After 30 years, the UN’s human rights Office is “a force for unity”

Excellencies, Colleagues, Friends,

My thanks to the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs for marking this milestone anniversary. It is great to have so many familiar faces from around the world here with us.

It is especially moving to be here, as an Austrian and as High Commissioner, on this occasion.

Growing up in Austria in the aftermath of World War II, the echoes of trauma and of grave human rights violations were palpable.

We were shaken by them, we were shaped by them.

It propelled us to look to a future that was different.

I found deep inspiration and hope in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which I discovered in school as a young teenager. For me, this little booklet represented a powerful unifying force for equality, social progress, justice and respect.

As young people in that era, we were also privileged to witness profound social transformations.

We marched alongside movements for social justice, feminism, LGBTI rights, and we stood in solidarity with the anti-apartheid, decolonisation and environmental struggles.

In 1993, when thousands of delegates gathered just across the Danube to strengthen this force by adopting one of the greatest promises seen in a generation, I felt pride.

I still feel it today.

The Vienna Conference took place against the backdrop of the end of the Cold War. The Berlin wall had fallen a few years earlier. The World Wide Web was only just beginning to expand and flourish.  

The feeling of hope and the yearning for change and new perspectives were unmistakable. In German, we use the term Aufbruchsstimmung, which really captures the zeitgeist of that period.

The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action – the outcome of the Conference - infused the global consciousness with a straightforward yet pivotal formula for human rights: that you cannot have one human right without the other.

At the heart of the debates lay the artificial hierarchy that many nations at the time were applying to human rights.

But how does freedom of expression help the pregnant woman living on the streets, when she doesn’t have a house, or a safe medical facility to deliver her baby? How does the right to vote help the activist jailed for calling out his government’s climate change policies? What does equality even mean when parents don’t have enough money to feed their children?

The delegates’ answer, the Vienna Declaration, shattered the long-held fallacy that social, economic and cultural rights have less value than civil and political rights.

The Vienna Declaration confirmed the conviction that human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent, and interrelated, and boldly rejected the view that certain human rights could be considered optional.

While placing value on humanity’s cultural diversity, the Declaration underscored that cultural differences can never serve as justification for human rights violations.

And in transcending deeply harmful notions of nationalism, it confirmed that ‘the promotion and protection of all human rights is a ‘legitimate concern of the international community.’

It also paved the path for numerous other breakthroughs in the field of human rights.

An agreement to establish the International Criminal Court, rousing hope that the world’s most atrocious crimes would not go unpunished.

Historical advances were made on women’s rights, children’s rights, and the rights of indigenous peoples.

Colleagues,

Thirty years ago, inspired by these powerful shifting tides, Member States also took the decision to give human rights a home.

You made a commitment to anchor human rights in an institution, something that had not been done in the history of the United Nations. 

To truly recognise, cement, and breathe a new life into the UN’s third pillar – human rights.

That home - my Office - has rapidly evolved from a support service to existing human rights mechanisms, to the leading global entity on human rights.

Its exceptional mandate – both within the UN system and outside of it – has become a powerful vehicle for change, progress, dignity and justice.

From our humble beginnings of 202 staff working in Geneva and two field presences, we are now a global team of 1,841 people working across more than 104 field presences and headquarters.

Political and financial support for the Office has skyrocketed, from just over 19 million USD in 1993 to a total budget of 392.6 million USD in 2022.

I want to add however, that this is far from enough – when it comes to the third pillar of the United Nations - to meet today’s challenges.

My Office urgently needs to double its budget, and donors – States, corporate and private – can help make this happen.

Colleagues,

Over the years, my Office’s unique voice has helped to drive the human rights agenda into the work of the UN, and into the heart of the global conscience.

From advancing recognition of the key role of human rights to prevent crisis and conflict and abuse.

To demonstrating the absolute inseparability of human rights and peace, a principle upheld by our 560 human rights officers working in 11 UN peace missions throughout the world.

To expanding our presence in countries affected by humanitarian crisis, significantly integrating human rights in the international response.

We have made sure the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development is a human rights agenda.

We’ve made sure that a free and open civic space is seen as the cornerstone of societies that thrive. We know that it is only with creativity that we can make progress.

We’ve put women’s rights and the rights of LGBTIQ+ people high on our agenda, on the UN family’s agenda and on the agenda of the wider international community.

We have championed the rights of children, of indigenous peoples, of minorities, of older people, of people with disabilities as well as of migrants and refugees.

All while holding the world’s most powerful to account.

