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Statement by the High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms. Louise Arbour at the 60th Session of the General Assembly Third Committee
25 October 2005
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New York, 25 October 2005
Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a pleasure and an honour to be with you once again to introduce my report on the work of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights during the course of the past year.
These past twelve months provide a quite remarkable backdrop for our meeting here today, and for this entire session of the General Assembly.
The Secretary-General’s reform agenda, as outlined in his report, In larger freedom, coupled with the Outcome Document agreed to at the World Summit, represent an ambitious – and necessary – programme of change for the United Nations.
It is a programme in which the Member States promise to deliver on the normative progress that has been made these past sixty years in framing, articulating and advancing international human rights law.
And it is a programme in which the Office of the High Commissioner has been tasked – eagerly so, I might add – with doing more to assist.
The challenge before us now is to ensure that we deliver.
The fact bears repeating that the Outcome Document, agreed to by all 191 Member States, is at its core a validation and defence of, and a collective, unambiguous re-commitment to, our universal human rights: that they are both inherently valuable in upholding and sustaining human dignity and integral to the pursuit and maintenance of both peace and security, and development.
Many of the human rights provisions arrived at are concrete; many are historic. Let me quickly review the results.
For an Organization borne out of the horrific violence of the first half of last century, and which has since witnessed, often impotently, many further acts of indescribable cruelty perpetrated on a large scale, the World Summit’s consensus on “the responsibility to protect” represents a watershed commitment.
Agreed at the highest level, the Summit recognized explicitly that every State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In doing so, you asserted unequivocally your belief in the primacy of the rule of law, and your determination to ensure that state sovereignty is not misused as a shield against responsibility and accountability.
But you went further and decided that where national authorities manifestly fail, through omission or deliberate policy, to protect their populations from these threats, the international community, acting through the United Nations, is responsible and empowered to act.
In addition, the Outcome Document clearly articulates the need and means by which to advance the place of human rights within the Organization.
It provides the first clear, broad, and high-level intergovernmental mandate for mainstreaming human rights throughout the United Nations system.
And the Summit called for more support to human rights education, endorsing the World Programme for Human Rights Education.
Throughout the Outcome Document, your Governments showed a truly laudable awareness of the need to defend, enforce and further promote the rights of the vulnerable, the marginalised, the persecuted, the deprived and the exploited.
The Document promises a concerted international response to the scourge of human trafficking. It calls for renewed efforts to eliminate gender-based violence and pervasive gender discrimination in education, the ownership and inheritance of property, housing, access to reproductive health, labour rights, access to land, and access to government. And it calls for renewed action to protect the human rights of migrants, children, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, minorities, internally displaced persons and refugees.
The Outcome Document is not simply a statement of principles for it also articulates a concrete vision by which those principles might further become reality.
In an historic move, the Summit mandated the establishment of a new Human Rights Council which will have an all-encompassing responsibility for “promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of any kind”. The Council will be empowered to address situations of violations of human rights, including gross and systematic violations, and to promote the mainstreaming of human rights throughout the UN system.
Work has already begun on detailing the modalities and composition of the new Council, and hopes are high for a stronger, more credible, more effective, and more highly placed intergovernmental human rights institution.
The Summit also committed the United Nations to improving the effectiveness of the human rights treaty bodies. I consider the United Nations human rights treaty system to be one of the Organization’s great achievements. Their work has had a direct impact in changing national law and policy and bringing meaningful redress to individual victims of abuse.
There are problems with the current system, however, which are well documented. It is my belief that a more streamlined approach, bringing all treaty bodies closer together, would play a significant role in addressing these problems and in this regard, my Office is working on proposals for a unified permanent treaty body, together with the relocation of CEDAW to Geneva. I look forward to intensifying our discussions on these initiatives in the coming months.
Furthermore, you called for the doubling of the budget of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, an increase in resources unprecedented in our history but essential to the implementation of our mandate at the outset of the twenty-first century.
And finally, and for the first time, Member States unequivocally supported a closer relationship between the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Security Council: a concrete recognition, perhaps, of the overwhelming linkage between human rights and peace and security.
Mr. Chairman, Excellencies,
We should be in no doubt: this is an historic document. It is a document which seeks to do justice to the aspirations we have for this Organisation and which seeks to do right by the peoples of our world. Whatever its imperfections, it is a document that should inspire hope.
