In the packed Great Hall of the University of Athens, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr Volker Türk, delivered, on 18 November 2024, quite a powerful keynote speech on the current crisis of human rights, titled «The centrality of Human Rights in the current context».
The High Commissioner particularly noted that this crisis is taking unprecedented and alarming dimensions and put particular emphasis on all the contemporary challenges contributing to this crisis, including the proliferation of armed conflicts across the globe(in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, Congo), the financial crisis and the accelerating impact of climate change.

You can read the entire speech of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Volker Türk, here.

Introducing the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the President of the MFHR, Prof. Linos-Alexander Sicilianos, emphasised the pivotal importance of the institution of the High Commissioner at this critical juncture for human rights. He referred, in particular, to the fact that, for the first time, all major ongoing military crises are brought before the International Court of Justice(ICJ) in The Hague. Having as a jurisdictional basis the most important UN treaties on human rights, the ICJ is called upon to pronounce on States’ accountability for gross human rights violations in the context of recent or ongoing armed conflicts.

You can access the speech of Prof. Linos-Alexander Sicilianos here.