Mourning

If the meeting was an opportunity to celebrate, it was also an occasion to mourn. On Thursday afternoon, the Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, Bertrand Ramcharan, led a special session to reflect on the assassination of Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, while he was on a mission for the UN Secretary General in Baghdad, as well as the killings of other human rights defenders across the world. With other speakers throughout the Conference, he condemned the bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad and described it as a symbolic attack on human rights and human rights defenders everywhere. Mr Paul Kavanagh, [Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland], spoke movingly of Sergio de Mello and his personal contribution to the United Nations and its humanitarian and human rights work.

The Acting High Commissioner went on to encourage all those present to look forward and consider this grave setback as a summons to work harder and more effectively to implement human rights at every level. The participants stood in silence for one minute to honour all human rights defenders around the world who had died in defence of justice and to protect the rights of others.

" Si je ne brûle pas

Si tu ne brûles pas

Si nous ne brûlons pas –

Qui illuminera la voie? [1]

- The poet Nazim Hikmet

[1] "If I do not burn, if you do not burn, if we do not burn, who will light the way?"