GENEVA, December 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Russia will press for fixing irregularities and abuse in the work of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC), Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations Office at Geneva Alexei Borodavkin said in an interview with Itar-Tass in connection with Human Rights Day that was observed in the world on Tuesday.
As such negative phenomena examples the diplomat cited situations where “human rights problems are used in the interests of political score-settling, defamation or those of other states and their governments, conducting biased campaigns and criticism.” This, according to Borodavkin, could not cause anything other than rejection, as a result of which “the HRC effectiveness is drastically reduced.” “Unfortunately, the above confrontational approach to the work on the human rights track is not uncommon in the HRC,” Russia’s permanent representative admitted.
According to him, “in the case of a genuine desire to spread the universal norms of human rights throughout the world, to make people throughout the world know and use the opportunities that are enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, if equal and mutually respectful partnership is used to achieve these objectives, then the results will also be most positive and significant.”
During elections in the UN General Assembly in November, Russia was elected as a full-fledged member of the UNHRC for three years, starting from January 1, 2014.
Speaking about Moscow’s priorities in the HRC that annually holds three sessions in Geneva, Borodavkin said that “Russia has an extensive positive agenda in the HRC.” “Our portfolio contains proposals for the development of cooperation in the promotion and protection of human rights, in the fight against contemporary forms of racism — especially neo-Nazism, in the spheres of human rights, sports and Olympic ideals, in matters related to the inadmissibility of arbitrary deprivation of citizenship, in the promotion and protection of family values and others,” said the diplomat. “Many states are ready to support us in this sphere. We hope that the work to implement our proposals will make it possible to enrich the YN human rights dimension,” he added.
Borodavkin drew attention to the fact that the approach “to the promotion and protection of human rights in the world is shared by the majority of UN member states.” “Its essence is that nobody is allowed to violate the universal standards in this sphere. It is important to learn to respect human rights and develop multilateral cooperation and dialogue in this sphere,” said the Russian permanent representative. “Also, turning human rights protection into its opposite when one group of people, defending their rights, violates the rights of others, is unacceptable. The modern world is too small for this. Aggressiveness and arrogance in the promotion of human rights can only negate the effectiveness of these efforts.”
December 10 was chosen as the date for Human Rights Day in honor of the adoption and proclamation by the UN General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on December 10, 1948. After the horrors of World War II, the Declaration confirmed the dignity of every person. This document declares the universality of human rights, as well as the interdependence of every person’s inherent civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights.