Ms BRYNJÓLFSDÓTTIR pointed out that the Prime Minister of Iceland had been very vocal about LGBTQI rights in Iceland and internationally. She asked how the backlash against the progress made in women's and LGBTQI rights could be countered. Ms JAKOBSDÓTTIR said that she was a bit shocked when she participated at the sixty-third session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations Headquarters in New York in 2019, which was when she realised there was a very tough debate on whether they could actually agree on a status quo when it came to the rights of women and gender equality, and not be faced with the backlash. They were not actually talking about progress, but about maintaining the status quo. There was backlash about women's reproductive rights, gender equality in general and LGBTQI rights. Human rights were never a given, she said, and this required them to stay vigilant. She said that multilateral co-operation, such as within the UN and the Council of Europe, was essential to the pushback. Something as important as human rights needed multilateral co-operation. They needed to realise that they were not all the same and did not all share the same ideas. They came from different cultures and different political parties, but the progress that had been made was through multilateral co-operation. During her years in office, at least, she said she had become more and more convinced of the importance of multilateral co-operation in dealing with challenges and backlashes. There was a round of applause to this statement. Ms BRYNJÓLFSDÓTTIR asked Mr KOX if “new generation rights” (to a healthy environment, rights in a digital age) was something different from the existing generation of rights. She asked whether they were in a phase of being faced with other challenges, or whether it was another form of the current human rights that they had already been trying to ensure over the last decades. Mr KOX replied that when the Convention was written, Article 1 said that everyone – nobody was excluded – had the right to be treated equally. So, he didn’t view these rights as being new. Being protected against the danger of artificial intelligence was not new because the whole Convention was about protecting citizens against their own governments. The Convention also spoke about the right to a healthy and safe environment; everybody was entitled to life and life was protected. He said that the attention given to it had a lot to do with developments in society, and a dirty environment did kill. Mr KOX praised his predecessor Mr Rik DAEMS. He referred to Ms JAKOBSDÓTTIR’s point and how they had been discussing new “versions” of fundamental human rights for a long period, and especially under the presidency of Mr Rik DAEMS, when they talked about artificial intelligence, the right to a healthy environment, the right of women to have equal access to rights and to be protected against violence. It was under the presidency of Mr Rik DAEMS that they really showed that the Parliamentary Assembly was able to deal with real and new issues. Mr KOX again pointed to the following two days of the Summit, and how these issues would be mentioned in the Final Statement, with the Heads of State and Government who would be committing themselves to deliver on this. He esteemed that they had made progress. He concluded by saying that while the rights were not new, the attention given to them was, and this was very important. He said the Parliamentary Assembly should be humble, but proud in this instance. Ms BRYNJÓLFSDÓTTIR said this was the best answer. Ms JAKOBSDÓTTIR said Mr KOX was so right, because they somehow still had not managed to ensure those rights and equality. The new challenges created even more pressure. Ms BRYNJÓLFSDÓTTIR told Ms Ilze BRANDS KEHRIS, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, that the Secretary General of the UN had been very decisive and vocal about gender equality, environmental issues and the climate crisis, also in asking for a clear response from the leaders of the states to respond to that crisis. She asked what the UN had been doing about this “new generation of rights”, and what the UN perspective was. Ms Ilze BRANDS KEHRIS, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, thanked Ms BRYNJÓLFSDÓTTIR for having her there in itself, and stressed she had understood that in the previous panel they had discussed how important it was for them all to work together, and for the regional organisations to work closely with the UN at a global and national level.

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