Global recognition of the right to a healthy environment is long overdue. There are opportunities emerging to do so, and this would give crucial support to threatened environmental activists. In March 2016, armed intruders battered down the door of the house where Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres, 44, was staying and killed her. By then, Cáceres, co-founder of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras, …
This week, the Human Rights Council’s Secretariat launched a new and improved website, which offers a ‘ new look & feel and improved navigation ’. But the truth is there is much more than meets the eye. The new features offered by the Council’s new portal represent an effort towards bringing the Council closer to its stakeholders and people on the ground; therefore, it contributes to enhancing …
Currently, Latin America is the most deadly region in the world to be an environmental defender. IUCN NL and other partners recently held a meeting in Bogota, Colombia, centered on improving the safety of these defenders. Attendee and IUCN NL Environmental Justice Expert, Liliana Jauregui, learnt that we need to take action on three levels; Protection mechanisms on the ground, sharing …
The notion of three generations of human rights has endured for 40 years. But it has no solid historical or analytic basis, and it obscures rather than clarifies the relationship between rights. The so-called “Three Generations Theory of Human Rights”—known for dividing human rights into three separate generations based on (1) civil and political rights; (2) economic, social and cultural …
A response to David Petrasek’s article in OpenGlobaRights entitled ‘ Another one bites the dust ’ (8 February 2018). David Petrasek’s recent article on the early departure of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, provides an extremely timely insight into the under-the-surface tensions and dynamics that help explain Zeid’s decision to step down. The article also offers clues as to what needs to happen …
En nombre de la Junta Directiva y del personal de Universal Rights Group, me gustaría expresar nuestra profunda conmoción y pesar por el fallecimiento de nuestra estimada miembro de la Junta Fundadora, Asma Jahangir. Asma había sido una importante fuente de orientación y sabiduría en nuestro trabajo durante los últimos cinco años. Ella también ha sido, por supuesto, una inspiración …
La partida prematura, una vez más, de un Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los Derechos Humanos sugiere que es hora de reconsiderar las prioridades de la oficina y fortalecer su mandato. Cuando, en diciembre de 2017, el Príncipe Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein de Jordania anunció que no buscaría un segundo mandato como Alto Comisionado de las Naciones Unidas para los …
The early departure — yet again — of a UN High Commissioner for Human Rights suggests it’s time to re-think the office’s priorities and strengthen its mandate. The announcement in December 2017 by Prince Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein of Jordan that he would not seek a second term as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights—leaving the post in the middle of 2018—came …
En el Día Mundial Contra la Lepra, las organizaciones de todo el mundo deben unirse para crear conciencia y trabajar en pro de la consecución de objetivos concretos para poner fin a la discriminación contra la lepra. Elton (alias) nació en 1980 en Río de Janeiro en un favela. Sin acceso a la educación o al mercado laboral formal, Elton tuvo que …
On World Leprosy Day, organizations across the world must come together to raise awareness and work towards the implementation of concrete goals to end discrimination around leprosy. Elton (alias) was born in 1980 in Rio de Janeiro. He was born in a favela, without access to education or to the formal labor market, and he had to depend on manual …