But to deliver on it will require concerted action: by you, the Member States, by civil society – an increasingly important and valuable vehicle for change – and by the secretariat, including myself and my colleagues at the Office of the High Commissioner, both in Geneva and throughout the world.
The United Nations – and I include all of us in that description – is widely and frequently criticised for being stronger on rhetoric than on action. Neither the frequency of the criticism, nor the fact that it is often simply wrong, should inoculate us from the sting of its message.
It is in this context that I turn to the work of my Office both in planning for the future and in seeking to address today’s human rights challenges.
In parallel with, and supported by, the General Assembly, the Office of the High Commissioner is currently engaged in its own major reform process. In particular, we are assessing how better we might be able to assist in responding to those key human rights challenges posed today by poverty, discrimination, conflict, impunity, democratic deficits and institutional weaknesses.
In other words, just as the call has been issued to Member States to move from declarations to implementation, so, too, are we refocusing our work accordingly. Our reforms aim at ensuring that we address appropriately those implementation gaps – whether born of insufficient knowledge, capacity, commitment or security – which lie at the root of human rights abuse.
Our approach to this work has been built on the following two premises: that human rights are universal and indivisible; and that no country’s human rights record is perfect.
Likewise, the success of our response must be judged by reference to two goals. First, by how effective we are in helping to ensure that the rights of everyone everywhere are protected: that they are not violated and, where they are, that rights-holders have credible means of redress. And secondly, that individual rights-holders are empowered to realise and enjoy their rights and that duty-bearers are likewise empowered to assist them in this regard.
To bring us to that position, our review has necessarily been both substantive and administrative in remit.
We are seeking to improve how we engage with individual states in helping to address their specific human rights challenges; exercise leadership in the field of human rights; and ensure that we maximise our impact through a system of dynamic partnerships, whether within the United Nations system, with governments, with regional organisations, with national institutions or with civil society more broadly.
Underpinning these initiatives, we are seeking to put in place the administrative and management mechanisms that will allow us to respond more efficiently and more effectively to the challenges with which we are confronted. As part of this drive, we recently created a Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit which will assist me and my Deputy in establishing a strategic planning and management system, including a process for setting and reviewing priorities and implementation for our work.
Mr. Chairman,
I am immensely proud of the staff of my Office: indeed, their dedication and expertise is a credit to the United Nations as a whole. Equally, however, we must strengthen our human resources, to build on these qualities, including the need for appropriate diversity, and ensure that the Office of the High Commissioner retains the capacity to respond to the growing demands placed on us.
In my report which you have before you, I have sought to explain how we are seeking to move forward with these reforms. Over the course of the next months, we intend to be in a position to begin to demonstrate some of the fruits of these endeavours.
These reforms, however, will fail unless the Office of the High Commissioner is equipped with significantly greater resources as contemplated in the Outcome Document. The realisation, therefore, of your Governments’ commitment to the doubling of our regular budget financing is thus a critical component of our overall efforts.
Coming from the regular budget, this increase will better reflect the universality of human rights: namely, their relevance and importance to all member states. This increase will be pivotal in enabling my Office to strengthen its human resources, develop the analytical expertise and build up the response capacity necessary for us to be a truly effective leader in the promotion and protection of human rights.
It will not surprise you to hear that I consider this commitment to the doubling of resources to be one of the great signals of intent to come out of the World Summit. It is easy to claim that no price can be placed on the protection of human rights; likewise, financial contributions, however generous, are no substitute for determined action. But it is equally apparent that we can always judge when our rights are being undervalued.
So far our financial commitment to the cause of human rights has been clearly inadequate. Your unequivocal commitment as articulated in the World Summit is a meaningful statement of your determination to seek to redress that inadequacy.
Excellencies,
While absolutely necessary, the process of reform is not without pitfalls. The risk is both that it becomes a permanent state of being – an end in itself – and also that, in so doing, it distracts us from the present.
We do not have the luxury of ignoring today’s human rights concerns as we better equip ourselves to address tomorrow’s challenges. While developing the foundations to enable us to move from an era of declaration to one of implementation, we must constantly fight against that process itself becoming but mere declaration. We must implement, as we seek to reform and we must not become prisoners of process, distracted from the substance of our task.
Thus in my report, I have sought to outline those key areas of substantive activity in which we remain actively engaged. It should be read in conjunction with those other reports, on discrete activities, country situation or thematic issues, which I am also placing before this session of the Third Committee, including my reports on Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sierra Leone.
