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	Human rights around the world are currently under major attack by Andrew Gilmour UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights   Oct. 2017   Statement by Andrew Gilmour, UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights to the 2017 Dublin Platform for Human Rights Defenders - Hosted by Front Line Defenders, Dublin, Ireland   Human rights around the world are currently under major attack. I feel it even in the rarefied atmosphere of the UN in New York and Geneva, where High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad Al Hussein, my colleagues and I are criticized from many quarters, and attempts are made to silence us, slash our budgets and reduce our capacities. So if we feel it, even there, you on the frontline surely feel it far more acutely. An antagonistic nationalism is on the rise, with mounting levels of racism and xenophobia. We are seeing a form of populism that is often demagogic, cheap and xenophobic, with leaders and the media claiming to speak 'on behalf of the will of the people'. This form of populism tends to be anti-foreigner, anti-minority, and seeks out victims to blame who are usually from the most vulnerable groups in society.   As High Commissioner Zeid put it not long ago: 'The bellowing of hatred I heard around the world sends us back to a time when women, sexual minorities, and racial and religious groups had far fewer liberties'.   And that is precisely the point of many of the populists who want to return to some idyllic age when rights were privileges reserved for only a few.   I joined the human rights movement at the end of the 70s, as a naive enthusiastic teenage volunteer. Not that we knew it then, but it was the start of a human rights revolution that lasted more than three decades. A period when enormous progress was made. But now we are seeing a backlash, or the pendulum swinging in the other direction, with many influential people questioning, and trends going against the values of human rights, freedoms and tolerance.   The shrinking of civil society space is not an accident of fate, but is usually the result of intolerant, and at the same time insecure, leaders (whether politically, militarily or sometimes psychologically insecure), who cannot bear the fact that NGOs might question their infallible decisions, and speak up for the rights of those being targeted. In the last few years, we have seen bans against NGOs passed in many countries, including Russia, Turkey, Israel, India, Egypt, Ethiopia and Kenya.   The backlash takes many forms. We see it in countries like the Philippines, where thousands of people - both petty criminals and bystanders - have been mercilessly gunned down in the streets and their homes by state agents, with a President who boasts of having personally participated in some murders, and encourages his soldiers to rape village women.   Millions of people around the world were shocked to hear talk from some leaders about actually 'liking torture', believe it or not, and claiming that 'torture works'. Such glorification of torture is profoundly troubling, beyond a reluctant condoning, though even that would be bad enough.   The backlash continues to be felt also in connection with efforts to fight terrorism. While of course an important goal, we have however seen that these efforts have been used as a blanket justification to silence critical voices, clamp down on civil society, arbitrary detention in huge numbers and even execution of innocent people.   Some of these measures, which are in total contravention of human rights, have been observed in places like Nigeria, Bahrain and Egypt. What we find time and again - Governments simply refuse to learn this lesson - is that when you fight terrorism in a way that abuses the civilian population and leads to communities feeling more marginalized, then you end up with more terrorists than there were in the first place. This is something we in the UN are really trying to do something about now.   We have also seen entire groups unjustly vilified, immigrants and minorities, whether Roma, Muslims or Mexicans.   And we still have a long way to go in our struggle to fully realise the rights of women, including their right to equality and to be free from discrimination, violence, and sexual harassment (though the enormous brouhaha about the conduct of Harvey Weinstein suggests that we may at last be at some welcome tipping point on that).   What human rights need to survive and to push back against the backlash is a strong civil society, in the form of courageous NGOs and human rights defenders. And what we in the UN know and must do more to acknowledge is that you play a fundamental role in consistently standing up for human rights, tolerance and justice. You open space for debate, and help shape opinion. You are key in driving local decision-making processes for reform.   And as you know all too well, interrupting the status quo is often not well-received. Standing up for the rights of others and for what is right can mean exposing what powerful interests do not want exposed. When it involves the redistribution of power, and access to valuable resources, it can cause a violent response. Indigenous and environmental rights defenders are often the target - as I learned just last week when I was in Colombia, and before that in Honduras. And women human rights defenders too are exposed to specific risks.   