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STORY: UN / HUMAN RIGHTS AWARDS
TRT: 04:39
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 15 DECEMBER 2023, NEW YORK CITY / FILE
FILE - NEW YORK CITY
1. Wide shot, exterior United Nations Headquarters
15 DECEMBER 2023, NEW YORK CITY
2. Wide shot, General Assembly
3. Wide shot, Secretary-General António Guterres walks up to the GA rostrum
4. Wide shot, Guterres at the rostrum
5. SOUNDBITE (English) António Guterres, Secretary-General, United Nations:
“Human rights are under attack around the world. Conflicts are raging, with appalling consequences for civilians as we are dramatically witnessing every single day with immense death and suffering in Gaza after the horrors of the 7 October attacks. Inequalities are deepening. Hunger and poverty are rising. Women’s rights are stalling, and in some cases, going into reverse. Civic space and media freedom is being rolled back. New threats are blossoming – from catastrophic climate disasters to artificial intelligence, which holds the potential for immense possibility, but also for immense peril. And age-old hatreds are resurging with a vengeance – from racism, to xenophobia, and religious intolerance.”
6. Wide shot, General Assembly President Dennis Francis walks up to the rostrum
7. Wide shot, Francis at the rostrum
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Dennis Francis, President, General Assembly:
“Alarming pushbacks against human rights, including surges in hate speech and hate crime, setbacks in women's and children's rights, and emerging challenges, such as the climate crisis and digital transformation, demand our collective attention. In this climate of proliferating conflicts and heightened global polarization, this 75th anniversary serves as an opportunity for introspection and a renewed call for action.”
9. Wide shot, High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk walks up to the GA rostrum
10. Wide shot, Türk at the rostrum
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Volker Türk, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights:
“This prize is an opportunity to celebrate human rights defenders and the enormous value they bring to societies all over the world. Human rights defenders are visionary agents of change. They see a better future for all of us, and they know how to make that future a reality. But in challenging the status quo or working in situations of violence or conflict, they face themselves a multitude of risks, from defamation, to harassment, to legal restraints to arrest, detention, enforced disappearance, torture and even death.”
12. Various shots, recipients of the Human Rights Prize receiving the award
13. Various shots, ceremony at Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial
14. SOUNDBITE (English) Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, United States:
“Eleanor Roosevelt often pointed out that drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not merely an intellectual exercise, that the document she worked so hard to help create had real meaningful applications for the world. And so, it needed to be able to weather the test of time and the fiercest of storms. In that sense, the memorial, this memorial is the ultimate embodiment of her vision. It literally exists outside the four walls of the United Nations, exposed to the elements, and for decades it has symbolized the fortitude of the Declaration and the woman behind it.”
15. Zoom out, Thomas-Greenfield lighting memorial candle
Secretary-General António Guterres today (15 Dec) said, “human rights are under attack around the world” and “conflicts are raging, with appalling consequences for civilians” as witnessed in the “immense death and suffering in Gaza after the horrors of the 7 October attacks.”
Guterres, addressing the General Assembly on the occasion of the UN Prize in the Field of Human Rights ceremony, said, “inequalities are deepening. Hunger and poverty are rising. Women’s rights are stalling, and in some cases, going into reverse. Civic space and media freedom is being rolled back. New threats are blossoming – from catastrophic climate disasters to artificial intelligence, which holds the potential for immense possibility, but also for immense peril. And age-old hatreds are resurging with a vengeance – from racism, to xenophobia, and religious intolerance.”
General Assembly President Dennis Francis told the gathering that “alarming pushbacks against human rights, including surges in hate speech and hate crime, setbacks in women's and children's rights, and emerging challenges, such as the climate crisis and digital transformation, demand our collective attention.”
He said, “in this climate of proliferating conflicts and heightened global polarization, this 75th anniversary serves as an opportunity for introspection and a renewed call for action.”
For his part, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk said, “this prize is an opportunity to celebrate human rights defenders and the enormous value they bring to societies all over the world. Human rights defenders are visionary agents of change. They see a better future for all of us, and they know how to make that future a reality. But in challenging the status quo or working in situations of violence or conflict, they face themselves a multitude of risks, from defamation, to harassment, to legal restraints to arrest, detention, enforced disappearance, torture and even death.”
The UN Prize in the Field of Human Rights is an honorary award given to individuals and organizations in recognition of outstanding achievement in human rights. The Prize was established by the General Assembly in 1966 and was awarded for the first time on 10 December 1968, the twentieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Prize has since been awarded in 1973, 1978, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008, 2013 and 2018.
The winners of the prestigious Prize for 2023 are the Human Rights Centre “Viasna” in Belarus; Julienne Lusenge, of the Democratic Republic of the Congo; the Amman Centre for Human Rights Studies in Jordan; Julio Pereyra of Uruguay; and the Global Coalition of civil society organizations, Indigenous Peoples, social movements and local communities for “the universal recognition of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.”
Later in the day, a ceremony was held at the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial at the UN Headquarters gardens.
United States Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said, “Eleanor Roosevelt often pointed out that drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not merely an intellectual exercise, that the document she worked so hard to help create had real meaningful applications for the world.”
She said, “this memorial is the ultimate embodiment of her vision. It literally exists outside the four walls of the United Nations, exposed to the elements, and for decades it has symbolized the fortitude of the Declaration and the woman behind it.”
The Monument to Eleanor Roosevelt is situated in the northeast part of the UN grounds. It consists of a semicircular granite bench with the inscription “1884 – Anna Eleanor Roosevelt – 1962,” and a tall slab, or stelae, facing the bench and showing a bas relief of a flame that bears the inscription “She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow warmed the world.” The memorial was conceived by American architect Eric Gugler (1889 – 1974) at the request of the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial Foundation. The foundation was created by an act of Congress signed on 23 April 1963 by President John F. Kennedy. It was deemed fitting that the memorial be built on the United Nations grounds, where Roosevelt worked for a world in which all people could talk in peace and dignity.
In 1945, Roosevelt was appointed as a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly by USA President Harry S. Truman. In April 1946 she became the first chairperson of the Human Rights Commission, where she was instrumental in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
