Annan urges early agreement on new human rights council
After a year of significant commitments, this year must be a year of visible results, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today, calling on the “Group of 77” developing countries and China to pay particular attention to forging an early agreement on the new Human Rights Council.
After a year of significant commitments, this year must be a year of visible results, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today, calling on the “Group of 77” developing countries and China to pay particular attention to forging an early agreement on the new Human Rights Council.
“I call on you to redouble your efforts for an early agreement on the new Human Rights Council mandated at the World Summit,” he said as the chairmanship of the Group of 77 and China passed from Jamaica to South Africa.
He said the decline in the credibility of the existing Commission on Human Rights was casting a shadow over the entire UN and urged the 132 developing country members of the G77 to act quickly to ensure a seamless transition between the Commission and the Council during the Commission’s final session this March.
“With your initiative, we can ensure that human rights are restored to the prominence accorded to them in the Charter,” he said.
A stronger renewed United Nations, while important for all Member States, remains most important to the people of the developing world, he added.
General Assembly President Jan Eliasson said according to Jamaican Foreign Minister K. D. Knight’s words during last year’s handover from Qatar, “we see that the development agenda, resource flows and disaster management were three of Jamaica’s stated priorities. I believe that the whole of the General Assembly will look back on Jamaica’s Chairmanship of the G77 and China as one in which important and very real progress was made.”
A key feature of the work this year would be the need to build bridges, he said, since so many of the issues of development and poverty reduction, communicable diseases, peacebuilding, human rights, the environment, organized crime, terrorism are areas in which the whole world has a common interest.
“All Member States, be they North or South, large, medium or small, need effective international cooperation and good multilateralism. We have to prove that ‘together’ is better and more effective than ‘alone’,” Mr. Eliasson said.