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Bertrand RAMCHARAN WORLD FORUM ON HUMAN RIGHTS, Nantes, France, 16-19 May 2004 OPENING CEREMONY, 16 May Bertrand RAMCHARAN Version prior to delivery of the speech BERTRAND RAMCHARAN United Nations acting High Commissioner for Human Rights Respect for international norms of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law is an imperative of our civilization Mr. Chairman, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, It is a great honour to participate in the opening of this, the first UNESCO World Forum on Human Rights. I bring you the greetings and good wishes of all my colleagues in the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. We wish you a very successful Forum and we shall do our utmost to assist in bringing this about. In today's troubled world it is crucial that one vital message go forth from this Forum: respect for the norms of human rights and humanitarian law is an imperative of our civilization: for the strong as well as the weak countries of world; for the rich as well as the poor countries. No one should be allowed to flout the basic standards of conduct laid down by the international community as part of contemporary international law. If we do not uphold the international rule of law we shall return to the dark ages and we shall be at the mercy of bullies. Our first duty, therefore, must be to examine ways and means of strengthening the application of international law. We can do this by calling for universal acceptance of the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and for more recourse to its advisory opinions - especially by the Security Council. We must call for the Secretary-General to be given the competence to request advisory opinions. Why is this important? It is because, today, there is a crisis in the application of the international law and unless we insist on respect for the Principles of the United Nations Charter and of the norms of international law, the foundations of international human rights and humanitarian law would be in jeopardy. We must not allow this to happen. All Governments must be held accountable to international human rights and humanitarian law. The content of international law is internationally defined. It is the competent authorities of the international community that can define the content of international law, not individual national Governments. All Governments must be held accountable for abiding by international human rights and humanitarian law. In the final analysis it is the Security Council that must uphold the principle of accountability and that must hold the barrier against impunity. From this perspective, the strengthening of the Security Council must become a leading policy objective of contemporary international relations. WORLD FORUM ON HUMAN RIGHTS, Nantes, France, 16-19 May 2004 OPENING CEREMONY, 16 May Bertrand RAMCHARAN As the Secretary-General of the United Nations has advocated in his programme on the strengthening of the United Nations, all Governments must be able to show that they have in place an adequate and effective national protection system embracing constitutional provisions for the defence of human rights; national legislation reflective of international human rights norms; courts that apply international human rights norms; national human rights institutions; monitoring arrangements; and arrangements teaching and spreading the human rights idea. Human rights education must be an integral part of primary and secondary education - as well as in universities and other higher institutions of learning. By deepening a culture of human rights a country makes its society more just and equitable. It contributes to national peace and international peace. The route to world peace passes through universal respect for human rights. These are the foundation messages that must go forth from this World Forum. Then there is the first theme of the Forum: terrorism. Terrorism is against human rights. There can be no excuse for it. Terrorism must not be tolerated and we must all work to eradicate it. This is an imperative duty that the Security Council has laid down for the entire international community. The Security Council, the General Assembly, and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have all also insisted that terrorism must be stamped out while maintaining respect for norms of international human rights law from which there can never be any derogation. This includes the interdiction of torture. The message must go forth from this Forum that human rights must be respected in the struggle against terrorism. Torture is impermissible in any circumstance. We in, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights have published a Digest of the key international and regional human rights jurisprudence on respect for human rights in the struggle against terrorism. Three insights stand out: we must never depart from the rule of law; we must insist on the non derogability of fundamental human rights; and we must adhere to the principle of proportionality. Turning to the second theme of the Forum, globalization and the struggle against discrimination and exclusion, there are some fundamental policy propositions that must guide us. In the first place globalization must be put to work for human rights, not against it. A globalizing world must not detract from the ability and responsibility of governments to uphold basic guarantees of human rights protection. The standards of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights must be the benchmarks of a globalizing world. Another key proposition is that, in a globalizing world, Business must be held accountable to international norms. This is necessary for a very simple reason: increasingly, international corporations are even more powerful than governments. As power-centers they must be held accountable to international human rights norms. Otherwise we would have a situation in which significant power-holders escape accountability. We cannot allow this. In a globalizing world the principle of non discrimination becomes even more important. In WORLD FORUM ON HUMAN RIGHTS, Nantes, France, 16-19 May 2004 OPENING CEREMONY, 16 May Bertrand RAMCHARAN the process leading up to the Durban Conference it was emphasized that each country should strive for a modernized national vision embracing all parts of the population in a spirit of inclusiveness. Especially as people are moving so much across frontiers, the modernization of the national vision is essential for every country of the world. Every country of the world must also have a place in a national monitoring system to detect and prevent discrimination. It is not good enough to wait until the problem develops and then to take corrective action. The emphasis in the future must be increasingly on the prevention of discrimination and other violation of human rights. As part of a preventive system, every country of the world must be able to show that it has ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and that it is cooperating in good faith in the full application of the Convention. As a policy proposition for the future we should insist on the universal application of the Convention. We should also seek to supplement it in areas such as discrimination on the Internet and the elaboration of a Convention on human rights education. The third theme of this Forum is poverty as a violation of human rights. Two policy propositions are important here. The first is that every country, and the international community as a whole, should have arrangements and institutions to detect and to act on situations where there is a consistent pattern of gross violations of economic and social rights. Stated simply, if there are parts of the population suffering from preventable property those responsible must be held to account. Furthermore, national courts should be vested with the competence to hear claims from the victims of poverty in situations where they consider that the Government could have acted to prevent it but has failed to do so. These two notions, namely a consistent pattern of gross violations of economic, social and cultural rights, and judicial determination of preventable poverty can help us develop a human rights approach to tackling poverty as a violation of human rights. To conclude, the times we are living in call for insistence on respect for the norms of international law. Terrorism is unlawful and must be combated keeping in mind the letter and spirit of international human rights law. Globalization must be put to work for human rights. Every country should strive to prevent discrimination, basing itself on the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; and preventable poverty should be brought under judicial scrutiny and control. I wish you a successful Forum. .
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