A/73/227
Ireland, shaped by the intervention of women human rights defenders, which rejected
religiously justified gender segregation in education. 15 “This judgment is a vital step
forward in our effort to persuade the courts and State bodies to take account of the
misogyny and gender stereotyping that is promoted in our schools and universities in
the name of religious and cultural freedom.” 16
28. Another positive example is the recent innovative citation of the Convention on
the Rights of the Child by a judge in an appeals court in Mazandaran province in the
Islamic Republic of Iran when denying the petition of a man seeking to revoke his
former wife’s child visitation rights because she remarried. 17 Every effort must be
made to facilitate such use of the courts and the law to defend universality, including
by facilitating the legal participation of human rights defenders.
III. Universality: at the heart of human rights culture and at the
centre of the counter-attack against human rights
29. Universality goes to the heart of human rights and of who we are as human
beings. It “can be found in the most intimate of all identities: relationships with life,
death, sex, age, others, water, sand, trees ... knowledge, filiations”. 18
30. Universality is both an overarching concept of human rights and the skeleton
that constitutes the framework of rights. It focuses both on “the universality of
application as well as on the universality of obligation”. 19 It is the test against which
respect for rights, enjoyment of rights and their indivisibility can be measured. Like
“culture”, universality is not a static concept but an evolving one that has grown to
offer greater rights protection, including equal protection from abuses by a range of
actors, including State and non-State actors, whether individuals or corporations, and
issues previously seen as outside the topic of international law, such as domestic
violence.
31. Ardent defenders of the universality of human rights are found in all regions of
the world. Its opponents are likewise geographically diverse. The antecedents and
architects of universality similarly emerged from every region. It is a truly global
project, not an idea that belongs to or springs from any one country or region. People
and Governments in every part of the world are capable of violating or sustaining this
idea.
__________________
15
16
17
18
19
10/26
England and Wales Court of Appeal, HM Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and
Skills v. The Interim Executive Board of Al-Hijrah School, Case No. C1/2016/4313, Approved
Judgement, 13 October 2017, on appeal from the High Court of Justice.
Southall Black Sisters, “Court of Appeal finds the gender segregation can amount to unlawful
sex discrimination”, press release, 13 October 2017.
See partial translation in Omid Salimi Bani, “The Judiciary: in Mazandaran Court, a judge
appeals to international law”, Human Rights and Democracy for Iran, 7 January 2017. See also
www.isna.ir/news/95101911493/ رای- بی- سابقه- یک- دادگاه- در- مازندران- سند.
Patrice Meyer-Bisch, “Les droits culturels, un principe éthique de coopération et un levier de
développement”, keynote address for the panel “Cultural rights under pressure — a
contemporary arts perspective” at the Crossroads conference organized by Pro H elvetia, Basel,
8 February 2018 (translated by the author).
Sunila Abeysekera, “The High Commissioner’s promotion of universality of human rights”, in
Felice D. Gaer and Christen L. Broecker, eds., The United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights: Conscience for the World (Leiden, The Netherlands, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers,
2014), p. 121.
18-12312