Thursday, June 8, 2017

Human Rights: We should not be “naming and shaming” States !


Denial of access and lack of cooperation with UN bodies will not diminish scrutiny of a State’s human rights record, UN High Commissioner Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein tells States at the 35th session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, 6 June 2017.

by Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein

( June 6, 2017, Geneva, Sri Lanka Guardian) Fifty years ago, this was the day I first heard the sound of war. I was three and a half years old and, while fragmentary, I can still remember military men milling around our home in Amman, an armoured car stationed nearby and later, planes that flew overhead. It was a war that shaped my life, and forged my later desire to understand the depths of Palestinian suffering but not only that, Jewish suffering too – the latter spanning over two millennia, and which culminated in that colossal crime, the Holocaust.