21 March 2012: Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, Ivan Simonovic, has called for the outcome of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD, or Rio+20) to be “firmly rooted” in human rights, underlining that progress on human rights is key to breaking the cycle of poverty, discrimination and violence.

Simonovic was speaking at a Briefing on Human Rights and Rio+20 for Member States, held on 21 March 2012, at the Permanent Mission of Norway to the UN in New York, US. He called for the Rio+20 outcome to set out a “convincing plan” for meeting the world’s sustainable development, green economy and poverty eradication goals. He stressed that human rights are important to such a plan because human rights reflect human aspirations, and the set of international human rights standards that have been developed over the past 60 years provide the only legally-binding framework able to turn such aspirations into reality.

Simonovic highlighted the need to include human rights considerations into all aspects of the UN’s work, from sustainable development to peace and security. [Assistant Secretary-General’s Statement]