Women's rights

Women at work  High-Level discussion, Economic Growth through Women’s Empowerment Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet 27 September 2018 President Grybauskaitė, Secretary General Excellencies, Colleagues, friends, I would like to begin by thanking President Grybauskaitė for hosting this event. When I was President of Chile, a female journalist once asked me: “How are you going to cope? You don’t have a spouse.” A female journalist. We all here have some insight into how hard it can be to surmount the obstacles to women’s leadership. I congratulate President Grybauskaitė for leading by example, through boosting women’s engagement in political and economic activities. Lithuania, today, has three times as many women Members of Parliament than it did three years ago: my congratulations. The question we’re addressing at this meeting is not whether we can afford to bring women fully into economic life. It’s whether we can afford not to. ...

Justice for Syria  Ensuring Justice for Syria Statement by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet 27 September 2018 Distinguished panellists, Excellencies, Colleagues, friends, The past seven and a half years in Syria constitute a tragedy; crimes of historic proportions have been perpetrated. The death toll in the hundreds of thousands. Innumerable people have been wounded, and more than half the people in the country have been forced to leave their homes. When their places of refuge themselves come under attack, terrified families are again forced to flee – sometimes multiple times. And their vulnerability grows. These are among the people who are now crowded into Idlib, in desperation and fear. Again and again, my Office and the Human Rights Council's Commission of Inquiry, which we support, have reported clear indications that parties to the conflict, including the Syrian Government, have failed to consistently respect the fundamental principle...

Seventy years ago, United Nations member states approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide – a treaty born out of the fervent desire to ensure that “never again” would any person face the horror of genocide, such as the atrocities inflicted by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The Convention was the first human rights treaty adopted by the UN General Assembly. Its approval came just one day ahead of proclaiming the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) on 10 December 1948, which explicitly laid out the rights inherent to all. Today, the world is not free from the threat and reality of the “odious scourge” of genocide. As the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said, “we must take stock of the gravity of recent acts perpetrated against the Rohingya and Yazidis, and we must do everything possible to hold those responsible to account.” “Accountability matters – not only because it provides justice for victims and punish...