NEW YORK, APRIL 18, 2008 - Here is
a Vatican translation of the address Benedict XVI gave
today to the General Assembly of the United Nations. The
Pope spoke first in French, then in English.
* * *
Mr President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As I begin my address to this Assembly, I would like
first of all to express to you, Mr President, my sincere
gratitude for your kind words. My thanks go also to the
Secretary-General, Mr Ban Ki-moon, for inviting me to
visit the headquarters of this Organization and for the
welcome that he has extended to me. I greet the
Ambassadors and Diplomats from the Member States, and
all those present. Through you, I greet the peoples who
are represented here. They look to this institution to
carry forward the founding inspiration to establish a "centre
for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment
of these common ends" of peace and development (cf.
Charter of the United Nations, article 1.2-1.4). As Pope
John Paul II expressed it in 1995, the Organization
should be "a moral centre where all the nations of the
world feel at home and develop a shared awareness of
being, as it were, a ‘family of nations’" (Address to
the General Assembly of the United Nations on the 50th
Anniversary of its Foundation, New York, 5 October 1995,
14).
Through the United Nations, States have established
universal objectives which, even if they do not coincide
with the total common good of the human family,
undoubtedly represent a fundamental part of that good.
The founding principles of the Organization -- the
desire for peace, the quest for justice, respect for the
dignity of the person, humanitarian cooperation and
assistance -- express the just aspirations of the human
spirit, and constitute the ideals which should underpin
international relations. As my predecessors Paul VI and
John Paul II have observed from this very podium, all
this is something that the Catholic Church and the Holy
See follow attentively and with interest, seeing in your
activity an example of how issues and conflicts
concerning the world community can be subject to common
regulation. The United Nations embodies the aspiration
for a "greater degree of international ordering" (John
Paul II, Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 43), inspired and
governed by the principle of subsidiarity, and therefore
capable of responding to the demands of the human family
through binding international rules and through
structures capable of harmonizing the day-to-day
unfolding of the lives of peoples. This is all the more
necessary at a time when we experience the obvious
paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be
in crisis because it is still subordinated to the
decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call
for interventions in the form of collective action by
the international community.
Indeed, questions of security, development goals,
reduction of local and global inequalities, protection
of the environment, of resources and of the climate,
require all international leaders to act jointly and to
show a readiness to work in good faith, respecting the
law, and promoting solidarity with the weakest regions
of the planet. I am thinking especially of those
countries in Africa and other parts of the world which
remain on the margins of authentic integral development,
and are therefore at risk of experiencing only the
negative effects of globalization. In the context of
international relations, it is necessary to recognize
the higher role played by rules and structures that are
intrinsically ordered to promote the common good, and
therefore to safeguard human freedom. These regulations
do not limit freedom. On the contrary, they promote it
when they prohibit behaviour and actions which work
against the common good, curb its effective exercise and
hence compromise the dignity of every human person. In
the name of freedom, there has to be a correlation
between rights and duties, by which every person is
called to assume responsibility for his or her choices,
made as a consequence of entering into relations with
others. Here our thoughts turn also to the way the
results of scientific research and technological
advances have sometimes been applied. Notwithstanding
the enormous benefits that humanity can gain, some
instances of this represent a clear violation of the
order of creation, to the point where not only is the
sacred character of life contradicted, but the human
person and the family are robbed of their natural
identity. Likewise, international action to preserve the
environment and to protect various forms of life on
earth must not only guarantee a rational use of
technology and science, but must also rediscover the
authentic image of creation. This never requires a
choice to be made between science and ethics: rather it
is a question of adopting a scientific method that is
truly respectful of ethical imperatives.
Recognition of the unity of the human family, and
attention to the innate dignity of every man and woman,
today find renewed emphasis in the principle of the
responsibility to protect. This has only recently been
defined, but it was already present implicitly at the
origins of the United Nations, and is now increasingly
characteristic of its activity. Every State has the
primary duty to protect its own population from grave
and sustained violations of human rights, as well as
from the consequences of humanitarian crises, whether
natural or man-made. If States are unable to guarantee
such protection, the international community must
intervene with the juridical means provided in the
United Nations Charter and in other international
instruments. The action of the international community
and its institutions, provided that it respects the
principles undergirding the international order, should
never be interpreted as an unwarranted imposition or a
limitation of sovereignty. On the contrary, it is
indifference or failure to intervene that do the real
damage. What is needed is a deeper search for ways of
pre-empting and managing conflicts by exploring every
possible diplomatic avenue, and giving attention and
encouragement to even the faintest sign of dialogue or
desire for reconciliation.
