Dear Ambassador Hilale,
Excellencies, distinguished panelists, ladies and gentlemen,
Thanking you all for your participation in our side-event today, I would like to share with you some ideas on the role of prevention in the promotion and protection of human rights.
Needless to say that preventive measures and strategies are progressively gaining in importance as an effective tool of averting preventable threats and emergencies in human rights sphere.
There are many references to the importance of preventive dealings in a number of international human rights instruments. But they are too scattered to serve as a solid base for developing a comprehensive preventive strategy in the field of human rights.
According to the UN General Assembly resolution 60/251 the Human Rights Council was designed inter alia to contribute, through dialogue and cooperation, towards the prevention of human rights violations.
However, prevention topic was somehow sidelined and underrepresented in the course of the debates in the Human Rights Council and in its decisions and resolutions.
This testified to the necessity of formulating a general concept of prevention in a separate resolution of the Human Rights Council taking into account the provisions of relevant international human rights instruments.
Nowadays, promotion of human rights is in itself an important means of protection of human rights. However the best way to protect human rights is to prevent related violations. Therefore, we believe that alongside promotion of human rights prevention of human rights violations should be placed prior to protection of human rights. It is clear that prevention of human rights violations is more cost effective in terms of financial and human resources than dealing with their consequences, especially when gross violations of human rights are committed.
And by adopting in 2010 its first ever resolution particularly dedicated to the issue of prevention, the Human Rights Council made a significant contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights.
Requested by this resolution, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights organized the Workshop on the Role of prevention in the promotion and protection of human rights in 2011, with active participation of all stakeholders.
The main conclusions of the Workshop were - the concept of prevention in the context of human rights should be further developed, and that there is a need to further elaborate what prevention means in practice.
Later on the Council adopted by consensus, as in previous time, a consecutive follow-up resolution co-sponsored by 45 countries that proved once again need for better understanding of prevention among all the human rights stakeholders.
And I am pleased to tell that at the current 24th session of the Human Rights Council the new draft of the resolution “The role of prevention in the promotion and protection of human rights” is being put forward by representative core group encompassing Ukraine, Hungary Morocco, Maldives, Poland and Uruguay.
I sincerely hope that actions and methods proposed by this resolution for in-depth developing the concept of prevention would gain broad support from the UN Member States thus strengthening the Council’s capability to comprehensively address human rights violations.
To conclude, dear Ambassador Hilale, I wish to express my strong belief that today’s side event will not only help to better understand the complex nature of prevention in promotion and protection of human rights.
I am sure it will also serve as yet another step bringing us closer to the development of the concept of prevention and its further practical application.
I thank you.