An Oral Statement to the 47th Regular Session of the UN Human Rights Council by the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC)
Madam President.
The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) welcomes the report of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to this Council.
Madam High Commissioner,
Your report has explained us on how your office – the OHCHR – has adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic having “significant impact on human rights worldwide”. The ALRC could not agree more with you as you have mentioned “[T]he COVID-19 pandemic has also starkly underlined the centrality of equality and human rights to the global agenda. The pandemic exposed the effects of decades of underinvestment in public services and made even more explicit how, during a crisis, poor governance, corruption, a lack of rule of law, limited access to justice, discrimination and weak or biased institutions threaten the principles of equality, dignity and human rights.”
Millions of people have become new victims of extreme poverty without sufficient supports from their respective governments in Asia. The people’s demands for food, healthcare, employments, and overdue wages from their employers are dealt with disproportionate brute force of the states’ law-enforcement agencies.
Building institutions in conformity with the Goal-16 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) of the United Nations (UN) is key to ensure human rights with human dignity for building peach. We would highly appreciate if you kindly tell whether your office has any plan to improve the quality of the justice institutions to achieve the Goal-16 of the SDG, at least, concerning the horrific human rights situation in many countries.
Thank you, Madam President.
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