VIENNA TO HOST WORLD HUMAN RIGHTS ASSEMBLY

12 June 1998

Press Release
HR/4367

VIENNA TO HOST WORLD HUMAN RIGHTS ASSEMBLY

19980612 VIENNA, 12 June (UN Information Service) -- Five years after the conclusion of the World Conference on Human Rights and during the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, top United Nations officials, Nobel Prize laureates and other celebrities will assemble here on Saturday, 27 June, for a commemorative event, preceded by discussions on related issues.

Scheduled to address the "Vienna Public Assembly on Human Rights" will be Secretary-General Kofi Annan; former United States President Jimmy Carter; Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka of Nigeria and Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa; Yelena Bonner, on behalf of Nobel laureate Andrei Sacharov; and Pino Arlacchi, Director-General of the United Nations Office at Vienna and Executive Director of the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention. The Austrian Government will be represented by State Secretary Benita Ferrero-Waldner. Hollywood actor Michael Douglas will read the Preamble of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Public Assembly, which takes place from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. in the Austria Centre, will include music and dance performances by Austrian artists. The theme of the Human Rights Assembly will be "Human Rights and the Rule of Law in the Twenty-first Century".

The event concludes a two-day programme of discussions, including a conference on building justice in post-conflict situations, which will focus on the cases of Albania, Bosnia, Angola and Mozambique. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, and the Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy, will take part in that meeting which begins at 10 a.m. on Friday, 26 June.

Following the conference, the Secretary-General will chair a panel discussion with Ms. Robinson, Nobel Laureates, and Austrian Foreign Minister Wolfgang Schüssel on "Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Societies in Transition", from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.

The events are jointly sponsored by the United Nations and the Austrian Foreign Ministry.

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