A speech by the ACHRS at the United Nations ceremony on the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Mr. President of the United Nations General Assembly, Your Excellencies, ladies and gentlemen

I am pleased to stand before you today, to celebrate together the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the receipt of the United Nations Human Rights Prize for the year 2023.

Allow me to congratulate our colleagues who won the award and wish a better luck to the nominees.

I would like to express my utmost gratitude and thanks to every individual, organization, and donor who has contributed their time, expertise, and money to the success of our center’s programs. Thanks to the Centre’s team, including the foreign trainees, who contributed to obtaining this prestigious award.

I also extend my sincere thanks to the prestigious United Nations Committee for this award for the year 2023 for the objectivity and integrity in processing all nomination requests.

This award is not only a recognition of our efforts, but rather reflects our center’s deep connection to the issues of human and peoples’ rights, culture, and democracy in Jordan and the Arab world.

Our Center was founded in 2000 as an independent think tank on human rights. Since then, the Center has been an active element in spreading the culture of human and peoples’ rights and supporting studies and research on these issues. We are proud that we have focused on five key priorities related to human rights in the areas of the right to: life, thought, expression, participation, and equality.

The center’s activities contributed to raising awareness and empowering activists in Jordan and the Arab world, as it built leadership capabilities for (254) women and youth, and contributed to preparing (289) trainers on human rights issues and thousands to monitor elections in the Arab world.

The Center succeeded in organizing more than 500 research, awareness-raising, and training activities for approximately 15,000 activists distributed across eighteen Arab countries. The center contributed to receiving (196) trainee researchers from

28 non-Arab countries. It also published 56 books and established five Jordanian and Arab human rights networks.

Finally, I am pleased to share with you our happiness for receiving this prestigious award and for peace based on justice to prevail in the whole world and transfer armament funds to be spent on education and health for the peoples of the world; and let us all work towards achieving the sustainable development goals so that “we leave no one, no people who long for the right to self-determination / especially the Palestinian people, behind us”.

New York, December 15th, 2023.

Thank you for listening and peace be upon you.