Mr. President,

I have the honour to make this statement on behalf of the member states of the OIC.

The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (VDPA) reaffirms the importance of ensuring the universality, objectivity and non-selectivity of the consideration of human rights issues.

We believe that human rights, while being dynamic, interdependent and indivisible must also reflect the development of history and growing human needs. There are emerging challenges and issues which need to be addressed by international human rights machinery.

It must also be recognized that the international community agreed during the World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993, that while considering the issue of human rights, national and regional particularities and various historical cultural and religious backgrounds must be borne in mind.

The negation of diversity and multiculturalism through a deliberate political discourse can have far reaching impact on the future of international human rights framework.

We are seriously concerned at the attempt to introduce in the United Nations concepts that have no legal foundation in any international human rights instrument. These attempts undermine not only the intents of the drafters and signatories to these human rights instruments, but also seriously jeopardize the entire international human rights framework.

The Human Rights Council was created to be the voice of the international community`s collective conscience. The full enjoyment of human rights is possible only if diverse stakeholders guided by the spirit of the World Conference join together to affirm their commitment to human rights in every aspect of life without any political considerations, which create polarization among states. The OIC believes that positive and constructive engagement free from politicization and double standards is the only way forward to realize the full potential of this Council in order to promote and protect human rights.

I thank you.