We must constantly fight for the enforcement of human rights so that the various forms of violations cannot be repeated – emphasized the President of the Republic Katalin Novák on Tuesday in Budapest at the international round table discussion organized by the National University of Public Service (NKE) and the Hungarian UN Society for Human Rights On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of his Universal Declaration.
The head of state added that with regard to the protection of rights, every country must also think about the situation within its own borders and ask whether the most basic human rights are really enforced for all its citizens. Speaking about women’s role, he called it important that women not only in business and academia, but also with their public and political actions, can help not only in attracting attention, but also in avoiding and solving conflicts.
Recalling her visit to Erbil and its surroundings a year ago, Katalin Novák said: her stay, which was deemed daring due to security risks, also convinced her that it is not possible to talk about superior human cultures based on money or other values; and people in trouble and vulnerable need to be helped.
In addition to the Hungarian head of state, Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist Nadia Murad, Ghada Waly, director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna, and Katalin Bogyay, president of the Hungarian United Nations Society, took part in the round table discussion.
Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights activist Nadia Murad, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for her fight against the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war, spoke in her conversation with Katalin Novák about: seeing violence and violations of rights, people must decide what kind of world they want to live in. they want to live; then they must help oppressed minorities to protect their own language, culture and human dignity. The young woman from the autonomous region of Kurdistan, Iraq, who was abducted and raped by the Islamic State militants in 2014, and then successfully escaped from her captivity, said that in addition to her studies at the University of Washington, she regularly returns to her country and works with her colleagues to restore the everyday life of the Yazidi minority and assert their civil rights. so that they build roads and schools.
In his contribution, Ghada Waly said that although significant progress has been made worldwide thanks to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in Paris in 1948 and translated into more than five hundred languages, the exercise of fundamental rights still faces obstacles in many parts of the world.
As an example, he mentioned that according to their data, around 2 billion people currently live in or near war-torn crisis zones where international law violations are regular, and aid supplies do not always reach people in need. He drew attention to the fact that 110 million people are currently forced to live as refugees far from their original place of residence, who remain targets of human trafficking and organized crime. He pointed out that 60 percent of the victims of human trafficking, which violates basic human rights, are women and girls, most of whom are also victims of sexual violence or exploitation. He also said that in 2022, 89,000 women will be victims of intentional homicide worldwide. He added that the protection and enforcement of human rights is a universal task not only of states, but also of individuals; therefore, according to his conviction, results can be achieved with the active cooperation of law-abiding people, and within this, the greater role of women and the education of young people to law-abiding behavior, and the UN continues to support the work of human rights defenders.