UN chief warns human rights: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights should be renewed, the UN head said on Monday, 75 years after it was signed, warning that respect for human rights has reversed.
Antonio Guterres said the declaration was “under assault from all sides” and cited the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine as well as risks to rights from escalating poverty, hunger, and natural catastrophes.
“Some regimes make inroads. Others employ a wrecking ball,” he said at the start of the main annual session of the UN Human Rights Council, calling the indifference and contempt for human rights observed throughout the world “a wake-up call.”
He claimed that the “most significant abuses of human rights” currently being seen in the globe were brought on by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
He said that it had caused extensive death, destruction, and relocation.
Although human rights and development have advanced dramatically during the previous century, Guterres cautioned that “instead of maintaining this progress, we have gone into reverse.”
“Global Summit Overshadowed by Calls to Denounce Moscow and Investigate War Crimes”
The summit, which was scheduled to span a record six weeks, was overshadowed by requests for unanimity in denouncing Moscow and extending an investigation into war crimes committed during the conflict.
Only a few days have passed since the full-scale assault of Moscow, which UN rights chief Volker Turk warned would demonstrate that even 75 years after the world’s nations endorsed the universality of rights, “the oppression of the past might reappear in various disguises.”
Turk spoke to “the disastrous wars of aggression from a bygone era, with global repercussions, as we have seen again in Europe with the reckless Russian invasion of Ukraine.”
During the first four days of the session, nearly 150 ministers and heads of state and government are scheduled to appear, either in person or online, after the remarks by the UN’s top brass.
The foreign ministers of the United States, China, Ukraine, and Iran will be among them.
Walkout?
Sergei Ryabkov, Moscow’s deputy foreign minister, will address the council in person on Thursday.
Despite requests from NGOs, analysts said it was doubtful that there would be a walkout like the one that many diplomats took part in when Sergei Lavrov’s film was shown in the council the year prior.
Many ambassadors indicated that additional actions may be used to express their opposition.
Yevheniia Filipenko, the Ukrainian ambassador, told reporters, “We believe that Russia does not deserve to sit in the room.” “We will respond appropriately.”
The crises in Iran, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Syria, and Israel are only a few of the urgent human rights challenges that the council needs to address.
During the final few days of the session, which is scheduled to end on April 4, a number of resolutions will be put to a vote.
probe into war crimes
The extension of a high-level probe into crimes committed in Ukraine since Russia’s invasion will be one of the important resolutions.
The so-called Commission of Investigation is expected to deliver a thorough report to the council in late March after concluding that Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine on a “large scale.”
According to Filipenko, the panel must “continue its essential work, which is of paramount importance for the values of accountability and justice.”
She asserted that her nation was fighting for the commission’s mandate to be strengthened as well as expanded in order to take into account the “many events” that had occurred over the previous year.
Nevertheless, there are worries that making the statement any stronger would lose it votes in the 47-member council, reducing the impression that the UN’s top rights body is united in its opposition to Russia’s activities.
Only Russia and Eritrea opposed the commission’s creation in the 32-member council vote from the previous year, and 13 nations abstained.