SECRETARY-GENERAL'S STATEMENT AT OPENING OF FIFTY-SECOND SESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
Press Release
SG/SM/5924
HR/CN/703
SECRETARY-GENERAL'S STATEMENT AT OPENING OF FIFTY-SECOND SESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
19960315 ADVANCE TEXT Following is the text translated from the French, of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's statement at the opening of the fifty-second session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva on Monday, 18 March:First of all, I should like to thank you for your welcome and tell you how glad I am to be able to be with you today in Geneva for the opening of this session of the Commission on Human Rights.
It is now 50 years since your institution was created and that it has occupied a central position in the field of the protection of human rights.
Since its inception, and thanks to its unceasing endeavours, often under the most difficult conditions, the Commission on Human Rights has been a veritable power-house of experiments and ideas.
I therefore have no hesitation in saying to you now that, without the Commission on Human Rights, the normative work of the United Nations would not have been what it now is.
This normative work, as you know better than anyone, is considerable. It is largely built around the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the fiftieth anniversary of which we will celebrate in two years' time.
Through this seminal text, the international community has solemnly declared its faith in the basic human rights and the dignity and value of the human person.
Since then, the United Nations has continued to extend its action by establishing not only individual rights, but also civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights.
At the same time, the United Nations has consistently expanded the areas of protection: the repression of genocide, the abolition of slavery, the fight against torture and the elimination of all forms of discrimination based on race or gender, religion or ideas.
Similarly, the United Nations has extended its protection to new categories: refugees, stateless persons, women, children, the handicapped, the mentally ill, imprisoned persons, victims of enforced disappearance, migrant workers and their families and indigenous peoples.
In consequence, the General Assembly has advanced its codification of human rights by drawing up what I like to call "solidarity rights", rights which presume the inter-connected action of all the social factors, on the internal as well as the international level. Thus, since the Charter of the United Nations, in Article 1, establishes the principle of the self- determination of peoples, the General Assembly has announced the right to the environment, the right to peace, the right to food security and above all, the cardinal idea of the right to development.
This normative action now represents our common good. It can satisfy all States, all peoples and all cultures. The universality that it expresses is truly that of the whole international community.
Your Commission played its role perfectly during this long normative maturation, not only through its studies and projects, but also thanks to its remarkable research work. The human rights declared by the United Nations would be nothing unless protected and guaranteed.
By deciding to devote yourselves, in the course of this fifty-second session, chiefly to the question of "the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms wherever they take place in the world", you have summed up more effectively than anyone else could have done your demanding mission.
The agenda for your session similarly clearly demonstrates what has always been your concern: the protection of human rights against the reality of international relations and the actual practice of States.
Some years ago, at the end of the cold war, whole peoples were able to speak out in the name of freedom, democracy and human rights. You lived through this period with intensity and kept pace with this fundamental change in the world.
Today, however, we know that we must also face new dangers, and particularly, new kinds of conflicts taking place, no longer between States, but within those very States.
Every day the United Nations has to confront internal conflicts, civil wars, partitions, secessions, ethnic clashes and tribal wars.
These new conflicts are usually carried out not by regular armies, but by groups which are more or less organized and more or less controlled. The
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anarchy extends to the conduct of operations. War is at once endemic and sectoral. Cease-fires are precarious. Truces are uncertain.
These new conflicts are also the most damaging to the rights of the human person, since it is often the populations themselves which are targeted, bombarded, tortured and subjected to violence. Civilians, women and children are massacred pitilessly. Floods of refugees are thrown, hopeless, on uncertain paths.
We have, therefore, an enormous -- and urgent -- workload. Your agenda provides eloquent testimony to the importance which you attach to these new situations.
I thank your Commission for its action and for the fruitful collaboration it maintains with other organs of the United Nations dealing with human rights. I should like, therefore, to take the opportunity to tell you about the place of the work undertaken by the United Nations to protect human rights within the general policy of the Organization.
In defending human rights, violations must be denounced on a case-by-case basis wherever they occur, but we must also create what I shall call a true human rights diplomacy.
This diplomacy appears clearly, today, in the mandate entrusted in recent years to the peace-keeping forces. Indeed most of the major operations, specifically those conducted in El Salvador, in Mozambique or in Cambodia include protection of human rights and of the population in the mission of the "Blue Helmets".
Thus the link between peace and human rights is clearly established by the facts. For the rights of the human person will be guaranteed first and foremost by restoring peace.
This diplomacy is also evident in the international action of the United Nations in favour of development. I know, in this area, the place that the right to development has on your own agenda. And believe me that I am very mindful, in that area, of the work which you have done and which you will do during this session again. For I myself have on several occasions had occasion to stress this essential link between the protection of human rights and the imperative of development.
I should like, finally, to recall how the forward-looking action which the United Nations is conducting in the economic and social field is also fully centred on the rights of the human person.
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Indeed, it is the human individual in his environment that we discussed in Rio. It is the human individual as owner of universal rights which we considered at Vienna. It is the human individual in his collective dimension which was the focus of our discussions on population in Cairo. It is again the human individual in his social development which brought us together last year in Copenhagen. It is the human individual through the status of women which was the topic of the international conference in Beijing last September. And it is the human individual in the reality of his habitat which we will be considering at the forthcoming conference in Istanbul.
That is to say that the rights of the human individual permeate all the activities of the United Nations and that they constitute both its fundamental basis and its ultimate goal.
But I should also like to underscore here the need to place this action in the service of human rights in a veritable political context.
This context, for me, has a name: it is democracy.
Yes, I am convinced that the process of democratization is inseparable from the protection of human rights. This is the spirit in which the United Nations provides electoral assistance to States which request such assistance.
By encouraging international action in favour of democracy we are not urging States to engage in some sort of mimicry or to borrow political forms that come from elsewhere. Quite the contrary. The aim is to affirm that democracy can be adapted to all peoples and all cultures and that, like human rights, it has a universal dimension.
The United Nations is pursuing this democratic imperative by promoting political pluralism and encouraging popular consultation and by participating in the training of citizens.
Furthermore, the United Nations is now establishing assistance mechanisms designed to strengthen the rule of law within countries which request such assistance. The aim then is to help the State to have a legislative and statutory machinery which is respectful of public freedoms and the general principles of law. The aim is also to train an administration which is concerned about serving the public and the general interest. The aim is, finally, to establish a police force and a judicial machinery that will guarantee individual and property rights.
As you see, these general aims of the world Organization are fully in line with those which you are pursuing here in your Commission, by other means.
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I wish to see in the convergence of our efforts, not only the affirmation of our common objectives but also the support of all for the universal dimension of human rights and fundamental freedoms.
I realize that this is a lengthy and arduous task. I know the constraints and the burdens which, in this field more than in any other, weigh on each institution.
I am also profoundly concerned by the grave financial crisis which the Organization is experiencing and which directly affects the institutions, missions and programmes of the United Nations in the field of human rights.
But we all have a bounden duty to continue our task.
Geneva has long been known as the city of human rights, in the United Nations. The High Commissioner for Refugees, the High Commission for Human Rights, the Centre for Human Rights and various institutions contribute to that reputation.
But the Commission on Human Rights, because of its specificity, because of the many years it has been conducting its work, because of the breadth of its activities, honours the objectives which it pursues and thereby honours the United Nations as a whole.
At this opening of your session, I should like both to thank you for your work, to wish you success in your work and to share with you this dedication to human rights which give the international community its meaning and all its value.
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