22nd session of the
Human Rights Council
Item 2
Annual Report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
ID 28 February 2013
Delivered by Renate Bloem
Thank you Mr. President,
Madame High Commissioner, CIVICUS welcomes your annual report and commends you on the extraordinary number of country visits and your continued audacity to speak up whenever gross abuses of Human Rights occur. We also laud your offices’ thematic priorities and share your concerns about the scarcity of funds in complete disconnect with the importance of tasks you have been asked to fulfill. We hear your Human Rights Appeal for 2013 and call on all members of the council and governments beyond to request the Secretary General and the General Assembly to take immediate steps a) for more balanced distribution within the overall regular UN budget to reflect the equal status of peace, development and human rights and b) to take urgent steps to seek increased extra budgetary resources.
CIVICUS also wishes to comment on your exemplary engagement in the Rio process which was rewarded with at least some human rights language inclusions in the (otherwise poor) outcome document. We also see your offices’ current involvement in the follow up to Rio+20, the Post-2015 agenda, as being of extreme importance as a guarantee to bringing the universality of the human rights perspective into a new people centered sustainable development agenda, into an agenda which includes the link between development and the enjoyment of economic, social, cultural, civil and political rights. The Freedom from Fear and Want is the legacy of the Vienna Declaration and CIVICUS considers it as a basis of a new social contract between governments and citizens.
The influence and active participation of civil society in governance structures is a critical aspect of sustainable development. Yet, in how many countries has civil society been silenced, its voice being stifled? How many laws, even recently, have been introduced to criminalise the work of civil society and human rights defenders?
Madame High Commissioner, you deplore the helplessness of the international community to prevent and end these daunting crises. Do we need more involvement of civil society?
Thank you for your attention