Delivered by the Permanent Representative of Estonia to the UN Mr. Sven Jürgenson
I thank Germany for convening today’s debate – we believe that human rights are directly linked to the maintenance of peace and security and the work of this Council, including with respect to peace operations. We thank all briefers for their presence and presentations.
Peace operations would not be able to fulfil their mandates effectively, if they ignored the issue of the protection and promotion of human rights. On the one hand, violations against human rights can foretell and drive conflicts and they are, regrettably, their constant feature. On the other, peace operations are one of the Council’s most powerful tools to manage conflicts.
Human rights are also a part of the protection of civilians’ mandates given to most missions by the Council to help those most vulnerable in conflict. Peace missions can be helpful interlocutors in a dialogue with governments as well as civil society. We underline the key role of the human rights components in the UN missions and the strong support lent by OHCHR. I take this opportunity to thank High Commissioner Bachelet and her team for their work in this regard.
Women and dedicated child protection advisors play an important and complementary role in protecting and promoting human rights. We note the importance of the cooperation between the human rights and protection advisers and believe that all those components should be sufficiently funded. However, we also believe that a whole-of-mission approach – the cooperation between the human rights officers and the military and police staff, is key to making a real difference. We welcome the good examples shared in this regard.
Similarly, it is a question of mission leadership – human rights should be part of the mission management at the highest level. We do not need “human rights protection” as a token add-on with no real impact, but an integral part of force generation, mission planning, management and oversight, and evaluation. We note the steps towards greater coherence in this regard. Sufficient and practice oriented pre-deployment training is one of the key elements here.
In the context of COVID-19, training and knowledge of the protection and promotion of human rights in practice helps missions better support countries dealing with the pandemic. We also stress the importance of applying a gender perspective to the human rights related activities of the peace missions and to the missions as a whole. In parallel, we underline the need for the observance of human rights by the UN peace operations themselves, including by addressing all instances of sexual exploitation and abuse.
We value the exchange we have had today and look forward to following up on this topic in our future discussions.
