Inside Geneva: baptism of fire for UN’s new human rights chief

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This week Inside Geneva sits down for the last in our series of exclusive interviews with UN human rights commissioners.

Volker Türk has a copy of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that he was given at school more than 40 years ago. Growing up in his native Austria, he focused his mind on human rights.

“In light of the history of my own country, Holocaust, its own atrocities committed by Austrians during the Second World War, it was very formative for me to actually really say OK what has to happen in this world so that we come to this never again attitude,” he told host Imogen Foulkes. 

Today, there are 55 conflicts worldwide – not the best atmosphere to celebrate the 75^th anniversary of the universal declaration. But Volker Türk has a compelling analogy of why it is still important.

“We actually have traffic regulations, and they exist because otherwise people would get killed. That’s the same on the human rights front, and that’s why the Universal Declaration of human rights is so important. Yes there are people who are violating traffic regulations, as there are people who violate human rights law, sometimes egregiously, as we see now. It doesn’t mean that this takes away the fundamental centrality of the norms.”

He also believes that if warring parties could really see the suffering they cause each other, peace might be easier to achieve.

“I was at the border to Gaza in Rafah, on north Sinai. I met Palestinian children, who had injuries that I have rarely seen in my life. Spine injuries, some of them couldn’t even talk, because they were in such deep trauma and shock. I also met families of hostages, Israeli hostages and I saw their pain, and I can see that there is immense suffering out there and that suffering is created from humans to humans.”

Is there anything to celebrate on this 75^th anniversary? Perhaps not, but we can learn.

“We cannot afford just to stay in the present. We need to learn from our crisis today to make it better in the future, and I hope that if there’s one single message that comes across: that the centrality of human rights has to be much more pronounced than ever before.”

Join host Imogen Foulkes on the Inside Geneva to listen to the full episode. 

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