IN MESSAGE TO 'HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS' AT PARIS CEREMONY, SECRETARY-GENERAL HONOURS FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF UNIVERSAL DECLARATION
Press Release
SG/SM/6828
HR/4394
IN MESSAGE TO 'HUMAN RIGHTS DEFENDERS' AT PARIS CEREMONY, SECRETARY-GENERAL HONOURS FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY OF UNIVERSAL DECLARATION
19981210 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Video Address to Palais de Chaillot, Site of 1948 Signing, Pays Tribute to 'Living Document' Foreseen by Eleanor Roosevelt and René CassinOn behalf of the United Nations, let me begin by paying tribute to all of you who have gathered in Paris and around the world to stand up for human rights. By joining forces today -- and by defending human rights every day -- you make the Declaration what Eleanor Roosevelt always hoped it would be: "a living document."
You make every word of every article in the Declaration matter by speaking out wherever and whenever human rights are violated -- regardless of personal or professional risk.
In the very halls of the Palais de Chaillot -- 50 years ago today -- a generation of human rights founders made their contribution to our freedom today. The signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the culmination not only of two years of hard and determined work, but of centuries of efforts to put into words mankind's eternal yearning for human rights. Here, finally, there would be a testament to human rights as universal in its origins as in its application -- common to all, prized by all, defended by all.
The Declaration drew from the best of human imagination and the worst of human experience. It defines the minimum required to permit the exercise of human conscience. It outlaws slavery and expresses the right to life, liberty, equality and freedom of thought. It resists tyranny and oppression by spelling out the right to peaceful assembly and popular sovereignty. It propels human development by establishing the rights to work, to equal pay for equal work and to education.
There can be no doubt about the Declaration's importance to the United Nations itself. Alongside our Charter, it sets out the principles of our duty, and holds up a mirror of progress achieved and progress deferred.
Indeed, it is the moral core of all our efforts to promote peace and alleviate poverty. At the time of its adoption, it was even said that the
- 2 - Press Release SG/SM/6828 HR/4394 10 December 1998
United Nations had been on trial for its life, and that it had justified its existence by producing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Let me say to you today: that trial continues, in every United Nations mission to prevent conflict and every programme intended to promote prosperity. Wherever we still the guns of war, we are defending human rights. Wherever we silence the voices of hatred, we are defending human rights. Wherever we lift one soul from a life of poverty, we are defending human rights. And whenever we fail in this mission, we are failing human rights.
That is our inheritance from our brave and visionary forebears, such as René Cassin and Eleanor Roosevelt, both of whom you honour today. The task is for us to build on their legacy, to make their visions more true than false, more present than distant, and more lasting than fleeting.
How will we do this? How can we make the second half century of the Declaration as full of progress as its first? Where can we do better and do more? The answer, alas, is everywhere. Every day, in every part of the world, men are being tortured or silenced, women are being abused or are denied their full equality, and children are held in bondage and are losing their chance to live a life of their own. Their suffering does not belong to them alone. It belongs to us.
You who have gathered in Paris today need not look to your imagination or beyond your horizons to realize this truth. Look to your left and look to your right, and you will see in the human rights defenders living proof that these rights demand genuine sacrifice -- the daily heroism of never staying silent and never staying still in the face of injustice.
Let your fellow men and women at this historic meeting be our inspiration to do more and do better, to go further and try harder to achieve all human rights for all.
* *** *