Gitga’at First Nation reminds Enbridge that Northern Gateway pipeline and oil tanker project is not welcome in Gitga’at territory.

HARTLEY BAY, BRITISH COLUMBIA (May 16, 2013) – The Gitga’at First Nation has instructed Enbridge to leave its territory after the company and a team of oil spill response surveyors showed-up uninvited, during the nation’s annual food harvesting camp, a time of rich cultural activity and knowledge sharing.

Enbridge representatives were instructed to leave Gitga’at council chambers and Gitga’at territory, Wednesday morning, after councillors voiced their displeasure at not being consulted on an Enbridge oil spill response survey.

The dust-up comes on the eve of final oral arguments before the Joint Review Panel, which is reviewing the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline.

“Despite an ongoing review process, Enbridge has entered our territory and begun project work before their proposed oil tanker and pipeline project has even been approved,” said Arnold Clifton, Chief Councillor of the Gitga’at First Nation. “This is disrespectful to the Gitga’at First Nation, the review process, and the people of British Columbia, who oppose oil tankers in our coastal waters.”
“Four years ago when Enbridge CEO Patrick Daniel and Northern Gateway President John Carruthers visited Hartley Bay, we treated them respectfully, but informed them in no uncertain terms that their project is not welcome in Gitga’at Territory. We reminded their staff of that today,” said Clifton.

Enbridge signaled its intention to enter Gitga’at territory by sending an after hours fax without proper contact information, less than a week before their arrival, and without prior consultation. The fax also mistakenly included a letter addressed to Chief Councillor Conrad Lewis of the Gitxaala First Nation, which the Gitga’at returned to Enbridge.

“It’s hard to imagine a company screwing-up its relationships with First Nations more than Enbridge has,” said Marven Robinson, Gitga’at Councillor. “This incident shows not only the failure of Enbridge to meaningfully consult, but also indicates an insensitive, scatter-shot approach to dealing with First Nations. We remain resolved to protect our territory and people from this project.”

THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMITTEE WILL QUESTION THE UNITED STATES ABOUT INDIGENOUS PEOPLES’ SACRED AREAS AND FREE PRIOR AND INFORMED CONSENT IN THEIR UPCOMING REVIEW OF US  COMPLIANCE WITH THE INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLICTIAL RIGHTS
 
April 25th, 2013:  The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly on December 16, 1966.   It went into legal force on March 23rd, 1976.   The United States of America is one of the 167 countries, called the “State parties”, which have ratified the Covenant.  
 
The ICCPR is legally binding on the State parties.  State parties are required to undergo periodic reviews of their compliance with the Covenant, usually every 4 - 6 years.  The UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) is the Treaty Monitoring Body for the ICCPR.  The HRC conducts periodic reviews of the State parties and makes recommendations to the States about how to improve their compliance and better fulfill their legal obligations under the Covenant.  
 
The HRC consists of 18 members representing all the UN regions.   They are nominated and elected by the State parties to the Covenant.   The HRC members are independent experts (not representatives of their respective countries) and serve in their individual capacities.  For a list of current HRC members see: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/members.htm.
 
Reports submitted by the State parties under review, provisional agendas and other relevant documents for the next session, including submissions by Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples, are posted on the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights website, http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrc/.   Recommendations and concluding observations of the HRC addressing the State parties’ compliance are also posted after the reviews. 
 
During its 107th session ending on March 28th, 2013, the HRC determined the issues which will be the focus of their review of 8 countries at their 109th session from October 14th – November 1st, 2013.  The United States will be reviewed at that time.   The list of issues for the US review is posted on the HRC web page, under 107th session, information on the US.      
 
In December 2012, the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) and the United Confederation of Taino People, with input from Indigenous Peoples, Nations and organizations in California, Hawaii, Alaska and New Mexico, submitted two proposals for issues to be addressed during the US review.  These focused on Article 1 of the Covenant addressing Self-Determination and Articles 18 and 27 addressing Language, Culture and Freedom of Religion for “minorities” and highlighted the relevant provisions in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Note:  as a UN Standard drafted in the 1960’s the term “Indigenous Peoples” was not used in the Covenant, however the HRC now uses this term).  
 
The HRC accepted the recommendations submitted by IITC et al pertaining to Article 27 of the ICCPR, and has drafted questions for response by the US and Indigenous Peoples as follows:
 
27.                Please provide information on measures taken to guarantee the protection of Indigenous Sacred Areas, as well as to ensure that indigenous peoples are consulted and that their free, prior and informed consent is obtained regarding matters that directly affect their interests. Please provide information on steps taken to implement Executive Order 13175 on Consultation and Coordination with Tribal Governments.  
 
