It is a great honor to be asked to open this seminar on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

I would like to express how important it is that His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince is with us today.  As a Goodwill Ambassador for United Nations Development Program, you have been a steadfast supporter of Norway’s and the international community’s efforts to promote peace and development. 

In preparing a brief speech on one of the most crucial issues of international politics, I came to think of the Irish writer, George Bernard Shaw, who once told a speaker that he had 15 minutes to speak.  The speaker replied, “15 minutes?  How can I tell them all I know in 15 minutes?”  Shaw responded:  “I advise you to speak very slowly.”

Let me assure you that I will stick to the 15 minutes I have been given.

Your Royal Highness,
Excellencies,
Distinguished guests
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to start by quoting Winston Churchill who said that “There are a terrible lot of lies going about the world, and the worst of it, is that half of them are true”.

Churchill spoke sarcastic of his age, but his characteristics go beyond his time:  The 20th Century was filled with what ought to be lies, but sadly turned out to be true:

Two world wars, endless civil wars, assassinations of heroic men and women, and many many more barbarous killings in brutal conflicts all over the world.

Add to that all the countless infringements of citizens in illiberal regimes world-wide, I think we clearly can conclude that the 20th Century was a century of disregard and contempt for humanity.

Elie Wiesel, who personally experienced the ultimate horror of that century – the Nazi-concentration camps – but rose and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace 22 years ago, described it as a century of indifference.

 
In taking on the 60 Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I think we should start from that notion.  The notion of indifference.  Or rather, indifference to the suffering of so many innocent and victimized civilians can in no way be a start.  Indifference as such, is an end.  It makes the human being inhuman.  That’s the core of Wiesel’s notion. 

But one crucial response to indifference, the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights became a start.  In that way indifference was the end, and the beginning.

The ideal of the Declaration can be illustrated through the beautiful formula by the philosopher Hannah Arendt: The pardon and the promise. As universal rights it included a pardon to the enemies of yesterday and the victims of them.

But the declaration is all about remembering and not to forget. To promise is to ensure future generations that all men will have their full place in an international community anchored in fundamental human rights, guaranteeing dignity and worth of the human person.

The reality of the Declaration is of course that although some 188 nations at the end of 20th had endorsed the Declaration, the world carries on with all its brutality.

Looking at the few years that have passed by in this century, it seems we got off in the same way here too.  Countless numbers of people around the world continue to experience indifference. Many human rights defenders experience that it is troublesome to be involved in other people’s pain and despair.

Dag Hammerskjold once said that the UN wasn’t created to take humanity to heaven, but to save it from hell.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights invented the moral basis for how we should relate to one another.  It does not take us to heaven, but it is a basis for making societies more human and civilized.

Looking at Europe today it seems clear to me that Europe did not invent human rights.

It is the other way around.  Human rights, as enshrined in the European Convention on Human rights, invented the Europe we know today.  Europe has become a place where people build their lives, instead of losing their lives.

 
That is the true legacy of the Declaration, in my view:  It is a fundamental moral point of reference for human relations and how to build a society.

Therefore, the test is not perfection. The true test of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is  whether we are able to recognize when we fail and  then act to overcome the challenges of an imperfect  world.

Your Royal Highness,

Distinguished guests,

What is the dominant force of the 21st Century?  In a bright picture it could, until recently, have been the global economy, but it could also be information technology, or the scientific revolution, or the advance of democracy and diversity.

In a dark picture it could be the climate changes, continuing poverty, or the conflicts caused by racial and religious tensions.

All these are important factors to our understanding of the new century we have entered. They all reflect one fundamental thing:  the 21st Century is a century, more than anything, characterized by an unprecedented degree of interdependence among nations.

Globalization simply means that we have more trade, more travel, more communication, and more exchange than ever before.  People experience more benefits than ever before in history.

But at the same time we have become more vulnerable. Look at the financial crises: within only weeks the impact of the meltdown of investment banks in the US has become hard realities also on our soil.

On the question of security, the free flow of people, information and gods across borders and waters, means that threats are being spread by other means and with other intentions than we are used to. 
 
Globalization has become the frame for a world system where all pieces are more or less dependent on one another:

Kofi Annan has said: Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another.  What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.

Yes Globalization gives birth to new great powers. New state actors are changing the rule of the game. No lasting solution to any of the major challenges of our time will be solved without the participation and commitment of the new great powers.

Therefore we have to reform the global institutions.

The permanent members of the United Nations Security Council reflected in 1946 a shattered world seeking reconciliation and renewal. Today, the Council no longer reflects the political realities of the world.

The permanent members seem to act only according to their national interest, forgetting the mandate they were given in 1946:  to act on behalf of all of us.

If we are to recognize our failures, and act to overcome the challenges of our world, I say to you that the first and foremost important act must be to recognize the simple fact that the world has changed irreversibly, it has become interdependent. And then we must adjust the World Organization accordingly.

Only then can we succeed in transforming the interdependent world to a genuine positive rather than negative condition to most people.

And only then can we advance human rights and global responsibility.
____

Declarations have formed the world. They have formed our thinking. And they have formed our actions.

The American Declaration of Independence and The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen redefined civic identity fundamentally. “All men are born free and have equal rights”. Yes indeed, it was a revolution.

But the achievements launched by the French Revolution and the American Revolution must be weighed against the excesses of nationalism that accompanied it.

In an unintended consequence of historic proportions, the new way of seeing the state, as belonging to the citizens instead of to its rulers, changed the meaning of war.

No longer was combat and war an enterprise for the Elite. Whole populations could be mobilized for wars; their wars. And this ideological transformation occurred just as technological innovations made mass destruction possible.

Furthermore, self-determination meant that parts could demand autonomy in relation to the whole. We got a lot of civil wars based in ethnic, religious and tribal identity.

This is why the two 18th Century declarations were followed be a third: the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This time not a revolution toward nationalism, but away from it. To internationalism.

This revolution unfolded slowly. During the Cold War years, the destructiveness of war made global leaders aware that time had come to mitigate national claims.

Since then, war and the threat of war have only increased the urgency of sublimating state sovereignty to something larger.

Also, the threatening catastrophe of ecological ruin and the free, but amoral market we are witnessing today contribute to the awareness that we have to build stronger global institutions and transfer national sovereignty to them. The years 1776, 1789, and 1948 marked leaps forward in the human project.  Ideals of justice and equality were advanced.  New political structures were invented.  The human hearts were inspired to accomplish what had been regarded as impossible.

Exactly such a leap forward is once again needed.  Committing us all to an interdependent world and closing once and for all the human divide that exists.
 
Paving the way for a new civic identity. Associating ourselves with the fate of other people. Using our freedom to make other people free. Using our freedom to make war impossible, to combat global warming, and to civilize markets and money.

If I have seen further it is because I have been standing on the shoulders of giants, said Isaac Newton. The Declaration of Independence, The Declaration of Freedom and The Declaration of Human Rights have all been such giants. Making it possible for us to look ahead. 

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”, states Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

This article, this fundamental imperative has steadily been spreading around the globe. This is also globalization.

Everybody knows their rights. The American writer, James Baldwin once wrote; “the people who once walked in darkness are no longer prepared to do so”. We must understand this. Oppression and indifference will lead to new conflicts and new wars. That is why we must use our freedom to make other people free. Use the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

There can be no indifference. There can only be human rights.

Thank you.