On the 13th of November 2023, the council hosted Ambassador Wafaa Basim, member of UN committee for civil and political rights, and former assistant for minister of foreign affairs and permanent representative of Egypt to the European headquarter of UN in Geneva. She addressed the organs of UN system which is concerned with human rights, in addition to the international agreements under the United Nations in this regard, and to what extend the countries comply with the obligation of these agreements.
Ambassador Mohamed Al-Oraby, the chief of the council, began the meeting. Participated in the seminar Ambassadors: Moner Zahran, Dr. Ezzat Saad, Salah Halima, Mr. Atef Al-Ghamry, Dr.Noha Bakr, in addition to students from Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Future University.
Ambassador Wafaa Basim addressed the human rights system, clarifying that the framework of this system is the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights. This declaration includes the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. These covenants are not new and include all rights of humankind. Prior to these covenants, there was an agreement of prevention and punishment of the crime of genocide which is presented to the international community in 1948 after genocide of Second World War. Ratification on this agreement is completed in 1952, and the Palestinian issue didn’t trigger according to this agreement.
In a related context, Ambassador Wafaa mentioned that the diversity in the topics, lead to prevalence of new agreements. These agreements are like the International Agreement for Elimination of Racial Discrimination, the International Agreement of Eliminating all kinds of Discrimination against Women, the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, The Convention of Child Rights and its accompanying protocols, the International Convention for the Protection of all Persons from Enforced Disappearance, the Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the International Convention for Protecting Rights of all Immigrant Workers and their Families, and the Convention of Refugees.
In addition to the previous agreements and Conventions, there are Treaty Bodies that is related to these agreements. These bodies are for checking human rights and to what extent there are compliance with these agreements. These agreements have mechanisms for individual complains after using the internal channels of complains within the state. Decisions of these bodies are non-binding, but only have a moral impact.
In the end, she referred to notes about the mechanisms of these agreements and to what extent countries abide by it. These notes include that the more the call for human rights, the less the compliance with it. Also, from he notes, the prevalence of double standards as a result of focusing on interests, the politicization of these treaties, calls for the right of privacy, in addition to the rise of untraditional topics.
