Thirty years ago, in June 1993, the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights decided to turn the promise of the Declaration of Human Rights into an operational reality. After more than two years of tough negotiations, the ‘Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action’ thus became a new fundamental document for international human rights action. Above all, creating a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights set a new framework for international action to protect and promote human rights.
Thirty years later, the balance is ambivalent: we are in a phase of fundamental geopolitical change. Many positive, substantial or institutional developments are increasingly called into question by authoritarian regimes. War as a means of solving political problems, increasingly ruthless repression, populist politics and, as a result, a decline in trust in institutions, especially political institutions – all of this results in multiple challenges. In addition to the global crises of climate change, migration movements and pandemics, technological developments, especially artificial intelligence as the most pressing one, are added to the list of matters requiring urgent attention: data protection, the spread of disinformation and hate speech, freedom of expression and the misuse of social networks are just some of the issues that are troubling us today.