The HRC will accept alternative or “shadow” reports with information in response to these questions and related concerns from Indigenous Peoples, Nations, Tribes and organizations as well as from Civil Society.  The alternative reports are due by September 1st for the October session.  The HRC requests information that is “as specific, reliable and objective as possible”, identifying the submitting non-governmental organization (NGO) or Peoples.  Anonymous information is not accepted.  Check the HRC web page on for additional information and guidelines on submissions by NGO’s and Indigenous Peoples.    
 
IITC plans to co-coordinate submission of a joint Indigenous Peoples “shadow report” on threats to Indigenous Peoples sacred areas, cultural rights, the right to Free Prior and Informed Consent and other relevant concerns for the US review.  On request, we will provide technical assistance and information to Indigenous Peoples and organizations who want to submit their information and issues as part of the IITC joint shadow report or on their own. 
 
As a reminder, we are also preparing for the periodic review of the US by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), the Treaty monitoring Body for the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.  The CERD will review the US again in early 2014, and we are beginning to work on those submissions as well.   Contact IITC for information on that process, which will also address the protection of Indigenous Peoples Sacred Areas and Cultural Rights, Treaty rights, Environmental Racism and a number of other issues.  IITC has an on-line handbook on using the CERD including its urgent action process which we will provide upon request.    
 
If you are interested in receiving more information, scheduling a presentation or training, or contributing to the joint Indigenous Peoples shadow report for the HRC focusing on sacred areas, cultural rights and Free Prior and Informed Consent please contact:
 
IITC Legal Counsel Danika Littlechild email 
Consulting Attorney June L. Lorenzo (Southwest Sacred Areas) email
IITC Executive Director Andrea Carmen email    
 
IITC looks forward to working with you on this important opportunity to address issues of vital importance to Indigenous Peoples and to participate in an international process to hold the US accountable to their human rights obligations.
                                                                                                  
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Bonjour à tous,

Vous informer que l’accréditation pour la 6ème session du Mécanisme d’experts sur les droits des peuples autochtones est ouverte jusqu’au 28 Juin 2013.

Veuillez suivre les instructions à l’adresse suivante:
==<->==Texte français==<->==

Hola a todos,

La acreditación para la sexta sesión del Mecanismo de Expertos sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas está abierta hasta el 28 de junio de 2013. Por favor, siga las instrucciones en ==<->== Texto en espanol==<->==

The United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) will hold it’s sixth session. EMRIP takes place at the United Nations in Europe - in town Geneva, Switzerland.

HOW YOU CAN PARTICIPATE

According to paragraph 9 of resolution 6/36, the meeting of the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples shall be open to the participation of observers through an open and transparent accreditation procedure in accordance with the rules of the Human Rights Council.

Representatives of indigenous peoples groups, organizations, communities, associations and others not in consultative status with ECOSOC are allowed to register; (You do NOT need status to the UN).

Procedure

Those required to complete the online registration process to attend the next session of the Expert Mechanism are invited to complete the three steps accreditation procedure by:

Preparing a letter requesting accreditation, according to the description below, which can be uploaded to the online registration form.

Complete the online registration form, Spanish and French (include the letter requesting accreditation and the registration information)
REGISTER HERE

Print, fill and bring to the session the Conference Registration Form (no need to be sent to the Secretariat).

O’otham Nations Traditional Territories [Phoenix, AZ]

SYRINGE by Greyeyes
After two days of public engagement and discussion last week, an alliance of Confederations of Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala [the Americas] is moving forward into a continental and global process of DISMANTLING the Doctrine of Discovery as the intellectual, religious and political justification for the raison d’Etat of the government states of the Americas, and around the world.

The Alliance of Abya Yala that participated in the DISMANTLING the Doctrine of Discovery International Conference at ASU West April 19-20, 2013 is pushing forward into the process of bringing to judgment and rectification at the local-regional, continental and global dimensions the continued institutionalization of the fundamental tenets of the Doctrine of Discovery as organizing principles that drive the policies and political relationships among the states in terms of Indigenous Peoples. In priority among the issues in need of rectification is the question of “resource” extraction, in terms of land, water, genetic material, and indigenous labor. At the conference the connection was made between how the Doctrine of Discovery and the derivative Monroe Doctrine (aka the Divine Right of States) are implicit in the criminal collusion of government states and capitalist corporations in terms of mining concessions and immigration policies of the states. Through the premise of the Divine Right of States (aka The Monroe Doctrine), these entities continue to perpetuate the illegal and criminal violation of the fundamental Human Rights of the Nations and Pueblos of Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala [the Americas] at the expense of the wela, the wellbeing of all life on Earth.

Addressing other issues implicit in the process of DISMANTLING the Doctrine of Discovery, the two day conference last week brought forward in five thematic working groups a template of interrelated themes intended to produce collective corrective strategies for action that would be driven by grassroots constituencies in proactive manner. The themes are: Youth-Regeneration; Education-Cognition; Religion-Spirituality; Law-Harmony; and Environment-Pacha Mama.

