United Nations – In his toughest warning to date hate movements around the world, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the World Human Rights Council in Geneva on Monday that the world must step up its fight against reviving neo-Nazism, white supremacy and racially and ethnically motivated terrorism.
“The danger of these hate-driven movements is increasing by the day,” the UN chief said, noting that while he believed they already posed the most important internal challenge for several countries, they were also reaching across borders and changing into more than domestic terror threats. It is becoming a transnational threat. ‘
Addressing the well-documented increase in the impact of racism around the world, Guterres said: ‘Individuals and groups are engaged in a fiery frenzy of hate – fundraising, recruiting and communicating online, at home and abroad, internationally to practice and work together network their hateful ideologies. ‘
“The Secretary-General has said too much,” these hate groups are applauded by people in responsibilities in ways that were not long ago considered unimaginable. “
For many listeners, including Richard Gowan, director of the United Nations Crisis Group (ICG), one of the last remarks was clear.
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“Guterres worked very hard to build a working relationship with Trump while he was in office, which I think was very difficult, and it seems like a fairly subtle but firm rejection of the former president,” he said. told CBS News.
“The deepest wells of injustice”
The UN chief’s speech highlighted the “most pervasive human rights violation of all: gender inequality”, which he said was “fueled by two of the deepest wells of injustice in our world: the legacy of centuries of colonialism; the millennia of patriarchy” . ‘
Guterres welcomes President Joe Biden’s commitment to rejoin the UN, and Mr. Biden’s choice as UN Ambassador, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who is expected to be at UN headquarters on Thursday, pending her confirmation from the Senate, has campaigned for human rights and diversity worldwide.
“Guterres has raised these issues before, but he has more political room to highlight these issues now that Biden is in office,” Gowan said.
Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told the Council that another factor had contributed to inequality over the past year, or at least to its manifestation within societies: “The pandemic the mask shook the deadly realities of discrimination; deep inequalities; and chronic underfunding for essential services and rights, which are largely ignored by many policymakers. ‘
In his remarks to the Human Rights Council, the UN chief not only sought to highlight what he saw as the rise of human rights violations, but to unite leaders to work against it: ‘When we allow the denial of one of us , we set the precedent for the demonization of us all. ‘