WILPF Statement on International Human Rights Day
Human Rights Day – 10 December 2007

The universally recognized Human Rights Day marks the anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on 10 December in 1948 in Paris.

On this coming Human Rights Day, 10 December 2007, the United Nations will launch a one-year intensive programme of activities leading up to the commemoration next year of the 60th anniversary of the Declaration under the slogan: dignity and justice for all of us.

The adoption of the Universal Declaration was followed by the adoption of the Covenants of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and on Civil and Political Rights, and a vast array of human rights conventions and treaties promoting and protecting the rights of children, women, minorities, indigenous peoples, migrants disabled persons; eliminating racial and all other discrimination to name but a few. They have been ratified by the majority of UN Member States and together form a remarkable body of international human rights law.

Implementation of these set standards remains a challenge. While the universal human rights standards and their oversight have been strengthened over the years, forces and trends (by states and private companies) that threaten and undermine these universal human rights continue unabated. Weapons profiteers develop machines that threaten and violate the human right to life and prevent the realisation of other fundamental freedoms. Our planet and its finite resources are threatened by those who choose profit over the right of future generations to exist.

While billions of dollars are wasted extending the arms race to outer space and developing a new generation of nuclear weapons, 1.2 billion people have no access to clean water and are forced to drink filthy, disease-ridden water. Fatal shortages and mismanagement of water resources is already a source of conflict. It is predicted that two thirds of countries will experience severe water shortages by 2025, and if these predictions are accurate, resource wars will increase globally. Water is not a service to be commoditized, but a common good to be protected, and it is a human need, as well as a finite resource on our common globe.

Since its inception in 1915, the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) has worked for all human rights to be respected. We have equally worked for the prevention of war and the eradication of militarism, believing that these conditions negate human rights. We are convinced that human rights cannot exist without peace and freedom.

As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enters its 60th year, and as the new Human Rights Council struggles to monitor and implement the universal standards for justice and human rights developed through exhaustive debate by governments and civil society, women have the right, the responsibility, and the sense of solidarity to defend, reclaim and realise human rights for all, as they have done, and continue to do for themselves.

The sad reality is that too often under the false pretext to protect women, women are denied the right to education, mobility, the right to their own body and the free choice to plan their own future. All over the world, women have to struggle for basic human rights on many levels.

Exercising the right to have an equal voice in international policy-making and the questions of war and peace, The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom calls for:

- the right of peoples to exercise political and economic sovereignty over their land and its resources;
- the right of peoples to live without fear of violence, occupation or military rule;
- the right of people to sustain themselves from their environment, to practice self-sufficiency and to be independent from companies, governments, and states who may try to coerce them into exploitative policies;
- the right of women to receive equal pay for equal work;
- the right of all people to be free from sexual slavery, other forms of bonded labour and exploitative conditions of work;
- the right of all people to have an equal and informed say in their government’s policy creation and implementation.


Best Wishes,

Susi Snyder
Secretary General
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
1, rue de Varembe
Case Postale 28
1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland
Telephone: +41 22 919 7080
Fax: +41 22 919 7081
www.wilpf.ch
www.PeaceWomen.org
www.ReachingCriticalWill.org