The Conference at ASU West was convened in consequence to the Preliminary Study on the Impact of the Doctrine of Discovery commissioned by the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII), and the specific recommendation given to the UN Economic and Social council by the UNPFII in 2012:

The Permanent Forum recommends that States include in all education curricula, in particular the school system, a discussion of the doctrine of discovery/dispossession and its contemporary manifestations, including land laws and policies of removal.

The co-conveners of the International conference consist a consortium of Indigenous organizations including TONATIERRA, Maya Vision, Techantit, and Frente Indigena de Organzaciones Binacinales (FIOB). The Social Justice and Human Rights Program at ASU West hosted the event.

Chief Jake Edwards, Onondaga Nation, of the Haudenosaunee - the People of the Longhouse,[1] addressed the conference on the first day and shared the history of how the Haudenosaunee instructed the Founding Fathers of the original thirteen British colonies in their initial efforts to form the confederation of states that became the US in 1776.

As representatives of the oldest democracy in the hemisphere, the Haudenosaunee shared with the immigrant European settlers the principles of self-government that as a Traditional Confederacy of Indigenous Nations had been the original foundation of the political tradition of democratic self-government for over a thousand years in the continent known to Europe as “The New World.”

Also attending the conference were delegations of Nations and Pueblos of Indigenous Peoples from the entire hemisphere, from the Lenape of the North [Canada] to the Mapuche Nation of the South [Chile]. Representatives of the Maya of Totonicapan [Guatemala] and the Nahuat Pipil [El Salvador] joined with Indigenous Nations of the O’otham [Arizona] and the O’dam of Mexico [Durango] to receive the Continental Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Abya Yala intent on regenerating the historical and political vision of responsibility and traditional alliance that has sustained the collective cultural identity and nationhood of Indigenous Peoples for millennia. Representatives of the Havasupai Nation presented special gifts of exchange for the relatives from the south.
Faced with the oncoming wave of climate chaos scenarios that have been exacerbated by the phenomena of global warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human industrialization, the gathering addressed the root causes of the “racial profiling” of Indigenous Peoples as “Indians” “Savages” “Minorities” and “Immigrants” in the eyes of the settlers from Europe and the subsequent state policies that have deformed and deviated from the traditional indigenous Mandate of Responsibility to the Future Generations since establishment on October 12, 1492 of the Doctrine of Discovery.

The delegations of Indigenous Peoples were not working in isolation last week. They were joined by a diverse spectrum of non-indigenous activists and organizations and academic institutions including the leadership of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations who in their annual conference last summer in Phoenix, adopted a resolution repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery and calling for the full implementation of the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples across the country. Dr. Phil Arnold of Syracuse University was in attendance with the message of the Skä•noñh Center – Great Law of Peace Center at Onondaga Lake in New York. Skä•noñh, is an Onondaga welcoming greeting meaning Peace and Wellness.

Nearly one hundred high school students from the Phoenix Union High School District and surrounding reservations also attended the conference at ASU West, as well as local leadership of both urban and reservation Native American communities.

A special installation by Zuni Pueblo artist, Edward Wemytewa highlighted the event, which concluded with a cultural celebration on Saturday evening April 20th.

DOMINUS by Edward Wemytewa, Zuni Pueblo
The conference was streamed live via Internet, and the video archive will continue to be available on the conference website. A report is being prepared and conference materials and resources will also be continuously edited and posted on the website as the DISMANTLING the Doctrine of Discovery process goes forward. Next steps include a call for mass mobilization of CALM (Conscious Acts of Liberation and Meaning) and PUBLIC DECOLONIZATION next month 5 de Mayo, 2013 in Phoenix, Arizona.

DDD
PURPOSE and THEMES
*******
Purpose
The word mantel comes from the Latin “mantellum” which can be translated as a “cloak”. The Doctrine of Discovery, as an instrument of European-American colonization and domination, continues to serve as the “Cloaking Device” which drives the continued normalization of colonialism in violation of the Human Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the fundamental human dignity of all humanity. In order to dismantle this intellectual pathogen, the first steps require clarity and courage, determination and perseverance. Centuries of historical trauma will take generations to heal, but as Mother Earth bleeds and climate chaos is the event horizon that surrounds us all, we cannot put off to another generation the need to engage and commit to the necessary corrective actions required for collective decolonization. This conference is dedicated to that purpose.

Youth – Regeneration
Youth attending the conference will be engaged in a series of activities that break down the meaning and purpose underlying the doctrine of discovery. They will be asked to reflect and share the ways in which they have been impacted by colonization in the classroom and as part of the broader community. Participating youth will develop a set of tools to help them engage their peers in discussion and build awareness around the doctrine of discovery and create their own strategies for dismantling it.

