Activities of the Secretary-General in Switzerland, 23-24 February
On Sunday, 23 February, the Secretary-General arrived in Geneva to take part in the opening of the fifty-eighth session of the Human Rights Council, scheduled to begin on Monday morning.
In his remarks to the Human Rights Council, the Secretary-General began by recalling that this year’s opening session was held under the weight of a grim milestone — the third anniversary of the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine, in violation of the UN Charter. The Secretary-General reiterated his call to the international community to spare no effort to bring an end to this conflict and to achieve a just and lasting peace in line with the UN Charter, international law and General Assembly resolutions.
Turning to the work of the Council, the Secretary-General said that without respect for human rights, sustainable peace is a pipedream.
Human rights are the oxygen of humanity, he added, but one by one, they are being suffocated. But, as the recently adopted Pact for the Future reminds us, Mr. Guterres said, human rights are, in fact, a source of solutions — by advancing human rights through development, through climate action, through stronger, better governance of technology and by recognizing that the rule of law and human rights go hand-in-hand. (See Press Release SG/SM/22562.)
In the afternoon, the Secretary-General also spoke to a high-level session of the Conference on Disarmament.
He reiterated that the nuclear option is not an option at all and reminded participants that, in the Pact for the Future, adopted in September, Member States recommitted to nuclear disarmament — and to the final objective of complete disarmament. (See Press Release SG/SM/22563.)
While in Geneva, the Secretary-General held a number of bilateral meetings. He met Judith Suminwa Tuluka, Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Maka Botchorishvili, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Georgia; Seyed Abbas Araghchi, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran; Abdullah Ali Al-Yahya, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the State of Kuwait; Ervin Ibrahimovic, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Montenegro; and Sergey Vershinin, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. He also spoke by phone with the Foreign Minister of Ukraine, Andrii Sybiha.
The Secretary-General travelled back to New York on Monday evening.