Berlin, 12 January 2023
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has urged world leaders to use the occasion of the anniversary year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to usher in a period of freedom, cooperation and optimism.
Addressing members of the Diplomatic Corps accredited to Germany during his traditional New Year Reception at Castle Belevue in Berlin, recently, Mr Steinmeier said, “let us work every day to ensure that our hope is well-founded.”
The German president observed that “it was in 1948, 75 years ago, shortly after the end of the darkest chapter of history, that the world was gifted two inspiring and illuminating sentences, namely, ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.”
This year marks 75 years since the epochal text was passed, says President Steinmeier, adding “It is easy, after hundreds of wars since 1948 and not least the brutal Russian attack on Ukraine, to dismiss the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a piece of paper with no real impact. But that would be entirely wrong.”
He described Human Rights which does not distinguish between north and south, east and west as universal.
According to President Steinmeier, Human Rights was not foreign to any culture or religion proof of which was the composition of the committee that drafted its 30 articles included the Chilian Hernan Santa Cruz; a Confucian scholar from China, an Indian woman, Hansa Mehta, and a Greek Orthodox Christian were also part of the efforts.
“Indian scholars saw Hindu ideals of freedom reflected in the Declaration; a Muslim intellectual believed that it embodied the prohibition on discrimination from the early days of Islam. They could all identify with the values of the text. Because they apply to all people, regardless of which continent they live in.”
President Steinmeier told the assembled Diplomats that the people who brought down the dictatorships of the Eastern Bloc in 1989 and 1990 could draw strength from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in the opinion of President Steinmeier, “gives strength to the Ukrainian soldiers who are fighting for freedom, self-determination and human dignity and bravely resisting the Russian invading army.”
Describing 2022 as a “dark year”, President Steinmeier stressed that, the year also offered something positive, namely, that, the desire for freedom was an indivisible part of human nature, that people want to be free and drawing strength from that desire.
“In the bleak year of 2022, things happened that we should not forget: a free country asserts itself with great courage against Russian military might and shows the world that democracy is capable of defending itself against the enemies of freedom.”
Turning to other equally important developments in 2022, the German President stressed that the elections in the United States “weakened those who reject the outcome of votes, sow mistrust and attack democracy.
“The longing for freedom brought brave people onto the streets and into the squares even in the face of the gravest threats from their dictatorial regimes. We saw and are still seeing that nobody should underestimate the power of the law and of democracy.
Touching on the issue of climate change, President Steinmeier said that the impact on the world show that “we are bound to one another and must therefore ally with one another.
“I see an encouraging sign that, at the UN Biodiversity Conference, 200 states were able to gather behind an agreement to stop worldwide species loss and the worldwide destruction of ecosystems.
“This is to show that cooperation for the benefit of all is not just essential, it is also possible,” says President Steinmeier.