Religion – Spirituality:

This series of workshops will invite participants to share their own experiences and reflect upon how colonization and the doctrine of discovery have impacted our religious and spiritual beliefs. This track revolves around the understanding that religion has played a key role in the creation and implementation of the doctrine of discovery. The discussions will move through the history and engage with the present devastating long-term impacts to Indigenous and non-Indigenous Peoples alike. Participants will be encouraged to envision a future that rejects the principles of colonization and create strategies that can be implemented within their own communities.

Law: Harmony
This working group track will be directed by the conference conveners: Maya Vision, Techantit and TONATIERRA. The sessions will be segmented into presentation from the three areas of the continent: South, Central and North. Each region will address the impact of the Doctrine of Discovery upon their Indigenous Nations and territories, and how they have responded in exercise of the inherent Right of Self Determination as Indigenous Peoples, Equal to all other Peoples. The impact of extractive mining, the criminalization of resistance, and the issue of International Borders of the colonizing states including domestic and international immigration policies of the government state are priority themes for this working group.

Environment: Pacha Mama
The success of any indoctrination process require a disassociation from reality. The reality is that we are all children of Mother Earth, and Mother Earth is also a child of the cosmos, and the Cosmos is a Matter of Mystery. Water and Land related, become watersheds and the Ocean which in reality there is only one ocean on this planet. Air and Fire related become the atmosphere and energy systems at the planetary level, the drivers of climate. This working group will address these inter-related natural systems from the perspective of the Indigenous Peoples on the front lines in defense of the Rights of Mother Earth, from the local-regional to the continental and global frames of reference.

Voices of Abya Yala:

We have always been here, since time immemorial. The dust of our ancestors travel with the wind into the sky and there collect the spirit of the water that becomes the rain, and we return time and again to fulfill our responsibilities and regenerate our nations of Mother Earth. Yet even she, our Sacred Mother Earth was not always a Mother. At one time, for a long, long time she was a maiden, and even before that she was simply a dream of creation. Yet now, however, she has been mother to life on Earth for a long, long time. She is no longer a young mother. She is now Abya Yala. She is the Mother Earth who, under the shawl of the Rain of Time, is showing the first grey hairs of becoming a grandmother.

What shall we do to take care of her? How can we take care of her if we do not know who we are, in good relations as Nations of the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala.

[1] The Haudenosaunee are most often, and mistakenly, referred to as the “Iroquois” or “Six Nations Iroquois”.

BY Katy Migiro

The Gibe III dam will stop the Omo River’s natural flood, on which the tribes depend.

Half a million Kenyans and Ethiopians are likely to be displaced, go hungry and face conflict due to a controversial dam linked to a forcible resettlement programme ‘bankrolled’ by British taxpayers, the lobby group Survival International said on Monday.

The Gibe III hydropower dam, due for completion in 2014, is being built on the Omo River in southern Ethiopia. It will reduce the flow of water to farmers and pastoralists living downstream, including those 600 kilometres to the south in Kenya, where the river flows into Lake Turkana, the world’s largest desert lake.

The British government’s Department for International Development (DFID) is one of many international donors funding Ethiopia’s Protection of Basic Services (PBS) programme, which subsidises basic services and local government salaries. This includes areas where people are being relocated to make way for the dam, part of a wider programme to resettle people into designated villages – known as villagisation – begun in 2010.

Survival argues that the forced resettlment of thousands of tribal people could not be carried out without the DFID-funded PBS programme.

“UK money is bankrolling the destruction of some of the best-known pastoralist peoples in Africa,” Stephen Corry, director of Survival said in a statement. “The UK government is renowned for only paying lip service to human rights obligations where tribal peoples are concerned. When it comes to human rights in Ethiopia, DFID’s many commitments are worthless.”

It is not the first time that the PBS programme has come under fire.

Last year, the London-based law firm Leigh Day began legal action against DfID on behalf of an Ethiopian man, known as Mr O, who claims he suffered severe abuse under the villagisation programme.

DFID visited the Lower Omo, where it heard reports of rape and intimidation, but it has not been able to substantiate the claims.

Survival International cites three recent reports by Oxford University, International Rivers and the Africa Resources Working Group to support its case.

The Africa Resources Working Group report warns of “an impending human rights and ecological catastrophe” and a “very real threat of mass starvation and armed conflict in the border region.”

The International Rivers report says that those who lose their homes and livelihoods are “likely to seek out resources on their neighbours’ lands in the Kenya-Ethiopia-Sudan borderlands.”

“Well armed, primed by past grudges and often divided by support from different state and local governments, these conflicts can be expected to be bloody and persistent,” it said.