We at the United Nations rely on cooperation with civil society actors around the world. You provide indispensable on-the-ground insights and information, alert the UN system to developing situations, and push for the right action to be taken.   For the work of the UN Human Rights Office - our advocacy with governments; our technical cooperation and training programmes for law enforcement, government officials, justice and security personnel, civil society and more; especially our monitoring and investigating reports of human rights violations - all this would be without foundation if we could not count on your courage, your expertise, your sense of principle, and your voices.   We have prioritized support to civil society in some of the following ways: we provide legal advice and capacity-building; we share lessons learned and best practices, and produce practical tools; we facilitate civil society engagement with UN Special procedures, treaty bodies and the Universal Periodic Review; we foster dialogue with State actors, and support legal frameworks and effective access to justice.   At times, as some of you have experienced or witnessed engagement with the UN on human rights can lead to reprisals and intimidation. This has been a long-standing concern to the Organization, and we are distressed at the increasing number of such acts.   These range from travel bans, threats and harassment, smear campaigns, surveillance, restrictive legislation, physical attacks, arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, denial of access to medical attention, and even killings.   Intimidation of human rights defenders is happening all the time. The purpose is to penalize individuals who have already spoken out, thereby also sending a signal to many others from speaking out in future.   Recognising the gravity of this issue, last October the Secretary-General announced that he had asked me to lead efforts to strengthen UN-wide action for prevention of, protection against, investigation into and accountability for reprisals. Many Governments are very supportive, and have offered resources for this endeavor. Our host country Ireland is very strong in this regard. We are trying to get as much information about what is going on, and for this we need your input, and will circulate our email address to help us get it.   Last month I presented the annual report of the Secretary-General on reprisals to the Human Rights Council in Geneva.   I am normally suspicious of the type of people who quote themselves. But I hope I may be forgiven in light of the direct relevance to what I am talking about today if I recount a few lines of what I said in my speech to the Human Rights Council three weeks ago as I presented the Secretary-General's report on reprisals:   We believe the significance of this report goes far beyond the individual cases contained in it. I think we should see these individuals as the canary in the coal-mine, bravely singing until they are silenced by this toxic backlash against people, rights and dignity as a dark warning to us all.   It is frankly nothing short of abhorrent that, year after year, we are compelled to present cases to you, the UN membership, of intimidation and reprisals carried out against people whose crime in the eyes of their respective Governments was to cooperate with the UN institutions and mechanisms whose mandate of course derives from you, the UN membership.   "I salute the extraordinary courage that it sometimes takes for the victims and their families to come forward and share their stories with us, and also the dedication of the civil society organizations who act on behalf of those affected."   But since the report I presented was limited to reprisals against people cooperating with the UN, the cases covered in it represent only a small portion of the far more generalized backlash against civil society, especially human rights defenders.   So we are reaching out to you and other defenders, and also doing more to sensitize governments to this issue. We are working on establishing a more coherent way at the UN system to deal with this issue. We are largely working through quiet diplomacy but go public when warranted. I have already taken up numerous specific cases with Governments concerned.   But there too, we feel the backlash. Certain Member States are unhappy with this mandate entrusted to me and are seeking to overturn it, or at the very least undermine it. Those Governments called out in our report tend to be those more vocal in criticizing it, which must come as a surprise to precisely nobody.   But let there be no mistake. Whether they succeed or not in pushing some hostile response in the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly, they cannot and will not stop us doing what we believe we have a moral obligation to do, explicit mandate or no explicit mandate: which is to defend the defenders and at a very minimum, point out the hypocrisy that is involved when some UN Member States punish people cooperating with mechanisms that were established by UN Member States themselves.   On the overall questioning of human rights in the world, I do not know when the pendulum will swing back again. A historian by training, I never subscribed to the view that human history necessarily moves in a progressive direction. My fervent hope is that what we are seeing is just a temporary blip in the progress towards deeper fulfilment of human rights, and not a lasting reversal.   But it will only be so - the backlash will only be halted and the pendulum only reversed - if the human rights movement works together in an even more focused and coordinated way, to garner additional popular and political support for rights. That is the challenge.   You at the frontline have done by far the most to deliver the progress that we been lucky enough to see in the past few decades. And you on the frontline are the most at risk during this backlash. It's the business of us in the UN, in particular OHCHR to deliver the support you need. Also to both salute and to draw attention to the inspirational courage and commitment to principle that so many of you demonstrate, day after day.   If I may again repeat something I told the Human Rights Council: 'I can conceive of no higher or self-evident duty either of Council members or of Secretariat staff such as myself, for us to do more to defend the defenders of human rights'. Visit the related web page
	Nobel Peace Prize awarded to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons by Norwegian Nobel Committee, agencies   The Norwegian Nobel Committee has awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN).   The organization is receiving the award for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.   We live in a world where the risk of nuclear weapons being used is greater than it has been for a long time. Some states are modernizing their nuclear arsenals, and there is a real danger that more countries will try to procure nuclear weapons, as exemplified by North Korea. Nuclear weapons pose a constant threat to humanity and all life on earth.   Through binding international agreements, the international community has previously adopted prohibitions against land mines, cluster munitions and biological and chemical weapons. Nuclear weapons are even more destructive, but have not yet been made the object of a similar international legal prohibition.   Through its work, ICAN has helped to fill this legal gap. An important argument in the rationale for prohibiting nuclear weapons is the unacceptable human suffering that a nuclear war will cause.   ICAN is a coalition of non-governmental organizations from around 100 different countries around the globe. The coalition has been a driving force in prevailing upon the world's nations to pledge to cooperate with all relevant stakeholders in efforts to stigmatise, prohibit and eliminate nuclear weapons. To date, 108 states have made such a commitment, known as the Humanitarian Pledge.   Furthermore, ICAN has been the leading civil society actor in the endeavour to achieve a prohibition of nuclear weapons under international law.   On 7 July 2017, 122 of the UN member states acceded to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. As soon as the treaty has been ratified by 50 states, the ban on nuclear weapons will enter into force and will be binding under international law for all the countries that are party to the treaty.   The Norwegian Nobel Committee is aware that an international legal prohibition will not in itself eliminate a single nuclear weapon, and that so far neither the states that already have nuclear weapons nor their closest allies support the nuclear weapon ban treaty.   The Committee wishes to emphasize that the next steps towards attaining a world free of nuclear weapons must involve the nuclear-armed states. This year's Peace Prize is therefore also a call upon these states to initiate serious negotiations with a view to the gradual, balanced and carefully monitored elimination of the almost 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world.   Five of the states that currently have nuclear weapons - the USA, Russia, the United Kingdom, France and China - have already committed to this objective through their accession to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons of 1970.   The Non-Proliferation Treaty will remain the primary international legal instrument for promoting nuclear disarmament and preventing the further spread of such weapons.   It is now 71 years since the UN General Assembly, in its very first resolution, advocated the importance of nuclear disarmament and a nuclear weapon-free world. With this year's award, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to pay tribute to ICAN for giving new momentum to the efforts to achieve this goal.   The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons has a solid grounding in Alfred Nobel's will. The will specifies three different criteria for awarding the Peace Prize: the promotion of fraternity between nations, the advancement of disarmament and arms control and the holding and promotion of peace congresses.   ICAN works vigorously to achieve nuclear disarmament. ICAN and a majority of UN member states have contributed to fraternity between nations by supporting the Humanitarian Pledge. And through its inspiring and innovative support for the UN negotiations on a treaty banning nuclear weapons, ICAN has played a major part in bringing about what in our day and age is equivalent to an international peace congress.   