You will further find summaries of the work already being conducted by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the three priority areas identified by our Plan of Action: country engagement, leadership, and partnerships, a few of which I shall now highlight.
We have placed a great deal of emphasis on the responsibility of the Office to engage directly and constructively with Member States on human rights issues. Engagement can take a number of forms, encompassing Geneva-based activities, support to United Nations Peace Missions and United Nations Resident Coordinators, provision of technical cooperation and advisory services, through to fully-fledged country and regional presences.
In the last twelve months my Office has continued to deepen its country engagement activities. We have assisted governments in building and strengthening national human rights protection systems. Support has been provided to constitutional reform in Mexico, and we advised the Iraqi Constitutional Commission on the compliance of the draft constitution with international human rights standards.
We have also assisted Member States with their reporting obligations under the international human rights treaties, and with following up on the recommendations of the special procedures. This type of assistance remains one of the more important ways to further respect for human rights at the national level.
And during the past year, field presences have been opened or strengthened in a number of countries, including Guatemala, Haiti, Nepal, and Uganda. At the regional level offices have been opened in the Pacific and Central Asian regions.
A word on Nepal, where during this past year, OHCHR at the request of the Commission on Human Rights, has established an important field office. Currently, an armed conflict that has deeply affected civilians, restrictions on democratic freedoms, and long-standing social inequalities are combining to present an extremely precarious human rights situation in Nepal that could deteriorate very rapidly. I am moved by the hope expressed by so many Nepalis that the work of my office to improve respect for human rights and international humanitarian law could help Nepal towards the peace for which its people long.
Though much more remains to be done, OHCHR has sought to strengthen its capacity to field fact-finding missions and support commissions of inquiry, often at short notice. Building on our successful support to the Darfur Commission of Inquiry, this year, my Office has deployed or supported missions to Bolivia, Kyrgysztan to look into the killings which took place in Uzbekistan in May 2005, Indonesia and Timor-Leste, and Togo.
The basis for our reform, the Plan of Action, called for by the Secretary-General and acknowledged by the World Summit, recognizes the role of the High Commissioner and of OHCHR in providing leadership on human rights issues, both within the United Nations system and beyond. A number of these activities are outlined in my Report.
They include our work on rights-based approaches to development, as well as on the issue of the justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights. On this last point, I have called for, and continue to call for, the drafting of an optional protocol to the Covenant. Furthermore, on the right to development, OHCHR has worked to provide significant substantive support to the High Level Task Force of the Working Group, to ensure that the intergovernmental process advances on the surest possible footing.
A pressing concern facing us all, and which was highlighted by the World Summit, is how effectively to counter terrorism in a manner which meets obligations under international human rights law. In this connection, OHCHR convened an expert meeting on human rights, counter-terrorism and states of emergency. Its outcome has been included in the report on this critical issue which the Secretary-General and I have placed before this session of the General Assembly. As a follow up, it was suggested that my Office engages in a dialogue with security and counter-terrorism experts on human rights issues to ensure that the dual objectives of countering terrorism and ensuring respect for human rights are met in practice.
Women’s human rights continue to remain a concern for OHCHR and we intend to place increased resources in this area in the coming months. On this issue, I addressed the Security Council last year on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of resolution 1325, during which I highlighted the continuing situation in Darfur as a glaring instance of the pervasive violations women can suffer during conflict.
Lastly, I would like to point out that OHCHR’s role can only be effectively performed in partnership with others. With our UN partners, we launched the Action 2 plan of action twelve months ago, and 2005 has been spent working to implement the Plan. In this regard, Human Rights Advisers have recently been deployed to a number of UN Country Teams, including to Chad and Togo. Plans are underway to deploy advisers also in Georgia, and the Russian Federation.
Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today’s challenges to human rights require a concerted response by the entire human rights community, whether governments, legislatures, judges, national institutions, civil society, or the United Nations system, including my Office, intergovernmental mechanisms, the treaty bodies and the special procedures.
In the discharge of our individual and collective responsibilities, we must avoid the old, unspoken orthodoxies of viewing human rights as being inherently intrusive and antithetical to state interests. Rather, we must realise that we are uniquely poised, in the aftermath of the World Summit, to embark in a mutually reinforcing enterprise: namely, to implement human rights as a critical component of a more just and safer world.
Can we truly seize that opportunity? Can we genuinely reinforce the protection of human rights? When we meet again next year, will we be able to answer these questions in the affirmative? I trust that we will and I am very grateful for your support in my own efforts to do so.
Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a pleasure and an honour to be with you once again to introduce my report on the work of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights during the course of the past year.
These past twelve months provide a quite remarkable backdrop for our meeting here today, and for this entire session of the General Assembly.
The Secretary-General’s reform agenda, as outlined in his report, In larger freedom, coupled with the Outcome Document agreed to at the World Summit, represent an ambitious – and necessary – programme of change for the United Nations.
It is a programme in which the Member States promise to deliver on the normative progress that has been made these past sixty years in framing, articulating and advancing international human rights law.
And it is a programme in which the Office of the High Commissioner has been tasked – eagerly so, I might add – with doing more to assist.
The challenge before us now is to ensure that we deliver.
The fact bears repeating that the Outcome Document, agreed to by all 191 Member States, is at its core a validation and defence of, and a collective, unambiguous re-commitment to, our universal human rights: that they are both inherently valuable in upholding and sustaining human dignity and integral to the pursuit and maintenance of both peace and security, and development.
Many of the human rights provisions arrived at are concrete; many are historic. Let me quickly review the results.
For an Organization borne out of the horrific violence of the first half of last century, and which has since witnessed, often impotently, many further acts of indescribable cruelty perpetrated on a large scale, the World Summit’s consensus on “the responsibility to protect” represents a watershed commitment.
Agreed at the highest level, the Summit recognized explicitly that every State has the responsibility to protect its populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. In doing so, you asserted unequivocally your belief in the primacy of the rule of law, and your determination to ensure that state sovereignty is not misused as a shield against responsibility and accountability.
But you went further and decided that where national authorities manifestly fail, through omission or deliberate policy, to protect their populations from these threats, the international community, acting through the United Nations, is responsible and empowered to act.
In addition, the Outcome Document clearly articulates the need and means by which to advance the place of human rights within the Organization.
It provides the first clear, broad, and high-level intergovernmental mandate for mainstreaming human rights throughout the United Nations system.
And the Summit called for more support to human rights education, endorsing the World Programme for Human Rights Education.
Throughout the Outcome Document, your Governments showed a truly laudable awareness of the need to defend, enforce and further promote the rights of the vulnerable, the marginalised, the persecuted, the deprived and the exploited.
The Document promises a concerted international response to the scourge of human trafficking. It calls for renewed efforts to eliminate gender-based violence and pervasive gender discrimination in education, the ownership and inheritance of property, housing, access to reproductive health, labour rights, access to land, and access to government. And it calls for renewed action to protect the human rights of migrants, children, indigenous peoples, persons with disabilities, minorities, internally displaced persons and refugees.
The Outcome Document is not simply a statement of principles for it also articulates a concrete vision by which those principles might further become reality.
In an historic move, the Summit mandated the establishment of a new Human Rights Council which will have an all-encompassing responsibility for “promoting universal respect for the protection of all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction of any kind”. The Council will be empowered to address situations of violations of human rights, including gross and systematic violations, and to promote the mainstreaming of human rights throughout the UN system.
Work has already begun on detailing the modalities and composition of the new Council, and hopes are high for a stronger, more credible, more effective, and more highly placed intergovernmental human rights institution.
The Summit also committed the United Nations to improving the effectiveness of the human rights treaty bodies. I consider the United Nations human rights treaty system to be one of the Organization’s great achievements. Their work has had a direct impact in changing national law and policy and bringing meaningful redress to individual victims of abuse.
There are problems with the current system, however, which are well documented. It is my belief that a more streamlined approach, bringing all treaty bodies closer together, would play a significant role in addressing these problems and in this regard, my Office is working on proposals for a unified permanent treaty body, together with the relocation of CEDAW to Geneva. I look forward to intensifying our discussions on these initiatives in the coming months.
Furthermore, you called for the doubling of the budget of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, an increase in resources unprecedented in our history but essential to the implementation of our mandate at the outset of the twenty-first century.
And finally, and for the first time, Member States unequivocally supported a closer relationship between the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Security Council: a concrete recognition, perhaps, of the overwhelming linkage between human rights and peace and security.
Mr. Chairman, Excellencies,
We should be in no doubt: this is an historic document. It is a document which seeks to do justice to the aspirations we have for this Organisation and which seeks to do right by the peoples of our world. Whatever its imperfections, it is a document that should inspire hope.
But to deliver on it will require concerted action: by you, the Member States, by civil society – an increasingly important and valuable vehicle for change – and by the secretariat, including myself and my colleagues at the Office of the High Commissioner, both in Geneva and throughout the world.
