lebanon, to Ukraine; Sudan; Myanmar; the Democratic Republic of the Congo; and a further list of victimised people that is so long it could break your heart. 

Extreme poverty is rising. The goal of ending extreme hunger globally by 2030 is slipping away – even though, together with the other UN Sustainable Development Goals, it is – or was – entirely achievable. Over half the world’s poorest countries are in or near full-blown debt distress. The international community's failure to address and resolve the monumental scale of human misery is driving further tensions – and conflicts. 

Climate change, the crisis in loss of species and rising pollution are no longer distant threats, whether in time or space. These threats, too, drive misery and conflict; they threaten our environment – and our human rights – now, and everywhere. 

Racing into our threat horizon, numerous digital technologies – including artificial intelligence, biotech techniques and lethal autonomous weaponry are developing at lightning speed, far outpacing the world's current determination to regulate their risks.

How our countries navigate this landscape will define humanity's future. But to date, the tableau has been grim. 

The space for genuine multilateral discussion and cooperative common action has been shrivelling, with international community increasingly polarised into blocs that bristle with hostility.

Hateful, divisive, and dehumanising speech has been mounting, and it is increasingly flaring into violence – turbo-charged by deliberate incitement, and by flawed social media tools. Even our tremendous progress on equality for women – and for people of all races and characteristics – is being forced back by waves of hatred and lies.

Crackdowns on peaceful protests, and attacks on human rights defenders and journalists – attacks on clarity and the truth – are growing, particularly in the context of elections. 

I am dismayed by the extent to which our world has turned its back on the proven tools of resilience and cooperation.

Dear friends, 

To devise a sound way forward, we need to look back. 

We need to take a hard look at the deep drivers and root causes of tensions, violence, and conflicts in history. We need to examine the solutions that our forebears devised to resolve those tensions and conflicts – and which worked. 

Let me tell you a story. 

I grew up in Linz, about two hours west of Vienna – and about 20 km west of Mauthausen, one of the most brutal concentration camps run by Nazi Germany. As a teenager, in the 1970s and 1980s, I was troubled by the horrors that had been inflicted on so many, just a few decades previously – and also by the suffocating denial of that reality which seemed to lie thick in the air all around us. 

But when I was 15, a teacher handed out copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

Over the course of the next few years, I grasped that the leaders who adopted the Universal Declaration didn't do it because they were gentle idealists. 

Their nations were exhausted, bitter, still choking from the fumes of hostilities that had fuelled the most terrible conflict of all time. 

They adopted the Universal Declaration because they sought to address, and resolve, the causes of the multiple kinds of appalling harm that were inflicted during World War II and before. 

They knew that implementing human rights – not just declaring them, but acting on them – would preserve their societies from harm. 

Human rights deliver societies that are more peaceful, because disputes can be resolved by an impartial system of justice. 

Human rights shape societies where the law serves the common good, not the interests of the powerful or corrupt. 

Where women and men of all races and origins, can be free from discrimination, and contribute fully to development and to public life, to the economy, politics, society and culture. 

Where young people can look forward to participating in development, and to benefiting from a fair share of development

Human rights build societies where a broad, free civic space – and meaningful, inclusive participation – build confidence, sound decisions and resilience to shocks, including planetary shocks. 

Societies that cooperate with neighbours and all other States to devise policies that protect peace and rights. 

Economies that deliver a fair share of development , because all budget, tax and investment decisions are anchored in human rights principles. 

Societies that safeguard the right to a clean, safe and sustainable environment, and the needs and interests of future generations. 

At 15, I found inspiration and a deep sense of hope in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the post-war social movements that accompanied it. Movements for women's rights, racial equality, social justice, LGBTQ+rights. Movements to end apartheid, colonial exploitation, anti-Semitism, and the murderous hatred that had so scarred my country.

In fact, I still carry that transformative little booklet with me today. Because for me, human rights articulate the deepest values of our shared humanity. They draw from African and indigenous traditions; Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, the Enlightenment and many other sources from across the world. They are a unifying force –  a force that I believe can overcome divisions and polarisation. A reminder that, while we know we will never attain a perfect world, human rights principles and tools enable shared efforts to achieve greater peace and security; to build a more sound and equitable level of development; and to create justice. 

What would these principles and tools mean for our world, today? 

Nationally, it would mean investing in rights because they are practical, and effective.  

