© Reuters. Volker Turk, United Nations Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights, attends the high-level occasion commemorating the seventy fifth Anniversary of the Common Declaration of Human Rights on the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, December 11, 2023. REUTERS/Denis Bal
2/4
By Emma Farge
GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. human rights chief urged international locations on Monday to work collectively to defeat threats comparable to struggle and air pollution at an occasion to mark 75 years of the Common Declaration of Human Rights that dangers being overshadowed by the Israel-Hamas battle.
Ministers, diplomats and activists attended the Geneva occasion the place Volker Turk invoked the spirit during which the newly-formed United Nations adopted the declaration in December 1948, in response to what the doc calls “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind”.
“I view today’s event as a call to hope, and a call to action,” stated Turk, an Austrian, who stated the declaration had impressed successes comparable to the tip of racial segregation in the USA and apartheid in South Africa.
“At a time of so little solidarity, and so much divisive and short-sighted vision, I view it as a call to overcome polarisation.”
However he additionally lamented failures within the wrestle, comparable to struggle, referring to “millions of people suffering unbearably in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, notably in Gaza, and Israel” in addition to famine, discrimination, repression and air pollution.
By no means earlier than within the interval after World Conflict Two has the world seen so many conflicts, with 55 now energetic, together with a struggle between rival navy factions in Sudan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the United Nations stated.
In communications in regards to the two-day occasion, Turk’s workplace has averted the phrase “celebrate” in referring to the anniversary, preferring as an alternative the time period “mark”.
Different U.N. officers had been extra downbeat than Turk.
Lynn Hastings, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator within the Occupied Palestinian Territory, stated human rights had been beneath assault greater than two months after Hamas’ lethal cross-border assaults on Israel on Oct. 7, adopted by a retaliatory Israeli bombing marketing campaign.
“In 2023, I should not have to issue such a statement,” she stated. “It is as if we have learned nothing in the past 75 years.”
