Vienna +25 - Building Trust: Making Human Rights a Reality for All, Vienna

2018 marks the 25th anniversary of the World Conference on Human Rights which took place between 14 and 25 June 1993 and gathered more than 10,000 representatives of governments, the United Nations and the international civil society. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action (VDPA) adopted at the World Conference together are considered a landmark document for the promotion and protection of human rights, creating inter alia the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and his office (OHCHR).

On this occasion, the Austrian Federal Ministry for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs together with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the City of Vienna, and the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Human Rights organized a high-level expert conference on 22 and 23 May 2018 in Vienna. Federal Minister Dr. Karin Kneissl together with the High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein opened the event.

The programme and the concept note are available here.

The conference gathered independent human rights experts from civil society, academia and the private sector, youth, human rights defenders, representatives of the UN, regional/sub-regional/national/local human rights institutions as well as government representatives. Leading experts from all world regions were invited to discuss global trends such as digitalisation, demographic changes, urbanisation and climate change and their impact on human rights. The discussions at expert level were conducted in two working groups focusing on the following topics:

• Human Rights and Security
• Promotion of Equality in our Societies

The working groups developed practice-oriented recommendations to States and other relevant stakeholders aimed at further improving the protection of human rights.

Alexandra Tsvetkova, Director of LIBRe Foundation, was invited to take part in the 'Human Rights and Security' Working Group. She was also among the chosen ones to encourage the discussion with an incentive speech on 'Challenges to Secure Digital Rights and Initiatives to Raise Privacy Awareness'.