5주차｜사회·노동·인권 (+ 난민·이주)_임정은

[임정은]

Title: Human Rights are our mainstay against unbridled power

Speaker: Volker Türk, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

Date: 09 September 2024

Words: 432

Link: https://www.ohchr.org/en/statements-and-speeches/2024/09/human-rights-are-our-mainstay-against-unbridled-power

glossary

1.     High Commissioner: 유엔 인권최고대표(유엔 인권최고대표사무소(OHCHR)를 이끄는 최고 책임자)

2.     Global Update: (유엔 인권이사회에서의) 전 세계 인권 상황에 대한 종합 보고

3.     New normal: 새로운 일상 / 새로운 정상 상태

4.     Beijing: 베이징

5.     Afghanistan: 아프가니스탄

[script]

Mr. President,

Excellencies,

Distinguished delegates,

Next month will mark two years since I took up my position as High Commissioner.

For this Global Update, I would therefore like to depart from the usual listing of various country situations and offer some broader reflections about the state of human rights today, at the mid-way point of my mandate.

It seems to me we are at a fork in the road.

We can either continue on our current path — a treacherous ‘new normal’ — and sleepwalk into a dystopian future.

Or we can wake up and turn things around for the better, for humanity and the planet. 

The ‘new normal’ cannot be endless, vicious military escalation and increasingly horrifying, technologically “advanced” methods of warfare, control, and repression.

The ‘new normal’ cannot be continued indifference to deepening inequalities within and between States.

It cannot be the free-for-all spread of disinformation, smothering facts and the ability to make free and informed choices.

Heated rhetoric and simplistic fixes, erasing context, nuance, and empathy.

Paving the way for hate speech and the dire consequences that inevitably follow.

The ‘new normal’ cannot mean accepting the injustice, driven by greed, that the triple planetary crisis affects those who are the least responsible the most.

Or that sustainable development remains elusive for so many.

The ‘new normal’ cannot be that national sovereignty is twisted to shroud – or excuse – horrific violations.

Or the discrediting of multilateral institutions or attempts to rewrite the international rules, chipping away at universally agreed norms.

This cannot be the world we want – as individuals, for our families and loved ones, for our societies, and for our global community and future generations.

We can and must make a different choice.

Reconnect with our common humanity, nature, and our planet.

In other words, we could choose to be guided by human rights and the universal values that we all share.

Mr. President,

Human rights are not in crisis. But political leadership needed to make them a reality is.

In every region around the world, we see deep-seated power dynamics at play to grab or hold on to power, at the expense of universal human rights.

Despite some important advancements, 30 years after the universal commitments on women’s rights in Beijing, the shadow of patriarchy still looms large.

We are seeing alarming regressions on gender equality issues we thought had been settled years ago.

At their most extreme, for example in Afghanistan, despicable laws and policies are effectively erasing women from public life.

But everywhere, insidiously, hate and subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, misogyny online and offline are almost normalised.

[…]