The principle of "responsibility to protect" was
considered by the ancient "ius gentium" as the
foundation of every action taken by those in government
with regard to the governed: at the time when the
concept of national sovereign States was first
developing, the Dominican Friar Francisco de Vitoria,
rightly considered as a precursor of the idea of the
United Nations, described this responsibility as an
aspect of natural reason shared by all nations, and the
result of an international order whose task it was to
regulate relations between peoples. Now, as then, this
principle has to invoke the idea of the person as image
of the Creator, the desire for the absolute and the
essence of freedom. The founding of the United Nations,
as we know, coincided with the profound upheavals that
humanity experienced when reference to the meaning of
transcendence and natural reason was abandoned, and in
consequence, freedom and human dignity were grossly
violated. When this happens, it threatens the objective
foundations of the values inspiring and governing the
international order and it undermines the cogent and
inviolable principles formulated and consolidated by the
United Nations. When faced with new and insistent
challenges, it is a mistake to fall back on a pragmatic
approach, limited to determining "common ground",
minimal in content and weak in its effect.
This reference to human dignity, which is the foundation
and goal of the responsibility to protect, leads us to
the theme we are specifically focusing upon this year,
which marks the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. This document was the
outcome of a convergence of different religious and
cultural traditions, all of them motivated by the common
desire to place the human person at the heart of
institutions, laws and the workings of society, and to
consider the human person essential for the world of
culture, religion and science. Human rights are
increasingly being presented as the common language and
the ethical substratum of international relations. At
the same time, the universality, indivisibility and
interdependence of human rights all serve as guarantees
safeguarding human dignity. It is evident, though, that
the rights recognized and expounded in the Declaration
apply to everyone by virtue of the common origin of the
person, who remains the high-point of God’s creative
design for the world and for history. They are based on
the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in
different cultures and civilizations. Removing human
rights from this context would mean restricting their
range and yielding to a relativistic conception,
according to which the meaning and interpretation of
rights could vary and their universality would be denied
in the name of different cultural, political, social and
even religious outlooks. This great variety of
viewpoints must not be allowed to obscure the fact that
not only rights are universal, but so too is the human
person, the subject of those rights.
[The Pope continued in English]
The life of the community, both domestically and
internationally, clearly demonstrates that respect for
rights, and the guarantees that follow from them, are
measures of the common good that serve to evaluate the
relationship between justice and injustice, development
and poverty, security and conflict. The promotion of
human rights remains the most effective strategy for
eliminating inequalities between countries and social
groups, and for increasing security. Indeed, the victims
of hardship and despair, whose human dignity is violated
with impunity, become easy prey to the call to violence,
and they can then become violators of peace.
The common good that human rights help to accomplish
cannot, however, be attained merely by applying correct
procedures, nor even less by achieving a balance between
competing rights. The merit of the Universal Declaration
is that it has enabled different cultures, juridical
expressions and institutional models to converge around
a fundamental nucleus of values, and hence of rights.
Today, though, efforts need to be redoubled in the face
of pressure to reinterpret the foundations of the
Declaration and to compromise its inner unity so as to
facilitate a move away from the protection of human
dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests,
often particular interests. The Declaration was adopted
as a "common standard of achievement" (Preamble) and
cannot be applied piecemeal, according to trends or
selective choices that merely run the risk of
contradicting the unity of the human person and thus the
indivisibility of human rights.
Experience shows that legality often prevails over
justice when the insistence upon rights makes them
appear as the exclusive result of legislative enactments
or normative decisions taken by the various agencies of
those in power. When presented purely in terms of
legality, rights risk becoming weak propositions
divorced from the ethical and rational dimension which
is their foundation and their goal. The Universal
Declaration, rather, has reinforced the conviction that
respect for human rights is principally rooted in
unchanging justice, on which the binding force of
international proclamations is also based. This aspect
is often overlooked when the attempt is made to deprive
rights of their true function in the name of a narrowly
utilitarian perspective. Since rights and the resulting
duties follow naturally from human interaction, it is
easy to forget that they are the fruit of a commonly
held sense of justice built primarily upon solidarity
among the members of society, and hence valid at all
times and for all peoples. This intuition was expressed
as early as the fifth century by Augustine of Hippo, one
of the masters of our intellectual heritage. He taught
that the saying: Do not do to others what you would not
want done to you "cannot in any way vary according to
the different understandings that have arisen in the
world" (De Doctrina Christiana, III, 14). Human rights,
then, must be respected as an expression of justice, and
not merely because they are enforceable through the will
of the legislators.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
As history proceeds, new situations arise, and the
attempt is made to link them to new rights. Discernment,
that is, the capacity to distinguish good from evil,
becomes even more essential in the context of demands
that concern the very lives and conduct of persons,
communities and peoples. In tackling the theme of
rights, since important situations and profound
realities are involved, discernment is both an
indispensable and a fruitful virtue.
