Side-Event: The Costs of Exclusion and the Value of Inclusion; Fostering peace, prosperity and human rights

37th session of the Human Rights Council

Statement by Deputy High Commissioner Kate Gilmore

26 February 2018

Excellencies,

Through the UDHR, officially for seven decades now, the world community has affirmed that as its foundation stone – the premise that born we all are free and equal in dignity and rights, all of us – with the exception of none of us, with the inclusion of each of us in the interest of all us. 

Inequality and exclusion thus are man-made ruptures of our primordial state – in which, as Nelson Mandela urged us to understand – we are taught, not born, to hate.

And as member states have further pledged – time and time again – the UDHR affirms that we all are entitled to a social and international order in which our rights and freedoms can be fully realized.  On this basis, it must be understood that those who are governed - hold a first-order claim on those who govern – that their founding duty is to provide just such an order; an order whose fabric un-ruptured is woven – thread over thread - from an inalienable – unswerving, uncompromised and universal - duty of governments to our equality and to dignity for us all.

The self-interested political misconstruction of the governance project as being other than for the purpose of upholding equality and dignity of all is a loss-leader in our world.   The leading drivers of unmanageable costs - of casualty and calamity - are today’s toxic claims of the governor to govern first for country rather than for people; for economies rather than fair societies; out of narrow political self-interest rather than for social cohesion; to govern for borders rather than for rights; for nationalistic interests minus common duties to our common planet specifically as it is afflicted by conflict, challenged by crisis, changed by climate instability.

Out-moded, historically redundant, afactual – the nativist efforts to get the better of us by appealing to the worst in us betrays the duties of leadership. 

By definition and intent, the nativist discourse of fictionalized mono-culturalism exclusion and discrimination are today’s most caustic eroders of the inclusion, diversity and pluralism on which peace and prosperity in a globalized world on a shrinking planet relies; are antithetical to the freedom, dignity and wellbeing of all individuals; bringing instead, unconscionable costs in currencies of human suffering and indignity, in depletion of human talent, in the undermining of social contribution and productivity.

History it seems on this must be a harsh teacher but must we be taught yet again that communities organized for exclusion and against inclusion inevitably invariably are unjust, unfair, wasteful, inefficient, wrong in principle and not smart in practice.  And to be clear –  their caustic byproducts do not remain localized – not matter how high the fence or sharp its barb wired nature. Hate, xenophobia and bigotry are not waiting in line for national passports before carrying their toxicity abroad - far beyond their points of origin.

Excellencies,

The period of the MDGs saw extraordinary progress towards fuller human dignity for all – this we must acknowledge. But, over the course of that same period, gapping disparities - along the fault lines of bigotry, discrimination and exclusion - stalled access to dignity for millions of people.  Inequalities were shown to be at the heart of development’s limitations with unjust distributions of power and opportunity alongside discriminatory practices core impediments to development’s more inclusive progress.

By gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, indigenity, disability, age and other stratifying identities, inequality and the associated ignorances of hatefulness and fear, exacted a high price that we can ill afford: at cost to social cohesion, to public health, to human security, to human rights and thus to hope.  

Inequality, intolerance and hate undermined enduring inclusive development.   Unless and until discrimination and inequalities are tackled directly, adolescent girls, persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples, those living with HIV/AIDS, internally displaced persons, migrants, the refugee, the elderly - all will continue to be denied equal access to the fruits that development provides.  And we will be denied the fuller benefit of their talents, creativity and contribution.

Some Member States seem reluctant to exercise the leadership that our contemporary world demands.  But from Venezuela to Tunis to Cairo to Hong Kong and in the harsh settings too of Bangui, Juba, Gaza and Damascus – people are acting in and on their worlds – worlds they experience as marred by poverty and inequality, by exclusion and by alienation, by claim and counter claim.  

And they are doing so often beyond the immediate reach of their formal representatives or standard channels.  Amplifying their voices through social media and social organizing, telling their own stories about what matters and what is happening; about what is right and wrong, intervening sometimes creatively and sometimes destructively, to assert, to express, to discover, to rebuild, acting for good and, in some instances, acting for hate.

Impatient with injustice, wanting for conclusive eradication of preventable human suffering, seeking redress in the face of unconscionable inequality, fearful of myriad fundamentalisms’ cruel extremes, living with the consequences of a planet and a climate under duress: people the world over have the greater stake in the world’s future, more than the policy maker, the business mogul, the governor or even the humanitarian.  And nowhere for no one is this clearer than for the world’s youth populations.

People are not development’s problem, they are development’s purpose.  People are not only development’s end, they are its central means.  People in all their diversity and in all their commonality.  People – born in dignity and rights – rights inseparable, inalienable – those inherent qualities that are the content of humanness – qualities that no one may grant us and of which none may relieve us

This needed resetting of power’s imbalances in favor of a rebalance of power, stands on a stool of four legs – the state, multilaterals, private actors and civil society – in the interests of citizens, not just consumers; of communities not just of markets; of people not only of elites….

To ascend the transformative shifts envisioned by the new development agenda we must waste not - we must waste not human dignity, talent or capacity or contribution - neither through bigotry nor exclusion; nor by neglect or design. 

Excellencies

The benefits of vibrant, pluralistic societies accrue to us all – they cannot be imprisoned by national boundaries, no matter how high its walls. 

Yet emboldened, no doubt, by their conflicts of interest with dissent, and falsely pitching people’s voice against security, inclusive participation against stability, governments across the world are spending huge sums on creating obstacles to equality of voice and civil society.  And yet without civil society?  There would have been no end to slavery.  No address of HIV or affordable anti-retrovirals.  No public exposure of child sexual assault perpetrated in churches and in football clubs.  No legislation against child marriage or rape in marriage.  No access to emergency contraception.  No protection of endangered species. 

Torch every book. Char every page.  Burn every free word to ash.  Gag the dissenter, lock up the pen holder and throw away the key.  Try as they might. Try as they do.  But, the human spirit – in all its diversity -  is incombustible.  And therein lies false power’s deeper fear and there in is found our most renewable resource.

Excellencies

We can live indefinitely on this earth only if we are disciplined about with whom we share it and expeditious in what we will and cannot tolerate about how we treat each other.  If globally and internationally we can’t better empathize across lines of race, religion, ethnicity, gender and sexuality, then there’s no hope of preserving democratic governance.  After all we are the first generation who could chose to be the last.

We must get on with the urgent task of developing collective empathy within our networked global family – to “live in each other’s shelter and not in each other’s shadow.” As other have put it - or as the poet Phillip Larkin expressed it – “We should be kind, while there is still time.” 

Excellencies, this an interdependence imperative and the UDHR is our declaration of inter-dependence.  Yes, the devil is indeed in the detail but the devil also lurks so close by when short term interests dominate, when our fears and anxieties keep us small, mean and self-centered and short sighted.

So on the occasion of the UDHR’s anniversary first, a deep breath, then a recommitment to universal rights for all and with that to an imaginative re thinking of the states’ collective role in protecting all rights for all people. 

Thank you.