Entrenched inequalities, and a lack of access to fundamental rights – to food, to adequate education and health care, decent housing and work, among others – are in and of themselves human rights violations; they also drive tensions across societies. 

Systemic discrimination is another profound human rights violation; and it also deprives society of the full contributions of all its members. 

The crushing of dissent is a human rights violation; and it also silences the voices of creativity and the truth: voices that contribute to better policy. 

Governance must be collaborative, bringing in many voices. We must have the humility to recognise that the real experts include users on the ground. And we must act on the fact that national governance which is guided by human rights principles builds societies that are better able to address and resolve threats. 

Globally, we need a strong multilateralism –  a multilateralism with teeth. Our current multilateralism is rudderless. The UN is our world's best hope for cooperative discussion on global risks, but its institutions have been undermined by polarisation and unmet promises. We need multilateral institutions that are anchored in solidarity, equity and fairness; which have strong buy-in from States and societies at large. 

Stefan Zweig's The World of Yesterday is a haunting elegy to Vienna, and to the world, before the slaughter of World War I. It is steeped in foreboding and aching despair. Zweig killed himself in 1942: he could no longer be alive in  a world that, he was certain, was ending. And yet, just three years later, an entirely different world began to take shape, led by the UN Charter and lit by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

The future is never written in stone. How could it be? For it is we, and our actions, that help to determine it. 

Just ten days ago, the Summit of the Future at the UN General Assembly adopted an agreement that signposts a very different, far more positive trajectory for our world. 

In 56 specific and often heartening action points, it promises renewed international cooperation, based on respect for international law. It commits States to strengthen their work for women's rights and an end to all forms of discrimination; to implement commitments on climate change; and to strive for peace. 

Whether or not every State in that room was entirely genuine in its commitment to action, it was very clear to all of us that the vast majority of States were strongly in favour of more cooperation to end war and place the Sustainable Development Agenda back on track. And to do so, they wrote in strong, universal commitments to address the human rights violations that are the drivers of conflict and the impediments to sustainable development. 

"We will not accept a future in which dignity and opportunity are denied to half the world’s population or become the sole preserve of those with privilege and wealth," the Pact for the Future states. "We will respect, protect, promote and fulfil all human rights... and we will be unequivocal in what we stand for and uphold: freedom from fear and freedom from want for all."

And so, despite the resonance of Zweig's bleak outlook in the world around us today, I do have hope, and I want to give you hope. 

Human beings have a unique capacity to connect and communicate with others. We are skilled at managing change; at initiating movement; and at achieving cooperation with groups that are not identical to our own. These are characteristics that have kept humanity alive, again and again, throughout history. And our generations share these attributes today. We share these deep principles. 

You, too, may find you are called upon to join this great river of human history of communication, cooperation and foresight, whether in your personal capacity or as practitioners of diplomacy and international affairs. 

I have no doubt that your perspectives will be greatly influenced by your studies at this institution, and by the connections you have make in this diverse community that I have been impressed to encounter today.

The friendships that I forged when I was at university in Vienna also helped to shape my outlook. They included friendships with students who were refugees – who had experienced hardships totally unlike my own, peaceful, childhood and adolescence. This, too, drew me to the universal principles of equality and justice that are embodied in human rights. It highlighted, for me, the importance of nurturing systems to build a world that would be more fair. 

Because if they are not universal, rights are not rights. They are luck. They are momentary, capricious, easily removed. 

For me to have rights – not passing privilege – you, and all the human beings beyond you, must have rights. This is also the core of ubuntu, the deeply resonant African philosophy which tells us 'I am because you are'. And this bedrock understanding of the universality of rights is crucial to the Universal Declaration. There are few sentences in international law as beautiful, as transformative, or as true as its Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Human rights remain radical at their core, because they have generated such immense changes in societies across the world.

They entitle us to question orthodoxies, imbalances in power and entrenched prejudice.

They embody hope. They guide us to the most principled, the most inclusive, and the most effective path. 

Today, you are setting forth on a new adventure in your intellectual lives and careers, at a time of many grave and interlocking threats. Now and in the future, I urge you to help your communities and societies navigate their challenges in pursuit of our universal rights – our bedrock, eternal rights to equality, freedom, dignity and justice.

The High Commissioner's visit to Vienna also included a speech to Austria's Constitutional Court, which he delivered in German.