General Debate in the Human Rights Council (10-11 September 2024)

The Permanent Representative of Greece to the UN and other international organisations in Geneva, Ambassador Ioannis Ghikas reaffirmed, during the General Debate in the Human Rights Council, Greece’s strong commitment to work with all partners to reverse the horrific degradation of the human rights situation around the world and to combat all forms of discrimination and hate-speechwithin our societies and globally.

For more details, please find below Greece’s oral statement:

“Greece aligns itself with the EU Statement and thanks the High Commissioner for his oral update. We commend and support his important efforts.

However, the alarming deterioration of human rights across the world, which the High Commissioner highlighted yesterday, cannot be allowed to continue. Particularly:

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and the continuing plight of the hostages, the war, famine, human rights abuses particularly against women in Sudan, the attempt to eradicate women’s rights in Afghanistan, the situation in Ethiopia, the systemic human rights violations in Belarus and Russia, the situation of refugees from Nagorno Karabakh.

Around the world, we are witnessing an increase in large scale human rights violations and abuses, gender-based discrimination, hate-speech, anti-semitism, severe limitation of the freedom of expression and denial of the right to education.

Greece will continue to work with our partners in the EU and beyond to address these grave challenges. We must intensify efforts to strengthen accountability and the international rules-based order, support human rights defenders and fight discrimination, antisemitism and human rights abuses within our own countries.

We must also intensify efforts to ensure access for the citizens of all countries to development, education, clean water, energy and health services, which are all fundamental enablers for reversing the catastrophic deterioration of the global human rights situation”.