Promoting and Protecting Human Rights

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a great pleasure for us to welcome the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to the Permanent Council today. The United States looks forward to working with the High Commissioner both at the UN and in cooperation with the OSCE to promote and protect human rights around the world.

We welcome the appearance of the High Commissioner here just two months after assuming office. This, we believe, demonstrates the close working relationship between our two organizations. We also welcome the High Commissioner's overview of his key goals, specifically combating racism, promoting women's rights, and protecting civilian populations in times of conflict.

As we all know, the OSCE is also tackling these issues. In preparations for our Ministerial, we are working on commitments regarding tolerance and non-discrimination, and we hope to highlight the need to combat racism and discrimination in all its forms. Of great importance to the United States is to have our Ministers give anti-Semitism the separate and due attention that it deserves, given the historical role this scourge has played in the OSCE region for many centuries. We hope the High Commissioner's office will also examine this issue.

The OSCE is working on a ministerial document on trafficking in persons to strengthen our commitments to combating trafficking and to address areas not previously dealt with in the OSCE, among them, the needs of trafficked children and the demand side of the trafficking cycle as well. In addition, the OSCE hopes to include training in our police activities to increase knowledge of investigation techniques to resolve crimes such as domestic abuse, rape, pedophilia and trafficking in women.

The United States fully agrees with the High Commissioner that armed conflict is an important cause of human rights violations today. We very much hope to make progress over the next year to resolve the frozen conflicts in the OSCE region.

Likewise, we encourage other regions within the OSCE that continue to suffer from varying levels of conflict, to respect the rights of civilians and to implement our Budapest Summit commitment stating that "if recourse to force cannot be avoided in performing internal security missions, each participating State will ensure that its use must be commensurate with the needs for enforcement. The armed forces will take due care to avoid injury to civilians or their property." The inhumane treatment of civilian populations in time of conflict is contrary to international law and only serves to reinforce the forces that the OSCE is dedicated to overcoming.

In closing, Mr. Chairman, permit me to say that the United States could not agree more with the High Commissioner's statement that the rule of law, based on modern democratic norms, is the lynchpin of human rights protection. Time and again, as we spoke with nongovernmental organizations at this year's Human Dimension Implementation Meeting, we heard this theme. First and foremost a functioning judiciary is needed to protect the rights of all persons and to address grievances. Second, as we heard at the Supplementary Human Dimension Meeting on Community Policing, our law enforcement must have the needed resources and training to be able to respect and protect those human rights. We look forward to future cooperation with the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and we believe that our two organizations will have many opportunities to work together to reinforce human rights standards and principles.