The Ethiopian government is planning to use the water to develop large-scale irrigation schemes, create jobs and generate huge amounts of electricity to power the region.

BERLIN, 15 April 2013:



Bacre Waly Ndiaye, the Director Human Rights Council and Special Procedures Division Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights Conference reminded everyone about the history of the United Nations battle for human rights in his opening address to mark the 20th Anniversary of the Vienna World Conference “Vienna + 20″, which hosted by the Human Rights Forum Menschenrechte und das Deutsche Institut für Menschenrechte in Berlin.


Vienna + 20
HUMAN RIGHTS ARE INDIVISIBLE


Opening address by Bacre Waly Ndiaye
Director Human Rights Council and Special Procedures Division
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

Berlin, 15 April 2013

Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen,

Thank you for the opportunity to journey back into the past, and to measure the distance we have covered since the Vienna World conference on human rights, 20 years ago.

It is also an occasion for me to recall and pay homage to Stéphane Hessel, for whom it is my heart-felt and painful duty to replace at this podium.

A diplomat, writer, member of the French Resistance and survivor of the Buchenwald concentration camp, Stéphane Hessel was an inspiring and beloved example of humility, clarity, perception and depth, and I believe I speak for many of the people in this room when I say that I sorely miss his presence among us today.

I met Stéphane Hessel in Strasbourg in January 1993, at a cross-regional preparatory meeting for the Vienna conference which was being held under the auspices of the Council of Europe. It was barely six months before the conference was due to take place, and the general assumption was that it was going to be a failure. A failure so terrible that it might even lead to a roll-back of human rights protection around the world.

Despite the efforts of some leaders, including former US President Jimmy Carter, there were many disagreements on the agenda. Like the 1968 Tehran conference, 25 years before Vienna, it seemed that the delegations would break apart into blocs, each grasping tightly onto their highly fortified positions — the Western countries favouring the primacy, or exclusivity, of civil and political rights; the East bloc and many developing nations arguing for economic and social rights above all.

In addition, there was a bloc of countries pushing for what they called “third generation” human rights; these spanned a number of variously defined group rights and collective rights. And there was another sizeable group of countries who vigorously argued that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was in some deep sense the product of a specifically Western culture, possibly imposed by colonial powers, and that in reality human rights should be understood to vary according to the characteristics and traditions of different cultures, so as to accommodate the peoples that were not around the table in 1948.

These were some very deep, very sharp differences — potentially irreconcilable. Moreover, as many of you here today will recall, the world was undergoing a series of tectonic shifts at that time, and some of them seemed extremely ominous.

The collapse of the Berlin Wall had created a global surge of hope, and indeed it was the main factor that had inspired the Vienna conference to be called in the first place. It had seemed to be the right moment for a new world to review its agenda for human rights, from basic principles to implementation.

But at the same time, the cannons were rumbling just next door, in the former Yugoslavia. There were charnel houses and killing fields less than a day’s drive from the conference rooms where our meeting was to take place.

It was in this difficult, conflicted period — the run-up to what promised to be a very trying conference — that I met Stéphane Hessel on a bus. We were both on our way to the Palais de l’Europe, in Strasbourg. I had no inkling that he was an Ambassador, or that he had worked at the UN during the process of writing the Universal Declaration, or that he was in fact one of the leading figures in our modern human rights landscape. What I knew from the start was that he was friendly, funny, humble, with a sharp mind and no pretensions whatsoever. He was in his mid 70s, though he looked far younger, and he could recite the entire Universal Declaration by heart. Over dinner, poetry spooled out of him. He was both a learned man and completely devoid of ego. It was a joy and a never ending lesson of life to be in his company.

It turned out that Stéphane Hessel had been asked to chair the discussion on the relationship between human rights, development and democracy at that preparatory conference in Strasbourg. And I, who was then the UN Special Rapporteur on summary executions, had been invited to preside the commission on the protection of human rights and development. So we did have quite a lot of work to do in common together with President Mary Robinson of Ireland who volunteered to be the rapporteur of the cross regional Strasbourg conference.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As our working relationship blossomed, we watched the larger process of developing consensus in Vienna unfold. Just a few weeks before the Vienna conference, Ibrahima Fall, the Secretary-General of the conference, still had quite literally hundreds of parentheses on his draft document for consensus. But gradually those parentheses fell away, and were replaced by agreement.

The key point, I now believe, was acceptance of what became almost a magic formula: the universality, indivisibility and interrelatedness of all human rights. This was the single factor that was most responsible for crafting the agreement that ultimately emerged. It allowed a number of States that had been resisting the entire notion of economic and social rights – because they saw them as a laundry-list of aspirations rather than rights intrinsic to human dignity and freedom – to take these economic and social rights on board, and it really anchored them within our discussions.

For example, the right to development. Several delegations would essentially get up and leave the room if a discussion of the right to development was tabled. There was a very binary mindset: either political rights, OR economic rights. But if you phrased this as indivisibility — as an inter-related and inter-dependant constellation of human rights, each of them a meaningful contribution to enjoyment of the others — those same delegations would stay in the room.

The debate regarding the alleged cultural specificities of human rights was resolved in a manner that to me seemed to strongly recall the legacy of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, which had been adopted in 1981. Ibrahima Fall was indeed a member of the drafting Committee of the African Charter. The African Charter states that ”civil and political rights cannot be dissociated from economic, social and cultural rights in their conception as well as universality “ and makes liberal reference to the primordial importance of rights and freedoms in traditional African cultures. It seeks, in its article 29, to preserve and reinforce Africa’s positive cultural values. (One example of those values would be the traditional freedom accorded to griots to criticize without risk of reprisals the conduct of the powerful. This in a sense prepares the way for freedom of expression and information).

This approach — of working with positive traditional values to strengthen attachment to the rights laid down in the Universal Declaration — was a particularly interesting one, given that African countries could not easily be suspected of seeking a colonial domination over other regions. As I’ve noted, in the run-up to Vienna a number of countries were asserting that human rights varied according to national and regional characteristics. These were countries which had not been present in 1948, when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted, because they did not at that time yet exist. The underlying notion was that criticism of your government for its failure to respect individual liberty and dignity was a kind of betrayal, a form of cultural imperialism, so that such critics were somehow working in the service of foreign, possibly colonial, interests.

I had myself an experience of this kind and had to confront the then President of Benin, Mathieu Kerekou, while leading an Amnesty International delegation.

Of course all countries are not the same, and all voices must, naturally, be heard. But these cultural specificities in no way erode the universality of human rights. Indeed aspiration to equality of all human beings, in dignity and rights inspired the fight against colonialism and doctrines of racial or cultural superiority. And the formula that ultimately created consensus on this point was: you choose your path, but the goal is something we hold in common. Your specificity will influence your way to advance towards the common goal, but that goal — of human dignity and human freedom, via the specific human rights elucidated in the International Bill of Rights — is something we share.

This inclusive approach, which wraps in the resilience and flexibility of every culture’s traditions to strengthen a common goal, has since then been used many times, to shield the International Bill of Rights from various specious attempts to alter its integrity with claims of cultural or religious singularity.
And so the Vienna Declaration became one of the strongest human rights documents of the past century. It emphasized that human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated, and took the key notion of universality a step further by committing States to the promotion and protection of all human rights “regardless of their political, economic, and cultural systems.”
Dear Participants,
What emerged from Vienna was powerful new recognition of women’s rights as human rights. The Declaration called for universal ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the integration of women’s rights into all UN activities. It recommended adoption of the Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women and endorsed the creation of a Special Rapporteur on Violence against Women.
Today, denial of rights to women — including sexual violence and domestic violence, subjects that had always been conceived as private crimes rather than human rights issues — are the subject of detailed reports by all the world’s governments in the course of the remarkable Universal Periodic Review, and this concerted global scrutiny of a long-neglected subject is just one of the many achievements of Vienna.
Mindful of the horrific abuse that continued in Bosnia, the Vienna conference was particularly vocal regarding impunity. Thus just one month after, the first ad hoc international criminal tribunal since Nuremberg was established, the Vienna Declaration encouraged the International Law Commission to push on with its work on establishing a permanent international criminal court.
A number of you in this room work closely on cases before the European Court of Human Rights, and you will understand the importance of this process.
The Vienna Declaration also amplified treaty implementation and their international and national monitoring. For instance, the Optional Protocols to the CAT, to CEDAW and to the ICESCR provide very important tools for the implementation of treaty bodies obligations; so is the expansion of special procedures to all sets of rights. It also called for new momentum in developing national human rights institutions. The thrust here was to “bring human rights home”.
This meant recognizing that human rights are not abstract words on an international treaty, but very real and practical rights to which every child, woman and man in every country are entitled.
They are also not limited to legal cases before the courts, but cut transversally across professions such as education, medicine and more.
National human rights institutions such as the German Institute of Human Rights — which was, I believe, set up following Vienna — are best placed to embed human rights into their home territory.
Vienna also acknowledged the crucial importance of civil society organizations. An unprecedented 800 NGOs were present, and they contributed with striking energy to the proceedings and to the mobilization of public opinion worldwide for a positive outcome of the Vienna Conferences.
Some of them are with us today in this room, as part of the German Human Rights Forum that was established following Vienna, and now counts 48 members.
But today we are seeing human rights NGOs under attack in several countries as “foreign agents” who face surveillance and even unacceptable reprisal. And I wonder, if Vienna were to be restaged today, whether they would be accorded as much prominence and respect as they were in 1993.
Women, children, persons with disabilities, indigenous people, representatives of minorities and migrants: individuals from all these groups testified to their experience at Vienna, and their concerns are reflected in the Declaration and Programme of Action. This laid the foundation for further development of international legal standards, their subsequent codification and establishment of means to encourage implementation.
Dear Friends,
It was also in Vienna that, upon an initiative from Amnesty International, NGOs pushed very hard for the creation of a High Commissioner for Human Rights. This was an old, blue-sky notion that had always seemed far too politically divisive and far-fetched to function. Most at the preparatory conference in Strasbourg thought it completely unrealistic. For one thing, how could the East bloc, the West and developing nations ever agree on who would become High Commissioner?

