United Nations Daily Highlights, 96-12-10

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From: The United Nations Home Page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

DAILY HIGHLIGHTS

Tuesday, 10 December 1996

HEADLINES

• Human rights faced with increasing threats and new challenges, UN Secretary-General says on occasion of Human Rights Day.
• Signing of South Africa's new constitution is another chapter in transition from apartheid to democracy, UN Secretary-General says.
• UN Secretary-General calls upon World Trade Organisation to strengthen participation of developing countries.
• General Assembly calls upon States to become parties to UN Convention on Law of Sea.
• Seabed Authority and International Tribunal for Law of Sea constituted in 1996, General Assembly is told.
• UN Children's Fund launches 1997 State of the World's Children Report.
• Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights ends three- week session in Geneva.
• Wildlife management enters new phase in Africa.
• Deputy Special Envoy for Georgia opens human rights office in Sukhumi, Abkhazia, Georgia.

He pointed out that it was now more urgent than ever for all the peoples of the world and all Member States to renew their commitment to the global task of protecting and promoting human rights.

"Peace, human rights, democracy and development are the daily work of the United Nations. All around the world, the United Nations is working hard to prevent and resolve conflict, and to offer countless millions new hope for a better and more peaceful future. Human rights are crucial part of these efforts," Dr. Boutros-Ghali stated.

Meanwhile, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Jose Ayala- Lasso, said he believed that a great deal of work could be done to advance human rights promotion and protection in cooperation with financial institutions and development agencies. In a message on the forty-eight Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Mr. Ayala-Lasso said Human Rights Day was a timely opportunity for looking back with pride on many accomplishments in the field of human rights and to prepare for the challenges ahead.

"The potential of the international community is definitely greater than the results achieved. Therefore, bearing in mind the dramatic fate of thousands of children, women and men who suffer from violence and lack of food and shelter, we should reinforce our endeavours to ensure that human rights occupy an even more prominent place on the international agenda", he stated.

Welcoming the signing of the constitution into law at Sharpeville, South Africa by President Nelson Mandela, Dr. Boutros-Ghali said it was fitting that such an important document was signed at a location where, in March 1960, 69 unarmed demonstrators were killed by the police of the apartheid regime.

In a message to the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organisation in Singapore, Dr. Boutros-Ghali called on the WTO to become universal in its membership, and to reinforce its cooperation with the UN system.

He said the evolving cooperation between the United Nations system and the World Trade Organisation over the last two years was a welcome sign of shared perceptions of the global development challenge, and of a willingness to devise solutions in common.

In two related drafts adopted without a vote, the Assembly expressed its concern that many important fish stocks continued to be overfished. It called upon the international community to impose appropriate sanctions on those who violated the global moratorium on all large-scale pelagic drift- net fishing on the high seas.

The establishment of nearly all the institutions foreseen by the Convention on the Law of the Sea was the year's most important development, the representative of Cameroon told the Assembly. He said the constitution of the Commission on Limits of the Continental Shelf, at the States Parties meeting in March 1997, would complete the process.

Several delegations praised the comprehensiveness of the Secretary- General's report on the Law of the Sea. The representative of New Zealand, who introduced the three draft resolutions before the Assembly on the Agenda item, noted that the report was the single means by which the international community reflected on all the issues facing the oceans today.

The Convention itself, the representative of Sri Lanka said, was indisputably one of the major achievements of the United Nations and had come to be regarded as a multilateral instrument of vast potential for the maintenance of peace, an equitable basis of sharing the resources of the world's oceans and a means for securing economic progress for all peoples of the earth.

Demanding an immediate end to the most intolerable forms of child labour, such as prostitution or bonded labour, Ms. Bellamy described them as "so grave an abuse of human rights that the world must come to regard them in the way it does slavery, as something unjustifiable under any circumstances".

The report estimates that some 250 million children aged five to fourteen years in the developing world are working. It proposes six key steps that must be taken to address the situation, namely, the immediate elimination of hazardous and exploitative child labour; free and compulsory education for every child; stringent child labour laws and their vigorous enforcement in each country; registration of all children at birth; data collection and monitoring; and codes of conduct and procurement policies.

The panel's 18 experts, charged with monitoring the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, requested the Government of the Dominican Republic to, among other things, honour its obligations through maintaining constructive dialogue with the Committee.

In other actions, the Committee urged the Government of Portugal to enact a legislation on the right to strike in Macau, and called for new legislative and social measures to challenge HIV/AIDS in Belarus.

It also recommended efforts to ensure equality between men and women with regard to employment and salary matters in Finland; and urged the adoption by the United Kingdom Government of legislation against age and sex discrimination in Hong Kong.

Kenya and the Republic of Congo are in the final process of ratifying the agreement. Concluded under the auspices of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Lusaka Agreement aims to reduce and ultimately eliminate illegal trafficking in African wildlife.

The office is part of the implementation mechanism of a programme for the protection and promotion of human rights in Abkhazia, Georgia. The programme is carried out by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in cooperation with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Government of Georgia.

From the United Nations home page at <http://www.un.org> - email: unnews@un.org

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