A/HRC/37/63
7.
Third I would propose a category of procedural or instrumental rights, such as the
rights to due process, access to information, freedom of expression and peaceful assembly,
work, education, social security, leisure — rights that we need to achieve our potential, to
complete our personalities, to engage in the pursuit of happiness.
8.
Finally I would postulate the category of end rights or outcome rights, that is, the
concrete exercise of human dignity, that condition of life that allows each human being to
be himself or herself. This ultimate right is the right to our identity, to our privacy, the right
to be ourselves, to think by ourselves and express our humanity without indoctrination,
without intimidation, without pressures of political correctness, without having to sell
ourselves, without having to engage in self-censorship. The absence of this outcome right to
identity and self-respect is reflected in much of the strife we see in the world today. It is
through the consciousness and exercise of the right to our identity and the respect of the
identity of others that we will enjoy the individual and collective right to peace (see my
2013 report to the GA A/68/284, paras. 67–68).
9.
The United Nations Human Rights Council should become the international arena
where governments compete to show how best to implement human rights, how to
strengthen the rule of law, how to achieve social justice, where they display best practices
and give life to this new functional paradigm of human rights. This kind of competition in
human rights performance is the noblest goal and challenge for civilization. The Council
should become the pre-eminent forum where governments elucidate what they themselves
have done and are doing to deliver on human rights, in good-faith implementation of
pledges, in adherence to a daily culture of human rights characterized by generous
interpretation of human rights treaties and a commitment to the inclusion of all stakeholders.
What the Council must not be is a politicized arena where gladiators use human rights as
weapons to defeat their political adversaries and where human rights are undermined
through “side shows”, the “flavor of the month” or “legal black holes”. The civilization
model of the globalized world must not be one of positivism, legalisms and loopholes, but
one of ethics, direct democracy, respect for the environment, international solidarity and
human dignity.
22
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