But the remarkable consensus that emerged, day after day, at the Vienna conference, made it possible for the idea of a High Commissioner to be accepted, too.

So as we discuss the legacy of the Vienna World Conference, we do also need to look at everything the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has achieved, because in a very real sense, OHCHR is the child of the Vienna Conference.

The post of High Commissioner was created to ensure that an independent, authoritative voice would speak out against human rights violations wherever they occur; to coordinate and supports the work of a range of different bodies; and to bring the weight of the United Nations to the work of supporting human rights for all.

With only two field presences in 1993, OHCHR now operates in 58 countries, and these field offices have increasingly played a human rights protection role — which is the ultimate aim of OHCHR — through their direct interventions, advocacy, monitoring, and contribution to legislative and policy reforms.

OHCHR has also become the focal point for commissions of inquiry and fact-finding missions into violations of human rights and humanitarian law, whether through mandates of the Human Rights Council, the Security Council, the Secretary-General or upon the High Commissioner’s own initiative.

In addition to ensuring that human rights promotion and protection has become an integral feature of the UN’s peacekeeping and peace building, OHCHR has endeavoured to be increasingly responsive to crises, with a rapid response capability. The Office deploys staff for human rights monitoring or assessments in cases of deteriorating human rights situations, and recently has participated in UN responses to humanitarian crises such as the Haiti earthquake in 2010. These crisis response activities are increasingly contributing to the fight against impunity, and have been paving the way for international criminal investigations opened by the ICC.
In order to play a key role in UN efforts in the most critical situations, OHCHR must continue to expand its crisis capabilities, and explore new opportunities to engage effectively. In the late 90s it became a key member of the UN prevention and early warning framework team. The recent establishment of the UN Operations and Crisis Centre is an opportunity to provide more early-warning and crisis-related human rights information to senior decision-makers. But becoming a more systematic, operational and predictable actor in humanitarian and human rights crisis response remains a challenge.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Alongside the Office of the High Commissioner, the entire human rights system of the UN has grown stronger since Vienna.
The Human Rights Council began its work in 2006, replacing the Commission on Human Rights. The Council has gained credibility for its brave and steadfast positions in the face of controversy. It has adopted approximately 456 resolutions which address a wide range of issues, some of them very sensitive — such as the protection of human rights on the Internet — and others serving to create a consensus on thorny issues such as “combating intolerance, negative stereotyping and stigmatization of, and discrimination, incitement to violence and violence against, persons based on religion or belief.”
In particular, the Human Rights Council has been notable for its successful management of the unique and remarkable Universal Periodic Review. This process — which examines every UN Member State’s human rights record without exception — requires governments to take charge of assessing and challenging each other’s detailed submissions regarding human rights measures in a number of specific topics, including women’s rights, domestic violence and gender-based discrimination. Other stake-holders, including non-governmental organizations, UN country teams, Treaty body experts and Special Rapporteurs, may also be involved in these Universal Periodic Reviews, and I can assure you that it is often a very powerful process.
During its first cycle, which ended in 2011, the Universal Periodic Review examined every UN Member State’s human rights record without exception, and it is now embarked on a second cycle. Implicit in this cycle is the need for every country to make progress regarding a number of benchmarks and recommendations that arose during the first round. Noting that the entire UPR procedure is also webcast — and thus available not only live but also permanently via the Internet — I think there can be no person in this room who does not appreciate what a ground-breaking process the UPR really is, and its potential for creating real advances in human rights in countries across the globe.
In June 1993, there were just 26 Special Procedures with thematic or country-based mandates. Today there are 48 separate mandates with 72 experts appointed by the Council. This combination of independence, expertise and UN-bestowed authority is a powerful one.
The human rights treaty bodies have also grown in number and weight. Two major new international treaties – on Persons with Disabilities and Disappearance – and nine important substantive and procedural Optional Protocols have been adopted since Vienna. In 1993, the seven treaties and protocols had received 742 ratifications by States. That number has grown to 2010 ratifications of 18 treaties and protocols.
Dear Participants
If we were to gather again in Vienna today, would we have a better text, or would the final declaration fall back from our 1993 commitments?

