Ms. Roueida Adel El Hage, Regional Representative for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region - Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Beirut,
Dear colleagues and students at the University of Balamand,
Esteemed guests,

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all on this day to the campus of the University of Balamand in Dekwaneh, a campus that accommodates our renowned and prestigious School of Fine Arts ALBA, and that has recently witnessed the development of the newly built facilities for the Faculties of Health Sciences and Medicine.

Today we celebrate the Human Rights Day. A slogan that has been repeated, uttered, and widely used, to express its crucial content in preserving humanity.

On this day, and to be faithful to the history of Human Rights, I was personally surprised to know that the first concept of Human Rights dates back to 539 BC where King Cyrus the Great freed Babylonian prisoners, and declared that all humans should have the right to choose their own religion. Almost 2000 years later, the UN established the 1st official declaration of Human Rights. In 1945, it was explicitly stated that “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood”. At that time there were five basic human rights articles: the right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion and expression, the right to work, and last but not least, education.

Unfortunately, despite this long incubation time for the Human Rights declaration, and despite the many efforts for implementation, we still see nowadays, all kinds of violations to the basic human rights all over the world, and sadly enough in our country where every single item of the Universal Declaration of humans rights has been repeatedly violated.

However, no matter how powerless and helpless we feel towards preventing injustice, we should never give up on our right to protest and we shall never refrain from supporting justice.

I believe this gathering on this day in an academic institution underlines the key role of education in helping with the implementation and the safeguarding of the basic principles of human rights where all other entities have failed to do so. It is through education, and only education, that we can strengthen the culture of respecting human rights, and ultimately respecting Humanity.

One other notion that I would like to draw the attention to is digitalization. Though it has made a major impact on our technological revolution, digitalization carries a huge risk for human rights violation, where our virtual activities have tremendously limited our human interactions.

At the end, a take home message on this special day is that peace can only last where human rights are respected as Dalai Lama said.

Happy Human Rights Day to all, and I am confident that the University of Balamand, through its educational mission, will always be a major supporter and a faithful partner to all those who believe in humanity and who work for the preservation of human rights.

Finally, I would like to thank all those who made this event a success, and to congratulate our Balamand students for their remarkable contribution as their efforts represent the impact of higher education in general, and the University of Balamand in particular, in promoting and implementing the fundamentals of human rights. ​