SECRETARY-GENERAL'S STATEMENT AT OPENING OF FIFTY-SECOND SESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
Press Release
SG/SM/5924/Rev.1*
HR/CN/703/Rev.1*
SECRETARY-GENERAL'S STATEMENT AT OPENING OF FIFTY-SECOND SESSION OF HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION
19960315 Following is the text, translated from the French, of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali's statement delivered today at the opening of the fifty- second session of the Commission on Human Rights in Geneva: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 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, do not hesitate to say to you 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.
In this seminal text, the international community has solemnly declared its faith in basic human rights and in the dignity and worth 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
__________ * Reissued to reflect text as delivered.
fight against torture; and the elimination of all forms of discrimination based on race, gender, religion or ideas.
And the groups to be protected have been more sharply defined: 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 domestic, 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. It expresses the universality of the international community.
Your Commission played its role perfectly during this long development of the United Nations' normative role, through not only its studies and projects, but also its remarkable research work. The human rights declared by the United Nations would be meaningless unless protected and guaranteed.
By continuing 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 effectively characterized your demanding mission.
Similarly, the agenda for your session clearly reflects 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.
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These new conflicts are usually carried out not by regular armies, but by irregular groups which are more or less organized and more or less controlled. The 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, including 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 discuss with you the role of human rights protection within the work of the Organization as whole.
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 is apparent in the mandates entrusted in recent years to United Nations peace-keeping forces. Indeed, most of the major operations, specifically those conducted in El Salvador, Mozambique and Cambodia, include protection of human rights and the population in the mission of the "Blue Helmets".
Thus, United Nations efforts in the field have clearly established the link between peace, development and human rights. 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 the cause of development. I know, in this area, the place that the right to development has on your own agenda. And believe me, I am well aware, in that area, of the work which you have done and which you will do during this session. I myself have, on several occasions, stressed 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 being conducted by the United Nations 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.
In other words, the rights of the human individual permeate all the activities of the United Nations and constitute both its fundamental basis and its ultimate goal.
But this action in the service of human rights must also be understood in a veritable political context.
This context, for me, has a name: it is democracy.
I am convinced that the process of democratization within States and the International Community 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, encouraging popular consultation and helping to train 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 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 with 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 by other means here at the Commission.
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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 task, an 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 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 duty to continue our work.
Geneva has long been known in the United Nations as the city of human rights. The High Commissioner for Refugees, the High Commission on Human Rights, the Centre for Human Rights and various other institutions -- and since 1994, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose action has been brought to bear on all continents -- have contributed 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 to thank you for your work, to wish you success in your continued efforts and to share with you this dedication to human rights which gives the international community its meaning and all its value.
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