President of the 18th Cycle of the United Nations Human Rights Council Omar Zniber says he made an important choice from the beginning of his term to focus on the impact of climate change realizing that African states suffer most from it impacts.
Speaking to female African journalists from five different countries in Geneva, he indicated that reports from UN agencies show that droughts have affected many countries and exacerbated the continent’s food security situation.
He challenged the international body to do more to help Africa as the climate change phenomenon has made people to become vulnerable and compounded the issue of human trafficking arising from displacements.
“Africa has almost no response ability to the deterioration of climate worldwide so we have to care about the population of Africa and elsewhere but it is one of my priorities. I drew the attention of the Council, I organize a very important meetings inviting High level leadership from outside the continent and other international organisations to focus on this.
“Climate change, it means the creation of biodiversity and it is becoming food priority. I would like to say one of the most important one for the rural community for the youth. So we have to care about it; of course we cannot talk about climate change from a scientific perspective, it has a human rights dimension
“Climate change, it means the creation of biodiversity and it is becoming food priority. I would like to say one of the most important one for the rural community for the youth. So we have to care about it; of course we cannot talk about climate change from a scientific perspective, it has a human rights dimension
Zniber who is also the Permanent Representative of Morocco to the UN office and other international organisations in Geneva, stressed on the need to upgrade human capacities for Africa.
He called on those responsible for organizing Conference of Parties (COP) processes within the UN to effectively deal with climate change.
“They should keep in mind that they are not only dealing with the economy, with energy, no; they’re also dealing with human rights; this is what is important when I introduced this because when it has to do with the new technologies, it has to do completely with human rights. We’re experiencing unfortunate issues to do with digital divide in our continent in Africa”.
The President stated on his clear mandate to promote human rights using mechanisms to assess the global human rights situation and in member countries.
Every year countries come before the Human Rights Council to present their policies concerning the promotion of human rights and get questioned by the members a process he described as quite interesting with other countries following
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is mandated to present reports, organize sittings, panels and work in close contact with special mandate holders to provide them with the means to help them achieve their goals and objectives.
Ziber bemoaned the little funding allocated to humanitarian programmes for Africa in countries such as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
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