The United Nations Office at Geneva
Multimedia Newsroom
Stakeout Volker Türk 12 December 2023
/
15:18
/
MP4
/
1.1 GB
Press Conferences | OHCHR , UNITED NATIONS
Stakeout Volker Türk 12 December 2023
Stake out / Point de presse
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Subject:
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk remarks to the press at the end of the two-day High Level Event marking 75 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Speaker:
Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Teleprompter
Good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us.
I will very quickly pass the floor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
Volker
Turk.
He has a few short opening remarks. And then we will take some questions.
Commissioner.
Thank you very much. I thought it would be good to after this very intense two days to
give you a quick update
on what
for us in the human rights office has been an incredibly important
culmination of human rights 75 with this high level event
that has just taken place here in the Palais.
Over the last two days,
we actually
had
some
over 2000 participants here, but many of and then we had, in addition,
a couple of 1000 online.
So we had, I think,
very important
level of participation.
And especially in
this very difficult but also sombre moment, it was incredibly important for us
to rekindle
the spirit,
the momentum,
but also
the actual content and the essence of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
And I think it was good that we had heads of state heads of government, ministers,
civil society organisations from all continents from many different countries,
parliaments business enterprises come to Geneva
to have real discussions
but also to make pledges.
And I just want to say for me the important outcome
is the pledges that we got from over 150 countries,
some of them very substantial,
some of them ranging from gender equality to the abolition of the death penalty
to instituting legislative changes and legal reform.
And you will.
We will publish all these pledges and we are also committed
to following them up with the ones who did it.
But we also had pledges from civil
society organisations over 70 from international organisations,
from parliaments, from businesses,
from all stakeholders of the human rights constituency and community.
I'm also pleased to say
that we had very strong participation of people under 25. We had 120 participants
and we had our youth advisory group and they
came forward with a very strong youth declaration
which will help us really craft and take stock of this whole year,
take stock of the substance, take stock of the essence
and come up with a vision statement for the future that will also, we hope,
feed very much into the summit of the future that will take place next year
in New York. And I just wanted to mention this to all of you because
I think it's also important that you get a first read out from
some of the key takeaways that we have from this very important event.
Thank
you. High Commissioner questions,
Nina.
And then Loo
and then Gabriel. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Um,
there have been lots of, uh, beautiful and very and
nice words about, um the importance and the strength of human rights.
Um, at the same time, you see the absolute catastrophe that's unfolding in Gaza.
And, uh, there was the Palestinian foreign minister who was here today who was, um,
who was, uh, upset with the international community,
saying it's not living up to its responsibility, uh,
towards what he and many others describe as a genocide
in, um in Gaza. I'm wondering what you think about that.
And what I mean, what can your office what can bring to a situation like this?
Besides these words? Thank you.
I mean,
it's clear
and which is also the reason
why we decided
to make it
very
important for everyone
to actually go back to the basics and the fundamentals of the international legal
framework as it was established in the wake of the Second World War.
And
one of the key pieces is the universal Declaration of human rights.
It has always been a
promise.
We have seen
the achievements.
This event also allowed us to look at the
failures and one of the failures is of course,
the lack of implementation.
We have seen implementation. That's not only
say that there have been no successes, we have seen the achievements.
I mean, if we look back 75 years ago, the world did look quite differently.
But it is also important that we learn the
lessons and we actually put the emphasis on implementation.
And it was very important, therefore,
that we had state representatives at senior level attend this meeting
because at the end of the day it is about political leadership
in the current crisis,
but also in many other situations where we have
still let's not forget 55 conflicts around the world
and we need the political leadership to embrace human rights and make it
the core and essence of every and any decision that they take.
And that's really the message back to everyone.
Take human rights seriously more seriously and make it
central to your policy making
and decisions.
No.
Thank you. Sorry for my voice.
you mentioned, uh, the pledges.
Um, what would you
have liked to see
as a pledge or pledges that wasn't addressed by the different stakeholders
just to give you I have actually a little bit more information on this.
So we had pledges on the ratification of international human rights instruments,
which is always good.
We had, as I said, five pledges concrete pledges to abolish the death penalty.
You know,
we are all wanting to see the death penalty
abolished everywhere around the world in the 21st century,
and sooner rather than later,
we have
a number of important pledges on women's rights and gender equality.
In fact, this was quite a large number of pledges,
including
inequalities and discrimination issues.
We had also a pledge or pledges on the
promotion and protection of the rights of older people,
including
to open negotiations on a specific instrument on
human rights of older people.
Because that was one of the lessons learned from the covid pandemic
climate change,
especially climate change,
human rights, climate, justice and resilience.
And strong commitments from some states to protect human rights defenders,
journalists,
civic space and combat hate speech.
And, of course, then also pledges on the digital age.
What I
Well, I mean,
we take what we get.
It's a good basis to get more ambition next time and to work on what we have got
on funding as well.
Perhaps we would like to see more of if I may add
Gabriel
High Commission to be told by my spokesman. Of course we want more funding.
I said it in my closing remarks.
I mean, the third pillar of not the third one of the three pillars, as you know,
is human rights.
And of course we want to see much more funding for the UN, and we got some
pledges
to increase our funding,
but we want more.
Um hi, commissioner. Just to go back on my colleague Nina's question, um,
the Palestinian foreign minister said, um,
the situation in Gaza was an utter failure of the international system.
He phrased it this way.
Do you agree with this statement? Um,
and, uh
and if
if there is anything,
can
the human rights system or the international system see any success here?
Thank you.
I
mean,
it's clear you heard the secretary general talk about the paralysis of the Security
Council when it comes to peace and security affairs in a number of situations,
including the one in the Middle East and in Gaza.
I mean, it is clear if you look at the humanitarian situation at the moment,
it is so precarious that the secretary general, well,
all of us have been saying what we had to say,
including our humanitarian colleagues, because
I don't even know what
word to find in terms of precariousness. I don't know whether
you can give me a better word than it
is extremely precarious. I mean, it's on the verge
of
well beyond breakdown. So of course,
there is a clarion call
for everyone
and for the international institutions
that deal with it,
to take it very seriously and to act on it.
What has that got to do with human rights? It is again about implementation,
and it's also frankly,
if I look at the work that my office has been doing over many years,
it's to take human rights more seriously and to heed the calls
and to heed our recommendations and to take them more seriously because
we have made so many recommendations on the on the past.
Unfortunately, they weren't taken seriously enough.
So the question is, learn from it and take human rights more seriously,
including from a prevention perspective.
And I hope that we achieved a little bit of this
during these two days.
We got two more questions and then I'm afraid he's got more bilaterals to go back to.
OK,
the
panellists,
the
exactly
a
problem.
Unacceptable
last
question.
The difference
app
le
at
the
OK,
that's
your
next meeting.