36^th session of the UN Human Rights Council

Agenda item 2: Oral update by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

General debates

 

Intervention by Permanent Representative of Ukraine                                 

Ambassador Yurii Klymenko

 

(September 12, 2017)

 

Mr. President,

We are grateful to the High Commissioner for the oral update, in which he talked about human rights violations in dozens of countries as well as of worrying trends that may cause degrading of human rights protection globally if not reverted.

We agree that none of human rights violations should be ignored wherever they take place; we also believe that a positive human rights record is not something established forever once achieved. Transparency and cooperation with human rights mechanisms should be essential here as both remedy and precaution.

There should be no fear of monitoring when there is confidence in the proper way of addressing human rights concerns or a strong determination to improve the situation; on the contrary, denied access is most likely an attempt to cover human rights abuses.

Over three years of illegal Russian occupation of Crimea have been marked by blatant violations of basic human rights and fundamental freedoms of the Crimean population, with no access to the peninsula for international monitoring. It must remain our priority to seek, by all available instruments, the monitoring and presence in Crimea of established human rights monitoring mechanisms in compliance with the UN GA Resolutions 68/262 and 71/205.

We support the High Commissioner and his Office in their efforts to get access to Crimea.

I thank you.