Discernment, then, shows that entrusting exclusively to
individual States, with their laws and institutions, the
final responsibility to meet the aspirations of persons,
communities and entire peoples, can sometimes have
consequences that exclude the possibility of a social
order respectful of the dignity and rights of the
person. On the other hand, a vision of life firmly
anchored in the religious dimension can help to achieve
this, since recognition of the transcendent value of
every man and woman favours conversion of heart, which
then leads to a commitment to resist violence, terrorism
and war, and to promote justice and peace. This also
provides the proper context for the inter-religious
dialogue that the United Nations is called to support,
just as it supports dialogue in other areas of human
activity. Dialogue should be recognized as the means by
which the various components of society can articulate
their point of view and build consensus around the truth
concerning particular values or goals. It pertains to
the nature of religions, freely practised, that they can
autonomously conduct a dialogue of thought and life. If
at this level, too, the religious sphere is kept
separate from political action, then great benefits
ensue for individuals and communities. On the other
hand, the United Nations can count on the results of
dialogue between religions, and can draw fruit from the
willingness of believers to place their experiences at
the service of the common good. Their task is to propose
a vision of faith not in terms of intolerance,
discrimination and conflict, but in terms of complete
respect for truth, coexistence, rights, and
reconciliation.
Human rights, of course, must include the right to
religious freedom, understood as the expression of a
dimension that is at once individual and communitarian –
a vision that brings out the unity of the person while
clearly distinguishing between the dimension of the
citizen and that of the believer. The activity of the
United Nations in recent years has ensured that public
debate gives space to viewpoints inspired by a religious
vision in all its dimensions, including ritual, worship,
education, dissemination of information and the freedom
to profess and choose religion. It is inconceivable,
then, that believers should have to suppress a part of
themselves – their faith – in order to be active
citizens. It should never be necessary to deny God in
order to enjoy one’s rights. The rights associated with
religion are all the more in need of protection if they
are considered to clash with a prevailing secular
ideology or with majority religious positions of an
exclusive nature. The full guarantee of religious
liberty cannot be limited to the free exercise of
worship, but has to give due consideration to the public
dimension of religion, and hence to the possibility of
believers playing their part in building the social
order. Indeed, they actually do so, for example through
their influential and generous involvement in a vast
network of initiatives which extend from Universities,
scientific institutions and schools to health care
agencies and charitable organizations in the service of
the poorest and most marginalized. Refusal to recognize
the contribution to society that is rooted in the
religious dimension and in the quest for the Absolute –
by its nature, expressing communion between persons –
would effectively privilege an individualistic approach,
and would fragment the unity of the person.
My presence at this Assembly is a sign of esteem for the
United Nations, and it is intended to express the hope
that the Organization will increasingly serve as a sign
of unity between States and an instrument of service to
the entire human family. It also demonstrates the
willingness of the Catholic Church to offer her proper
contribution to building international relations in a
way that allows every person and every people to feel
they can make a difference. In a manner that is
consistent with her contribution in the ethical and
moral sphere and the free activity of her faithful, the
Church also works for the realization of these goals
through the international activity of the Holy See.
Indeed, the Holy See has always had a place at the
assemblies of the Nations, thereby manifesting its
specific character as a subject in the international
domain. As the United Nations recently confirmed, the
Holy See thereby makes its contribution according to the
dispositions of international law, helps to define that
law, and makes appeal to it.
The United Nations remains a privileged setting in which
the Church is committed to contributing her experience
"of humanity", developed over the centuries among
peoples of every race and culture, and placing it at the
disposal of all members of the international community.
This experience and activity, directed towards attaining
freedom for every believer, seeks also to increase the
protection given to the rights of the person. Those
rights are grounded and shaped by the transcendent
nature of the person, which permits men and women to
pursue their journey of faith and their search for God
in this world. Recognition of this dimension must be
strengthened if we are to sustain humanity’s hope for a
better world and if we are to create the conditions for
peace, development, cooperation, and guarantee of rights
for future generations.
In my recent Encyclical, Spe Salvi, I indicated that
"every generation has the task of engaging anew in the
arduous search for the right way to order human affairs"
(no. 25). For Christians, this task is motivated by the
hope drawn from the saving work of Jesus Christ. That is
why the Church is happy to be associated with the
activity of this distinguished Organization, charged
with the responsibility of promoting peace and good will
throughout the earth. Dear Friends, I thank you for this
opportunity to address you today, and I promise you of
the support of my prayers as you pursue your noble task.
Before I take my leave from this distinguished Assembly,
I should like to offer my greetings, in the official
languages, to all the Nations here represented.
Peace and Prosperity with God’s help!
[The Pope repeated the above greeting in French,
Spanish, Arab, Chinese and Russian]
Peace and Prosperity with God’s help!
© Copyright 2008 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
Pope Benedict XVI's Address to United Nations
"Human Rights ... Must Be Respected As an Expression of Justice"