etre (To Be) - The Face of Human Rights

After the admission of Switzerland into the United Nations, the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in Geneva offered the UN an exhibition entitled "To Be" to celebrate the occasion in the Palace of Nations on the 60th Commission of Human Rights. This exhibition brought to life an interest among our representatives and cooperative offices of COSUDE. For this reason, the Fourth Political Division, in collaboration with Lars Müller, Commissary of "To Be", subsequently produced an exhibition available to the representatives and cooperative offices of COSUDE. Human Rights are indivisible and universal; they are valid everywhere and for everyone. They are also valid for all spheres of life. Human Rights are required rights. In respect to those rights, concessions are not acceptable now that there is widespread agreement about human rights and with regard to the violation of those rights. It is easy to speak of human rights. Many human beings know their rights but few demand them. And they do not demand them because they do not know how to do so, or because they do not have the necessary means to, or even because the state impedes them. What can we do so that human beings pay more attention to their own rights? We can sensitize people by means of establishing images of human rights through mediums as sculpture, photography and writing. Human rights are universal and indivisible and contain the fundamentals of a "World Constitution". The respect and application of human rights are indispensable in order to allow all human beings a dignified existence anywhere in the World. Human rights are rights that each individual can demand in face of the state.

Wolfgang Amadeus Bruelhart
Chief of the Political Section of Human Rights
Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland
(Translated by Bruce Jacobs)

This exhibition is an excerpt from the publication "The Face of Human Rights", 2004
© Lars Müller Publishers
© for all photographs: Magnum Photos
© 2005 by Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland
Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland
Exhibition created with the archives of Magnum Photos.