U.N. chief Antonio Guterres launched a “call to action” Monday, lamenting rising attacks on human rights, the persecution of minorities, “alarming levels of femicide” and a lack of support for climate action as evidence the world must look more closely to the globalist “family” for leadership and guidance.
“I have come to the Human Rights Council — the fulcrum for international dialogue and cooperation to advance all human rights — to launch a Call to Action,” Guterres said, speaking in broad terms while refusing to name any individual countries’ rights records.
“Human rights are under assault … People are being left behind. Fears are growing,” he said. “A perverse political arithmetic has taken hold: divide people to multiply votes,” he said, warning that “the rule of law is being eroded”.
Guterres said civilians were being “trapped in war-torn enclaves, starved and bombarded in clear violation of international law” as well as “human trafficking, affecting every region in the world, preying on vulnerability and despair”.
He lamented women and girls were being “enslaved, exploited and abused”, “activists jailed, and religious and ethnic minorities groups persecuted.”
Human rights expand hope, enlarge possibilities & unleash the best of ourselves and our world. But they’re under assault.
That’s why I am launching the Human Rights Call to Action.
We must work together to realize humanity’s highest aspiration: all human rights for all people. pic.twitter.com/AXvX8PSq6Y— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) February 24, 2020
Guterres also spoke out against what he called rising white supremacy, racism and extremism, and cautioned violence against women and girls “as the world’s most pervasive human rights abuse.”
In an allusion to what are popularly known as “killer robots,” he reiterated his previously stated stance that machines should never be given “lethal capacity outside human judgment or control.”
“People across the world want to know we are on their side,” Guterres said. “Whether robbed of their dignity by war, repression or poverty, or simply dreaming of a better future, they rely on their irreducible rights – and they look to us to help uphold them.”
“Human rights — civil, cultural, economic, political and social — are both the goal and the path,” he said.
This is not the first time Guterres has lamented the state of the world.
As Breitbart News reported, last June he warned climate-related devastation is striking the planet on a weekly basis and global action must be undertaken immediately with U.N. agencies in the lead or else the earth is doomed.
“We are here because the world is facing a grave climate emergency,” Guterres told a two-day Abu Dhabi climate meeting ahead of a Climate Action Summit in New York in September.
“Climate disruption is happening now… It is progressing even faster than the world’s top scientists have predicted,” the U.N. secretary general said. “It is outpacing our efforts to address it. Climate change is running faster than we are.
“Every week brings new climate-related devastation… floods, drought, heatwaves, wildfires and super storms.”
AP, AFP contributed to this story
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