“Human rights is the common language of our shared humanity. It is about how we interact with each other—as individuals, within societies, between countries—as well as with our environment and the planet. At its heart is the recognition of human dignity, the need for power dynamics and relationships to be based on respect. Human rights unifies us, and it can overcome polarization, especially in its striving for equity, shared prosperity and justice.”

With these words, Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, opened the fifty-second session of the UN Human Rights Council.

The seventy-fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) will be marked on 10 December 2023. To commemorate this important milestone, SGI is featuring a quiz that focuses on various human rights issues, such as gender equality and racism, on its social media channels every month in 2023. In addition, Elisa Gazzotti of SGI, as chair of the NGO Working Group on Human Rights Education and Learning, supported the oral statement delivered by Sian Bagshaw of the World Scout Movement Organization during the fifty-second session of the Human Rights Council under General Debate Item 3.

The statement, titled “The Universal Declaration on Human Rights: Human Rights Education and Youth,” underlines the importance of ensuring that civil society’s voice, including people from the most excluded backgrounds, is heard at the UN so that the great expectations expressed in the Declaration become tangible reality for everyone.