Schoolgirls in South Sudan | Credit | Girls Education South Sudan/GESS

The United Nations’ Secretary-General has launched a human rights campaign for member states to advance and respect human rights.

The Call to Action by Antonio Guterres aims to ensure equality for women and girls, to advance sustainable development, too prevent conflict, reduce human suffering, and build a just and equitable world.

This year’s high-Level panel discussion on human rights is themed: ‘Thirty years of implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child: challenges and opportunities.”

The session will listen to human rights progress reports from member states, including South Sudan.

South Sudan is being represented by the permanent representative to United Nations as well as representatives from Human Rights Commission.

The month-long session till 20 March will assess member states’ progress towards human rights goals and listen to reports from government officials.

The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan is expected to present their latest report.

In a 2018 Human Rights Report released this month, Human Rights Watch says lack of accountability in South Sudan fuelled the violence, while progress on establishing the hybrid court envisioned in the 2015 peace agreement remains stalled.

The report says government also continued to restrict media and civil society and arbitrarily detain perceived critics and opponents.

Speaking on the opening day of the UN Human Rights Council’s 43rd session in Geneva yesterday, the UN chief told rights defenders that human rights are ultimate tool of the world body to help societies grow in freedom.

Antonio Guterres cited cases where civilians are trapped in war zones, women and are girls exploited and abused, civil society persecuted, and journalists are killed or harassed for doing their jobs.

Guterres cautioned against riding on the pretext of national sovereignty to abuse rights.

He says human rights must never be a vehicle for double standards or a means to pursue hidden agendas.

“People across the world want to know we are on their side. Whether robbed of their dignity by war, repression of poverty, or simply dreaming of a better future,” Guterres stated, “they rely on their irreducible rights – and they look to us to help uphold them.”

The UN chief insisted that all States had a responsibility to protect and promote people’s “dignity and worth, adding that national sovereignty cannot be a pretext for violating human rights.

Among the other priorities, he highlighted that much more needs to be done to prevent violence against women, saying violence against women is the world’s most pervasive human rights abuse.

But he believes positive change is possible, recalling his own experience living under dictatorship in Portugal, which finally gave way to a democratic movement when he was 24 years old.