UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres yesterday launched a “call to action” against rising attacks on human rights worldwide, highlighting the persecution of minorities and “alarming levels of femicide.”
“Human rights are under assault,” he said as opened the UN Human Rights Council’s main annual session in Geneva, Switzerland.
“People are being left behind. Fears are growing,” he said, pointing to swelling divisions and political polarization in many countries.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“A perverse political arithmetic has taken hold: divide people to multiply votes,” he said, warning that “the rule of law is being eroded.”
Guterres said civilians were being “trapped in war-torn enclaves, starved and bombarded in clear violation of international law” as well as “human trafficking, affecting every region in the world, preying on vulnerability and despair.”
He also said women and girls were being “enslaved, exploited and abused,” “activists tossed in jail and religious and ethnic minorities groups persecuted” and “minorities, indigenous people, migrants, refugees, the LGBTI community vilified as the ‘other’ and tormented by acts of hate.”
Guterres launched a “call to action” to the entire UN system, to governments, lawmakers, the private sector, civil society and to “people everywhere.”
He laid out seven areas where he said concrete action could “achieve a quantum leap in progress or avert the risk of backsliding,” including boosting efforts to halt violence against women and girls — “the world’s most pervasive human rights abuse.”
“We see a pushback against women’s rights, alarming levels of femicide, attacks on women human rights defenders and the persistence of laws and policies that perpetuate subjugation and exclusion,” Guterres said.
“We also continue to see chronic stagnation in women’s participation in political leadership roles, peace processes and economic inclusion,” he said.
Work toward gender equality “starts within,” he said, pointing out that as of Jan. 1, the UN achieved “gender parity across our senior-most ranks.”
“We pledge to reach gender parity throughout the UN system at all levels by 2028,” he said, adding that the UN would apply “a gender perspective” to all its work.
Other areas of specific focus included offering broader protections for people trapped in conflict situations, increased efforts to protect civic space, including free expression and assembly, and to recognize the rights challenges posed by the climate crisis and new technologies, he said.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
STOPOVERS: As organized crime groups in Asia and the Americas move drugs via places such as Tonga, methamphetamine use has reached levels called ‘epidemic’ A surge of drugs is engulfing the South Pacific as cartels and triads use far-flung island nations to channel narcotics across the globe, top police and UN officials told reporters. Pacific island nations such as Fiji and Tonga sit at the crossroads of largely unpatrolled ocean trafficking routes used to shift cocaine from Latin America, and methamphetamine and opioids from Asia. This illicit cargo is increasingly spilling over into local hands, feeding drug addiction in communities where serious crime had been rare. “We’re a victim of our geographical location. An ideal transit point for vessels crossing the Pacific,” Tonga Police Commissioner Shane McLennan
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS