Pavey: Traditions hamper human rights

Safak Pavey, a deputy from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) and a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, addressed 250 parliamentarians from 36 countries in the 20th anniversary ceremony of the adoption of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (VDPA). In her speech, Pavey said that children, women, disabled people and minorities have greatly and directly benefited from the path opened by VDPA and that thanks to the VDPA, today's youth also had the chance to relate to participatory democracy, human rights through new mediums for freedom of expression, digital freedom such as social media. Underlining the significance of adopting the declaration with the consensus of the 171 states participating in the conference, Pavey noted that it was a strong message to be conveyed to the international community and civil society that a consensus could be reached on human rights. "VDPA has played a very important role in making discrimination unacceptable and shameful at the level of states. In the past 20 years, developments and changes within the international community have strengthened multilateral human rights actors and procedures. However, there are still serious human rights violations today. We can't just leave the solutions to these problems to legislation which sometimes ceases to be functional. Most of the time, we can see strong challenges to domestic laws that are in compliance with the international law. Today, the resistance of traditions, not the resistance of states, hampers our struggle. The underlying thought saying 'instead of freedoms that do not contribute with a meaning to my life, I choose traditions that give meaning to one's life' is deeply embedded in various societies. I believe we will be able to eliminate this obstacle once we find a way to reconcile freedoms and traditions," Pavey added.