UN human rights chief warns of women’s rights complacency

Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, has warned against complacency on women’s rights at an event marking the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration, a landmark agenda for the empowerment of women.

Ms. Bachelet, taking part in a panel discussion, held at the UN Human Rights Council on this week, said that the Beijing Declaration should be celebrated but noted that the Plan of Action agreed at the event is still unfinished.

According to Ms. Bachelet, the risks of setbacks to women’s rights are real, and growing. The rights chief noted that, whilst the Beijing conference is recognized as a demonstration of strong collective commitment to human rights, the scenario 25 years later is quite different.

Women’s rights are threatened and attacked” on many fronts, she warned, adding that there over this period there has been “a backlash and the resurgence of gender inequality narratives based on age-old discrimination”.

However, for the UN human rights chief, women’s rights are not negotiable: “they cannot be an optional policy, subject to the changing winds of politics,” she warned. According to Ms. Bachelet, the women’s rights agenda must not be torn apart by the establishment of a hierarchy between what is acceptable and what is deemed “too sensitive”.

Ms. Bachelet called on the international community to “resist any challenge to a hard-won affirmation, namely that women’s rights are human rights. “Human dignity cannot be dissected, compartmentalized, negotiated, nor be the privilege of the few,” she said