25^th Session of the Human Rights Council

High-level Dialogue with relevant United Nations entities

on the promotion of preventative approaches within the UN system

Intervention by the Permanent Representative of Ukraine,

Ambassador Yurii KLYMENKO

 (Geneva, March 4, 2014)

Mr. President,

Excellencies,

Distinguished participants,

My delegation welcomes today’s Hi-level dialogue and commends tireless and dedicated efforts by the Hungarian delegation which made this event happen.

Being consistent advocate of importance of prevention in the promotion and protection of human rights, Ukraine highly appreciates increasing commitment of states and the United Nations to move from a culture of "reaction" to one of "prevention" and readiness to work together with all stakeholders in order to make this shift practical. 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.

In this regard we positively assess a new initiative by the UN Secretary-General to improve UN action to safeguard human rights around the world - “Rights up Front”, its focus on early responding to human rights violations and significance of preventive efforts to this end.  It is important that UN Secretariat, Funds and Programmes ensure that the UN System, both on the ground and at HQ, is properly prepared – early on – to deal with evolving crisis situations.

Mr. President,

My country sadly recognized the price of insufficient action on prevention of human rights violations. If its role was rightly understood and all relevant precautionary measures taken timely, I believe that recent tragic events during peaceful protests in Ukraine could be averted.

To make prevention a workable tool aimed at improvement of human rights situations on national level and worldwide, we need concerted efforts by governments supported by NHRI’s, coordinated by appropriate UN machinery and expertise and in close cooperation with civil society. The Human Rights Council has a crucial role to play in achieving this objective.

To this end Ukraine - along with our core group of co-sponsoring states encompassing also Hungary, Maldives, Morocco, Poland and Uruguay brings forward the initiative on the role of prevention in the promotion and protection of human rights.

The corresponding panel on the subject will be organized at the 27^th session of the Council this September. We invite all interested stakeholders to actively participate in this event and in broad discussion of prevention.

With elaboration of the concept of prevention and applicable guidance endorsed by the United Nations, we will be able to effectively ensure adequate level of human rights protection.

We hope that deeper elaboration of prevention in human rights dimension will enhance well-developed conflict prevention mechanisms of the UN. Especially it could be highly instrumental in averting misuse of biased and framed allegations of human rights violations, in particular in the field of ethnic and national minorities rights, as a sufficient pretext for illegal military intervention, that Ukraine is subjected to these days.

I thank you.