The United Nations – and I include all of us in that description – is widely and frequently criticised for being stronger on rhetoric than on action. Neither the frequency of the criticism, nor the fact that it is often simply wrong, should inoculate us from the sting of its message.
It is in this context that I turn to the work of my Office both in planning for the future and in seeking to address today’s human rights challenges.
In parallel with, and supported by, the General Assembly, the Office of the High Commissioner is currently engaged in its own major reform process. In particular, we are assessing how better we might be able to assist in responding to those key human rights challenges posed today by poverty, discrimination, conflict, impunity, democratic deficits and institutional weaknesses.
In other words, just as the call has been issued to Member States to move from declarations to implementation, so, too, are we refocusing our work accordingly. Our reforms aim at ensuring that we address appropriately those implementation gaps – whether born of insufficient knowledge, capacity, commitment or security – which lie at the root of human rights abuse.
Our approach to this work has been built on the following two premises: that human rights are universal and indivisible; and that no country’s human rights record is perfect.
Likewise, the success of our response must be judged by reference to two goals. First, by how effective we are in helping to ensure that the rights of everyone everywhere are protected: that they are not violated and, where they are, that rights-holders have credible means of redress. And secondly, that individual rights-holders are empowered to realise and enjoy their rights and that duty-bearers are likewise empowered to assist them in this regard.
To bring us to that position, our review has necessarily been both substantive and administrative in remit.
We are seeking to improve how we engage with individual states in helping to address their specific human rights challenges; exercise leadership in the field of human rights; and ensure that we maximise our impact through a system of dynamic partnerships, whether within the United Nations system, with governments, with regional organisations, with national institutions or with civil society more broadly.
Underpinning these initiatives, we are seeking to put in place the administrative and management mechanisms that will allow us to respond more efficiently and more effectively to the challenges with which we are confronted. As part of this drive, we recently created a Policy, Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation Unit which will assist me and my Deputy in establishing a strategic planning and management system, including a process for setting and reviewing priorities and implementation for our work.
Mr. Chairman,
I am immensely proud of the staff of my Office: indeed, their dedication and expertise is a credit to the United Nations as a whole. Equally, however, we must strengthen our human resources, to build on these qualities, including the need for appropriate diversity, and ensure that the Office of the High Commissioner retains the capacity to respond to the growing demands placed on us.
In my report which you have before you, I have sought to explain how we are seeking to move forward with these reforms. Over the course of the next months, we intend to be in a position to begin to demonstrate some of the fruits of these endeavours.
These reforms, however, will fail unless the Office of the High Commissioner is equipped with significantly greater resources as contemplated in the Outcome Document. The realisation, therefore, of your Governments’ commitment to the doubling of our regular budget financing is thus a critical component of our overall efforts.
Coming from the regular budget, this increase will better reflect the universality of human rights: namely, their relevance and importance to all member states. This increase will be pivotal in enabling my Office to strengthen its human resources, develop the analytical expertise and build up the response capacity necessary for us to be a truly effective leader in the promotion and protection of human rights.
It will not surprise you to hear that I consider this commitment to the doubling of resources to be one of the great signals of intent to come out of the World Summit. It is easy to claim that no price can be placed on the protection of human rights; likewise, financial contributions, however generous, are no substitute for determined action. But it is equally apparent that we can always judge when our rights are being undervalued.
So far our financial commitment to the cause of human rights has been clearly inadequate. Your unequivocal commitment as articulated in the World Summit is a meaningful statement of your determination to seek to redress that inadequacy.
Excellencies,
While absolutely necessary, the process of reform is not without pitfalls. The risk is both that it becomes a permanent state of being – an end in itself – and also that, in so doing, it distracts us from the present.
We do not have the luxury of ignoring today’s human rights concerns as we better equip ourselves to address tomorrow’s challenges. While developing the foundations to enable us to move from an era of declaration to one of implementation, we must constantly fight against that process itself becoming but mere declaration. We must implement, as we seek to reform and we must not become prisoners of process, distracted from the substance of our task.
Thus in my report, I have sought to outline those key areas of substantive activity in which we remain actively engaged. It should be read in conjunction with those other reports, on discrete activities, country situation or thematic issues, which I am also placing before this session of the Third Committee, including my reports on Afghanistan, Nepal, and Sierra Leone.
You will further find summaries of the work already being conducted by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the three priority areas identified by our Plan of Action: country engagement, leadership, and partnerships, a few of which I shall now highlight.
We have placed a great deal of emphasis on the responsibility of the Office to engage directly and constructively with Member States on human rights issues. Engagement can take a number of forms, encompassing Geneva-based activities, support to United Nations Peace Missions and United Nations Resident Coordinators, provision of technical cooperation and advisory services, through to fully-fledged country and regional presences.
In the last twelve months my Office has continued to deepen its country engagement activities. We have assisted governments in building and strengthening national human rights protection systems. Support has been provided to constitutional reform in Mexico, and we advised the Iraqi Constitutional Commission on the compliance of the draft constitution with international human rights standards.
We have also assisted Member States with their reporting obligations under the international human rights treaties, and with following up on the recommendations of the special procedures. This type of assistance remains one of the more important ways to further respect for human rights at the national level.
And during the past year, field presences have been opened or strengthened in a number of countries, including Guatemala, Haiti, Nepal, and Uganda. At the regional level offices have been opened in the Pacific and Central Asian regions.
A word on Nepal, where during this past year, OHCHR at the request of the Commission on Human Rights, has established an important field office. Currently, an armed conflict that has deeply affected civilians, restrictions on democratic freedoms, and long-standing social inequalities are combining to present an extremely precarious human rights situation in Nepal that could deteriorate very rapidly. I am moved by the hope expressed by so many Nepalis that the work of my office to improve respect for human rights and international humanitarian law could help Nepal towards the peace for which its people long.
Though much more remains to be done, OHCHR has sought to strengthen its capacity to field fact-finding missions and support commissions of inquiry, often at short notice. Building on our successful support to the Darfur Commission of Inquiry, this year, my Office has deployed or supported missions to Bolivia, Kyrgysztan to look into the killings which took place in Uzbekistan in May 2005, Indonesia and Timor-Leste, and Togo.
The basis for our reform, the Plan of Action, called for by the Secretary-General and acknowledged by the World Summit, recognizes the role of the High Commissioner and of OHCHR in providing leadership on human rights issues, both within the United Nations system and beyond. A number of these activities are outlined in my Report.
They include our work on rights-based approaches to development, as well as on the issue of the justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights. On this last point, I have called for, and continue to call for, the drafting of an optional protocol to the Covenant. Furthermore, on the right to development, OHCHR has worked to provide significant substantive support to the High Level Task Force of the Working Group, to ensure that the intergovernmental process advances on the surest possible footing.
A pressing concern facing us all, and which was highlighted by the World Summit, is how effectively to counter terrorism in a manner which meets obligations under international human rights law. In this connection, OHCHR convened an expert meeting on human rights, counter-terrorism and states of emergency. Its outcome has been included in the report on this critical issue which the Secretary-General and I have placed before this session of the General Assembly. As a follow up, it was suggested that my Office engages in a dialogue with security and counter-terrorism experts on human rights issues to ensure that the dual objectives of countering terrorism and ensuring respect for human rights are met in practice.
Women’s human rights continue to remain a concern for OHCHR and we intend to place increased resources in this area in the coming months. On this issue, I addressed the Security Council last year on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of resolution 1325, during which I highlighted the continuing situation in Darfur as a glaring instance of the pervasive violations women can suffer during conflict.
Lastly, I would like to point out that OHCHR’s role can only be effectively performed in partnership with others. With our UN partners, we launched the Action 2 plan of action twelve months ago, and 2005 has been spent working to implement the Plan. In this regard, Human Rights Advisers have recently been deployed to a number of UN Country Teams, including to Chad and Togo. Plans are underway to deploy advisers also in Georgia, and the Russian Federation.
Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today’s challenges to human rights require a concerted response by the entire human rights community, whether governments, legislatures, judges, national institutions, civil society, or the United Nations system, including my Office, intergovernmental mechanisms, the treaty bodies and the special procedures.
In the discharge of our individual and collective responsibilities, we must avoid the old, unspoken orthodoxies of viewing human rights as being inherently intrusive and antithetical to state interests. Rather, we must realise that we are uniquely poised, in the aftermath of the World Summit, to embark in a mutually reinforcing enterprise: namely, to implement human rights as a critical component of a more just and safer world.
Can we truly seize that opportunity? Can we genuinely reinforce the protection of human rights? When we meet again next year, will we be able to answer these questions in the affirmative? I trust that we will and I am very grateful for your support in my own efforts to do so.
Thank you.