It is the firm conviction of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that ICAN, more than anyone else, has in the past year given the efforts to achieve a world without nuclear weapons a new direction and new vigour. http://bit.ly/2hRwhvE http://bit.ly/2jmuyzF   Oct. 2017   Group's Nobel Peace Prize win spotlights need to end 'nuclear nightmare' says UN chief. (UN News)   Congratulating the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) on being awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, top United Nations officials said that the recognition is a reminder of the need to grim threats posed by such weapons to humanity.   'This Prize recognizes the determined efforts of civil society to highlight the unconscionable humanitarian and environmental consequences that would result if nuclear weapons were ever used again', read a statement attributable to the spokesperson of the Secretary-General.   'At a time when nuclear anxieties are at the highest level since the Cold War, the Secretary-General calls on all countries to show vision and greater commitment for a world free of nuclear weapons', it added, noting the urgency to end the threat of a 'nuclear nightmare'.   Concerted efforts by ICAN as well as many other civil society organizations contributed to the adoption of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, in July this year, the first multilateral legally binding instrument for nuclear disarmament in decades.   The UN's top disarmament official offered her own congratulations to ICAN and underscored that achievement of a nuclear-weapon-free world continues to be an urgent priority for the UN.   Expressing hope that the Nobel Peace Prize would give new momentum to the agenda, Izumi Nakamitsu, the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs called for 'serious efforts by the international community to pursue disarmament as a means for preventing conflict, reducing international tensions and achieving sustainable peace and security'.   More than 15,000 nuclear weapons remain in global stockpiles, with many on high levels of alert. Furthermore, tensions have flared over the nuclear weapons development programme of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea since past few months.   Nuclear disarmament has been an objective for the UN since the very first General Assembly resolution in 1946, which established the goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons and all weapons of mass destruction. http://bit.ly/2y2tWol   Oct. 2017 (ICAN)   It is a great honour to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2017 in recognition of our role in achieving the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. This historic agreement, adopted on 7 July with the backing of 122 nations, offers a powerful, much-needed alternative to a world in which threats of mass destruction are allowed to prevail and, indeed, are escalating.   The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is a coalition of non-governmental organizations in one hundred countries. By harnessing the power of the people, we have worked to bring an end to the most destructive weapon ever created - the only weapon that poses an existential threat to all humanity.   This prize is a tribute to the tireless efforts of many millions of campaigners and concerned citizens worldwide who, ever since the dawn of the atomic age, have loudly protested nuclear weapons, insisting that they can serve no legitimate purpose and must be forever banished from the face of our earth.   It is a tribute also to the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - the hibakusha - and victims of nuclear test explosions around the world, whose searing testimonies and unstinting advocacy were instrumental in securing this landmark agreement.   The treaty categorically outlaws the worst weapons of mass destruction and establishes a clear pathway to their total elimination. It is a response to the ever-deepening concern of the international community that any use of nuclear weapons would inflict catastrophic, widespread and long-lasting harm on people and our living planet.   We are proud to have played a major role its creation, including through advocacy and participation in diplomatic conferences, and we will work assiduously in coming years to ensure its full implementation. Any nation that seeks a more peaceful world, free from the nuclear menace, will sign and ratify this crucial accord without delay.   The belief of some governments that nuclear weapons are a legitimate and essential source of security is not only misguided, but also dangerous, for it incites proliferation and undermines disarmament. All nations should reject these weapons completely before they are ever used again.   This is a time of great global tension, when fiery rhetoric could all too easily lead us, inexorably, to unspeakable horror. The spectre of nuclear conflict looms large once more. If ever there were a moment for nations to declare their unequivocal opposition to nuclear weapons, that moment is now.   We applaud those nations that have already signed and ratified the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, and we urge all others to follow their lead. It offers a pathway forward at a time of alarming crisis. Disarmament is not a pipe dream, but an urgent humanitarian necessity.   We most humbly thank the Norwegian Nobel Committee. This award shines a needed light on the path the ban treaty provides towards a world free of nuclear weapons. Before it is too late, we must take that path.   http://www.icanw.org/action/nobel-peace-prize-2017-2/ Visit the related web page
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