It is often stated that human rights are an abstract concept – but every person freed from arbitrary detention, every victim finding justice for their suffering, every person empowered to stand up for what they believe in and who they are – prove that human rights are tangible realities.

These victories are an extraordinary testament to the work of my Office and the human rights ecosystem to which we are proud to belong.

Colleagues,

The Vienna Conference set out a noble and ambitious promise for humanity.

Yet promises, as we know, can be broken.

There have been massive gains in human rights since the Vienna Declaration – but today, all around the world, we are seeing dramatic rollbacks.

People from Sudan, to Ukraine to Myanmar to Afghanistan endure the unbearable daily consequences of conflict and oppression.

The geopolitical backdrop to many of these crises – one of the most complex we have seen in decades - is a trend towards a deepened division within and across countries, resulting in hostile standoffs between opposing blocs.

It is a disturbing trend which threatens national cohesion, but also multilateral solutions, the one sure way out of chaos.

Pushbacks on women’s rights and gender equality – a phenomenon as old as we can remember – persist, unabated and uncontrolled. The human rights cause is all about putting an end to patriarchy.

Civic space is under fire, with more and more States suppressing dissent. People who dare to challenge the status quo – including human rights defenders, protestors and journalists – are increasingly subjected to intimidation, brute force and authoritarian tactics.

Hate speech is proliferating in ways and at rates we have never seen before.

Digital shifts, including artificial intelligence developments, are rapidly transforming our world – moving faster than the regulators who should be setting up careful human rights guardrails to protect us from their dangers.

Above all, the triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution constitutes the biggest threat to humankind we have ever seen, imperilling our very survival and that of future generations.

Colleagues,

Today’s emerging human rights challenges will continue to test us.

It would be naïve to say we can pass all these tests, but it would be dangerous and counterproductive to stop trying.

The full realisation of human rights for everyone is a work in progress – and we need to adapt and update our thinking to respond to the challenges that lie ahead.

The Vienna Declaration is a living document that can guide us today in our ambitions.

Vienna reconfirmed the validity of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document conceived in the aftermath of two global wars.

We mark its 75th anniversary this year.

Anniversaries are arbitrary unless we seize them as meaningful opportunities to reflect on our achievements, learn from our mistakes and take fearless steps towards progress and transformation.

The task before all of us today, this year and in the future is to apply the Universal Declaration’s visionary words to our current global challenges.

To rekindle the Declaration’s spirit, its values, and its ambitions for better.

To use human rights for what they are: a force for change and a force for unity.

My Office’s Human Rights 75 initiative is celebrating this anniversary throughout the year.

From our frank conversations with the human rights community, we aim to deliver practical solutions.

 To analyse and prepare ourselves for existential challenges and the challenges that lie ahead.

To reclaim human rights as the best tool we have to provide solutions to the turbulence we face.

And to rebuild the human rights constituency – especially among young people – so we have all the strength required to face these challenges – together.

Just as human rights are for everyone, this dialogue is for everyone. I urge you all to take part. The pledges and positive impact stories that you share in the coming months will feed into December’s high-level event in Geneva, where we will be presenting a new vision for human rights for the next 25 years, which will hopefully be reflected in the Summit of the Future in 2024.

Colleagues,

Restoring faith and certainty in human rights at a time of profound global turmoil is the focus of this Symposium, and it must be the focus of our future.

Three decades ago, it was this very faith and certainty that formed the basis of the Vienna Declaration.

How do we take back this spirit and this hunger for better?

How do we truly unleash the potential of human rights to divert us back to the path which journeys to a safer and fairer future?

As we look to this future – always guided by the lessons of the past – I am convinced that a groundswell of hope, with human rights as its bedrock, can steer us out of today’s fear and uncertainty.

By advancing towards solidarity, productive debate and understanding as the pillars of international relations, rather than bitter geopolitical divisions which lead nowhere apart from hate and chaos.

By significant political and financial investment in the global human rights architecture to bolster its efforts for the years ahead.

And by recommitting to not just paying lip service to human rights, but to reembracing them as humanity’s greatest binding force.   

I am reminded and inspired by the words of Stephan Zweig, an Austrian writer born in this very city and widely influential at the turn of the 20th century.

“Even from the abyss of horror in which we try to feel our way today, half-blind, our hearts distraught and shattered, I look up again and again to the ancient constellations that shone on my childhood, comforting myself with the inherited confidence that, some day, this relapse will appear only an interval in the eternal rhythm of progress onward and upward.”

The common language of human rights is our compass to guide us towards this progress. I count on your collective commitment to let it navigate us.

Thank you.