Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said that his country was working to strengthen international cooperation in the field of human rights and conflict resolution.
Addressing the high-level segment of the 40th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva on Tuesday, Shoukry explained that his country witnessed the development of a human rights strategy in 2018 and an initiative for community dialogue for all concerned parties, including non-governmental organizations, to achieve transparency.
He also pointed to the construction of the biggest mosque and the largest cathedral in the Middle East in the new capital, to prevent any discrimination on religious grounds within Egyptian society.
The Egyptian foreign minister said it was time to assess the situation in the Human Rights Council and to correct some practices. He pointed to some parties’ dissociation from the basic purpose of establishing the council, by seeking to turn it into a forum for settling political accounts and exchanging accusations.
He also stressed that his country regarded human rights as an interrelated group of indivisible rights, foremost of which was the right to life, which “is currently facing a harsh attack due to the spread of terrorism.”
Shoukry said he regretted that economic, cultural and social rights were much neglected in today’s world. He added that a large proportion of the developing world continued to suffer from poverty and lack of basic necessities. Economic and social rights are the means to enable individuals to claim their political and civil rights, he underlined.
“The process of promoting human rights is a cumulative and continuous path in which no country has attained perfection. Every country seeks to achieve its national goals in the field of human rights, building on successes and correcting any imbalances in parallel with the different circumstances and challenges facing countries,” the minister remarked.
He also warned of the growth of populist forces and the extreme right in many developed countries, which he said would lead to “dire consequences and threatens the achievements of the global human rights movement over the past years.”
Noting a significant increase in the use of violence by police forces against peaceful demonstrators, the rising rates of racism and xenophobia and the targeting of migrants and refugees, Shoukry called for joint efforts to promote and respect human rights and the culture of coexistence and tolerance.
