SIM Peter Baehr Lecture – Life Begins at Forty: Human Rights for the Future
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Author | Michelle Bachelet |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| DOI | 10.1177/09240519211056204 |
| Subject Matter | Lecture |
SIM Peter Baehr Lecture –
Life Begins at Forty: Human
Rights for the Future
Michelle Bachelet
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
Annual SIM Peter Baehr Lecture, 2 October 2021
1
Distinguished participants, dear students,
I am pleased to join you today in celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Utrecht University’s
Human Rights Centre. This celebration comes at a challenging time, when we are facing global
threats to human rights across the globe. COVID-19 has shown us a world immersed in human
rights gaps –and it has made them deeper and wider. The pandemic has exposed the weaknesses
of political, economic and health systems, and laid bare systemic discrimination and deep structural
inequalities everywhere, both within and between countries.
At the same time, our world continues to suffer with climate change, pollution, and biodiversity
loss. This triple planetary crisis created and sustained by human action –and inaction –is also dir-
ectly and severely impacting a broad range of rights, including the rights to adequate food, water,
education, housing, health, development, and even life itself.
One of the greatest uncertainties about these challenges is what policymakers will do about
them. Earlier this year I told the United Nations Human Rights Council that ‘navigating a clear
way out of the complex COVID-19 crisis, and towards an inclusive, green, sustainable and resilient
future, will be the work of this generation of world leaders –or their downfall.’So, in the midst of so
many threats to human lives, livelihoods and rights, allow me to share with you some thoughts on
how grave they are –and, on how, together, we can overcome them.
Recent months have unleashed extreme and murderous climate events on people in every region
of the world: monumental fires in Siberia and California; huge sudden floods in China, Germany
Corresponding author:
Michelle Bachelet, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
E-mail: ccanessa@un.org (Cecilia Canessa)
1. The SIM Peter Baehr Lecture is held every year at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, to celebrate the founding of the
Netherlands Institute of Human Rights (SIM) in 1981 and to commemorate the late Professor Peter Baehr, one of its
former directors.The High Commissioner's speech is also available via https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/
DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27594&LangID=E, accessed 1 November 2021.
Lecture
Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights
2021, Vol. 39(4) 329–334
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/09240519211056204
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