The global context was ominous in 1993, and it is ominous again now.

I refer not only to the upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa over the past two years, and to the crisis in the Sahel, but also to the painful global financial and economic crises and threats to the environment that make Vienna’s focus on economic, social and cultural rights especially relevant. Migrants, minorities and indigenous peoples remain the most vulnerable; the low ratification of the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families is a matter of great concern.

In addition, terrorism and counter-terrorism have created a situation that seems to once more call into question rights we had thought were agreed on for good. I refer of course to acts of forced disappearance, arbitrary detention, and torture which pull us back to practises unbefitting of mankind.
There has been significant progress since Vienna in tackling impunity for international crimes. In particular, ad hoc tribunals such as those for Former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Cambodia, but also the establishment of the International Criminal Court — the world’s first permanent tribunal with powers to prosecute suspected perpetrators of international crimes.
Yet here too, we still have a long way to go. The ICC can only become involved if the State concerned is among the 122 State Parties to the Rome Statute, or if a situation is referred to it by the Security Council. Two important situations – Darfur in 2008, and Libya in 2011 — have been referred, but the Security Council has so far failed with regard to Syria, despite OHCHR’s repeated reports of widespread or systematic crimes and violations.
Despite some truly inspiring advances in combating impunity and ensuring accountability both internationally and at the national level, far too many people with command responsibility continue to escape justice following gross human rights violations. Since Vienna, hundreds of thousands of people have died in genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia Herzegovina. The Palestinian territories are still occupied. Massive violations have occurred in Iraq and Sri Lanka. And war crimes continue to be committed in numerous internal conflicts, including those in Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Syria and Sudan.
Moreover, despite tremendous progress, there continues to be some resistance within the UN and the international community regarding the priority that needs to be given to human rights issues. The economic context affects the UN as a whole, but has particular impact on OHCHR, which has since its inception been financially fragile. For many years, limited funding to OHCHR (we painfully moved from 1% to 3% of the UN regular budget) revealed unwillingness to support a strong human rights mandate, and this problem may re-emerge.
Many other challenges will face us in coming years. The spectre of discrimination and prejudice continues to fall across entire communities, creating obstacles to free choice, twisting lives, inciting hate and violence on the basis of perceived differences in birth or belief. Thus, because of spurious assertions based on national, ethnic or racial origin or religion, Muslim, Jews, Roma, Christians and indigenous people live, in various regions, under the threat of violence, and are prevented from playing full roles in their society.
Another example of such prejudice is the problem of discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Recently there has been significant movement, including the first formal UN debate on the issue, which took place in March 2012 at the Human Rights Council. The atmosphere at the outset was tense and some States walked out rather than engage in discussion. There was also a walk out at the Durban Review conference against Racism and Xenophobia in 2008. But different States were involved and the very fact that there was a structured, formal debate among States was in itself a step forward.
Yet another thorny topic that will require sustained attention in years to come is helping companies and corporations to develop human rights agendas. Important economic actors, both transnational and national, need to understand the nature and legal protection of economic, social and cultural rights; the right to health; the right to housing; and, the right to water. We will also need to provide training and support for partners engaged in the realisation of economic, social and cultural rights, including NGOs, judges, lawyers, and national human rights institutions, as well as civil servants and regulators.
In fact, in a more general sense, translating States’ human rights commitments into reality is perhaps the single most important challenge of our time, following a long period devoted more to standard-setting. The demand on OHCHR’s field offices for technical assistance has increased steadily, and national human rights institutions can also play a crucial role. We also need to enhance the United Nations’ ability to improve the human rights of all. And this means we must also continue striving to mainstream human rights throughout the UN system, particularly in terms of the UN’s development agenda. This mainstreaming has been something of a challenging process, to date, but as part of drawing up post 2015 goals, we have seen some significant advances, including on 30 September 2010 when, under the leadership of High Commissioner Navi Pillay, 16 UN agencies agreed on a joint declaration on the human rights of migrants in irregular situation. Human rights are now much more widely regarded as indispensible assets, and, indeed, as the foundations, of a global partnership for development.

Dear Participants,

As we embark today on an agenda that promises to be rich with insight and practical advice, it seems to me I can do no better than to urge all of you to honour the memory of Stéphane Hessel, by striving for a world in which his vision of human freedom and dignity can be realized in the spirit of article 28 of the UDHR. All of us, I believe, are convinced that this world can only come about if there is greater accountability, the complete elimination of discrimination and prejudice, a more equitable allocation of resources, and a globalized freedom from want and from fear. Laws and international bodies are a necessary baseline, but the real work is to strengthen the “girdle of brotherly hands”, and of equally sisterly hands to make human rights, at last, a reality for all.

Thank you.

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