Press Release: Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
In an open letter to world Governments, a group of 22 UN independent human
rights experts called on States to incorporate universally agreed international
human rights norms and standards with strong accountability mechanisms into the
UN Rio+20 sustainable development conference’s goals, as the Rio+20 first round
of informal-informal negotiations began today in New York.
“Global goals are easily set, but seldom met,”
the rights experts warned, raising the bar for what the conference can and
should achieve. “A real risk exists that commitments made in Rio will remain
empty promises without effective monitoring and accountability,” they stressed
less than a hundred days before the conference starts.
The second Rio
Summit, Rio+20, is expected to lay the foundations for a set of global
Sustainable Development Goals to complement and strengthen the UN Millennium
Development Goals created in 2000.
“Learning from the mistakes of the
Millennium Development Goals, the new sustainable goals must integrate the full
range of human rights linked with sustainable development, and human rights must
be the benchmark for whether or not inclusive, equitable and sustainable
development is occurring,” the independent experts said
Twenty years
after the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, and
ten after the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, the
mounting effects of climate change and environmental degradation have raised the
stakes further. Both the Goals and the means of reviewing progress must be based
on human rights from the start.
“Human rights have guided sixty-plus
years of progress by providing a legal baseline for political actions,” they
said. “Human rights must now be the glue in Rio: they must bind countries to the
commitments they make. States have an opportunity in Rio to create the
transformative changes needed or else fare no better than in previous global
attempts in this regard.”
A double accountability
mechanism
The experts suggested that Rio+20 could establish an
international accountability mechanism similar to the Human Rights Council’s
Universal Periodic Review, which subjects each country’s human rights record to
a State-led peer review on the basis of information submitted by the country
concerned, UN entities, civil society and other stakeholders.
At the
national level, Governments should establish their own national accountability
mechanisms, including independent monitoring and civil society participation, in
order to evaluate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
This double accountability mechanism would help to ensure that these
goals are more enforceable than previous international ones, and to enable the
full realization of human rights, including the right to development. Human
rights mean prioritizing the most marginalized and vulnerable in pursuit of the
Sustainable Development Goals. It means that action can be corrected when
progress is uneven or is achieved at the expense of certain groups. The
fulfillment of human rights is the litmus test for whether or not sustainable
development is occurring.
“Science tells us that we are reaching a set
of environmental tipping points. We must therefore make Rio+20 the political
tipping point. Our futures and planet are at stake, and we have three months to
shape the ideas and political consensus that this huge task
requires.”
Read the open letter sent to
Governments: http://www-stage.lan.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/OpenLetterRio20.aspx
The
experts: Olivier De Schutter (food), Catarina de Alburquerque (water and
sanitation), James Anaya (indigenous peoples), Chaloka Beyani (internally
displaced persons), Kamala Chandrakirana (Working Group on discrimination
against women in law and in practice), François Crépeau (migrants), Virginia
Dandan (international solidarity), Calin Georgescu (toxic waste), Anand Grover
(health), Rita Izsak (minority issues), Margaret Jungk (Working Group on human
rights and transnational corporations), Maina Kiai (freedom of peaceful assembly
and of association), Frank La Rue (freedom of opinion and expression), Cephas
Lumina (foreign debt), Rashida Manjoo (violence against women), Najat Maalla
N’jid (sale of children), Raquel Rolnik (adequate housing), Magdalena Sepúlveda
(extreme poverty), Margaret Sekaggya (human rights defenders), Farida Shaheed
(cultural rights), Gulnara Shahinian (contemporary forms of slavery), Kishore
Singh (education).
Read more about the recent work of Soroptimist International and Rio+20:
Women’s Empowerment and the Sustainable Development Goals
Rio+20: An Urgent Call for Action
Green Economy Needs Gender Equality
SI Attends UNESCO NGO Meeting on Sustainable Development
SI Address Ministers forEnvironment at Nairobi Meetings