Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-01-17-Speech-3-168"
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"en.20010117.5.3-168"2
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"Mr President, last year I attended the 56th UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and last week, I attended the Human Rights Contact Group: much more needs to be done and, if anything, the situation is worsening across the world.
The promotion and defence of human rights is a high priority for the European Union and remains one of the fundamental principles of the Union. Indeed, I believe the concept of human rights should inform everything we do in the name of democracy because a negative human rights situation is often caused or exacerbated by the absence of democracy and inefficient and corrupt government structures. Human rights do not exist in isolation, neither should they be considered in abstract. They are the fundamental rights of all people regardless of who they are, where or to whom they are born. Yet as we speak in this Chamber, the human rights of men, women and children are being violated.
This is why the Council and the Member States must work for the universal ratification of the main human rights instruments available to all countries, in particular, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights, the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, already mentioned, the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination and the extremely important Convention against Torture. We also call for immediate measures to be taken to protect homosexual persons from degrading and inhuman treatment to which they are still subjected: because of their sexuality, they still face the death penalty in certain parts of the world.
We also call on the EU to support the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the other international organisations and NGOs in the fight against repression of the independent media already referred to by Lord Bethell and the repression of journalists and writers and to urge all states to end censorship, to protect the right of access to official information and to stop the restriction on access to modern information technology, often a saviour to people being repressed.
We also call upon the Council and the UN Commission on Human Rights to give full support to the drafting of the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances. Once again, and I hope not in vain, we call for the abolition of the death penalty.
Countries can, will and should be named and shamed, but in this House and together with the Council and the UN Commission, we must redouble our efforts to ensure that men, women and children are born equal and can live as equals, enjoying the fundamental freedoms of human rights. That is the message that this House must carry to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva and I hope everyone in this House will support such an intention."@en1
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