Human rights are under gradual suffocation, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned in a speech to the UN Human Rights Council, quoted by Agence France-Presse, BTA reports.
"Human rights are the oxygen of humanity. But they are being suffocated one after another," Guterres said, emphasizing that they are at their weakest point and are under brutal attack. According to him, this situation poses a direct threat to the mechanisms and systems built over the past 80 years to protect human rights.
Guterres pointed to authoritarian regimes as the main culprits for this pressure. "Authoritarian leaders crush the opposition because they fear what a fully empowered people would be capable of," he said, without citing specific examples.
The UN Secretary-General also condemned patriarchal structures that prevent girls from getting an education and restrict women's rights, as well as warmongers who violate international law, humanitarian norms and the UN Charter.
He also stressed that human rights are also threatened by the climate crisis, as well as by the morally bankrupt global financial system that deepens inequalities and hinders sustainable development.
Guterres also warned of the dangers of uncontrolled technologies such as artificial intelligence, which raise great hopes but can also violate human rights with a click.
According to him, intolerance towards different vulnerable groups - indigenous peoples, migrants and refugees, the LGBT community and people with disabilities.
"Human rights are being suffocated by the rhetoric of those who, preaching division and anger, see them not as a benefit to humanity but as an obstacle to the power, profit and control they desire," Guterres concluded.