SG/SM/6490

SECRETARY-GENERAL CALLS ART EXHIBIT AT PALAIS DES NATIONS
'A MOVING TRIBUTE TO VALUES ENSHRINED IN UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS'

Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's statement delivered today at the opening in the Palais des Nations, Geneva, of an art exhibition dedicated to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

I am delighted to be here. Allow me, at the outset, to thank the Government of Spain for the initiative that led to this exhibition. It is a moving tribute to the values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Each of these lithographs takes one person's private vision of an article from the Declaration and endows it with an intensity that gives it universal relevance.

Art holds the key to an ideal: a vision of honesty and humanity that real life can rarely offer us.

In our own minds, we are sometimes able to conjure up such a vision of what could be and should be so obvious, prompting us to pose the question, Why not? Real life tends to give us the answer to that question all too readily; but the strength of the artist is that he chooses not to hear it.

That is why artists, at their best, speak not only to people; they speak for them. That is why we know that if intolerance is the enemy of art, art is the constant combatant of intolerance. For every barrier art has broken down, every new perspective art has opened up, human understanding is the richer; and so, therefore, is humanity itself.

The mission to fight intolerance is one of the principles upon which our founders built the United Nations. We must never lose sight of it.

This year, dedicated to celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration, is a year that will involve not only governments, but all of us. This year, we are working as a coalition to take the message of the Declaration to every continent, every country, every village, every citizen.

The pictures we see here today were commissioned to His Majesty King Juan Carlos of Spain in 1984 to mark the fifth centennial of the birth of Fray Bartolome de las Casas. As His Majesty rightly says, there could be no homage more fitting to this passionate defender of human rights, this challenger of

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injustice, than bringing to life a declaration adopted at a time when humankind was emerging from one of the darkest and bloodiest nights in history.

Throughout this year, artists and authors from around the world will be proclaiming the rights of the individual -- the universal rights that no border, no rampart, no ocean can stop. They will shine the strong, health- giving light of their creativity into every dark corner, every nook where intolerance might be roosting.

On behalf of the United Nations, but also as the husband of a painter, I must tell you how much I admire and am grateful to all artists, wherever they come from, whatever their form of art.

I should like to hope that we non-artists will always keep deep within ourselves that thirst for integrity and humanity which, in our heart of hearts, will keep us asking, "Why not?".

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United Nations