A/HRC/23/29 26. She stressed that human rights still provoked political controversy and still too many serious human rights violations were inadequately addressed by the international community. In her view, a much stronger challenge than changing laws was the resistance of traditions. In her opinion, it was not the States that needed to reach immediate consensus, it was cultures and traditions. She referred to the phenomenon of acid attacks against women following rejection of proposals of marriage, resisting sexual abuse or family disputes. Despite laws and severe penalties, the number of victims had remained the same or increased. Referring to the recruitment of child soldiers, the sale of child brides by their families, she affirmed that we struggled against a “deep culture” which saw this as acceptable. We were battling with the prejudices, discrimination and hate crimes of the past. Our duty was to remove these burdens from the shoulders of future generations. In her view, there was no need for more legal development on the normative side, but the focus should be on the implementation through education and accountability. C. Former Prosecutor of the United Nations international criminal law tribunals 27. The former Prosecutor of International Criminal Tribunals, Ms. Carla Del Ponte, emphasized that the main achievement in the protection of human rights was the referral to justice of most of the political and military figures responsible for the commission of crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. The creation of the ad hoc tribunals was a great success in international justice. She underlined the fact that the first generation of international criminal tribunals demonstrated clearly that impunity was no longer tolerated by the international community, following the Vienna Declaration. She referred in particular to the role of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in holding those responsible for ethnic cleansing to account. She said that ethnic cleaning was a crime against humanity and was perhaps the most extreme form of human rights violations. 28. Ms. Del Ponte identified six challenges in delivering justice: (a) bringing senior and military leaders to justice; (b) the contribution to the development of national criminal law and humanitarian law; (c) the selection of suspects and transfer of information and cases to national prosecutors and courts; (d) the complexity of international investigations and prosecutions; (e) the protection of witnesses; and (f) State cooperation. 29. She concluded by saying that peacemaking and nation-building efforts would neither make peace nor build nations unless they included, from their inception, a justice component so as to prosecute the worst violations of international humanitarian law on all sides, to end the culture of impunity and to make it clear to everyone that no one is above the law. D. Human rights lawyer and participant in the World Conference 30. Human rights lawyer Ms. Hina Jilani recalled that the World Conference was convened at a critical juncture in the advancement of the United Nations human rights system. The expectations from the conference remained as relevant currently as they were twenty years before. At that time, she recalled that gaps in implementation of human rights conventions troubled those engaged in the promotion and protection of human rights. It was also important for those coming from countries of the South to ensure that the essence of the universality of human rights was not lost amongst overly emphasized notions of cultural specificities. The Conference was an important opportunity for human rights activists, academics and other civil society actors to interact and to bring both consistency and rationality to human rights advocacy. She believed that was the beginning of a global 8