The work of the Fourth Arab Regional High-level Conference on the Protection and Promotion of Human Rights, entitled “The Impact of Crises on the Enjoyment of Human Rights: The COVID-19 Pandemic as a Model”, began today, Monday, at the headquarters of the Arab League in cooperation and partnership between the Arab League and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The two-day conference aims to “determine the impact and repercussions of the Covid-19 pandemic on human rights in the Arab region, highlight the efforts made to reduce the economic and social consequences of the epidemic, diagnose existing challenges, extract the most prominent lessons learned, and explore the broad lines of the future roadmap.”
The Assistant Secretary-General and Head of the Social Affairs Sector at the Arab League, Haifa Abu-Ghazaleh, said in her opening speech to the conference that “after nearly two years of strict precautionary measures and their consequences at various levels, it was incumbent upon us, as politicians, diplomats, experts, doctors and specialized researchers, to work on collecting, studying and analyzing the remnants of the pandemic and drawing lessons to build the future in a way that ensures social and economic stability, and guarantees the rights of individuals and societies.”
The conference will be attended by various mechanisms of the Arab human rights system, a high-level delegation from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and representatives of a number of relevant United Nations specialized agencies such as the World Health Organization, the International Organization for Migration and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
