Speech by the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, Dunja Mijatović, at the event organised by the German Institute for Human Rights (Deutsches Institute für Menschenrechte) and Evangelical Academy of Berlin (Evangelische Akademie zu Berlin) to mark the 75th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Dear Beate, ladies and gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure for me to join you today to contribute to the discussion about the state of human rights in Europe 75 years after the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).
When the UDHR was adopted, the human rights landscape in Europe was very different. The death penalty was commonly legal, and the aftermath of the Second World War left hundreds of thousands of people awaiting repatriation or resettlement. At that time, countless refugees were fleeing across the Iron Curtain, homosexuality was still criminalised and women had not yet gained the right to vote in many countries.
Today, the edifice of human rights is home to many more people, freed from oppression and poverty and empowered to live the lives they want. However, the construction of this building, remarkable as it is, remains incomplete.
