Right to Peace: the legal advisor of the Ambassador of Costa Rica at the UN to meet with the students of the University of Padua

On Wednesday, 2 April 2014, starting at 11 A.M. David Fernandez Puyana, the legal advisor of Ambassador Christian Guillermet Fernandez of the Costa Rican Mission at the United Nations in Geneva, holds a meeting with Padua University students.

The event takes place at the Archivio Antico (Palazzo del Bo) of the University of Padua and it is organized by the Human Rights Centre, in the framework of the MA in Human Rights and Multi-level Governance.

Ambassador Guillermet Fernandez is currently the Chairman/Rapporteur of the Working Group of the UN Human Rights Council in charge of finalizing the text of the UN Declaration on the human right to peace. It should be noted that Costa Rica, the first state in the world without an army, is home to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and the United Nations University for Peace.

The particular importance of the lecture is also due to the fact that the Human Rights Centre and the UNESCO Chair Human Rights, Democracy and Peace of the University of Padua, in response to the Human Rights Council initiative, have elaborated the text of a petitionary motion aiming at the recognition of the right to peace as a fundamental right of the person and the peoples. The petitionary motion is being approved by several Town Councils throughout the country. This mobilization stems from the Campaign for the Recognition of the Right to Peace, promoted by the National Coordinating Body of Local Authorities for Peace and Human Rights.

In the debate on the matter which is taking place in Geneva, some powerful States, both Western and not, are not prone to give up the ius ad bellum and are therefore opposing the advancement of the Declaration. On the contrary, the front of the favourable NGOs which enjoy consultative status at the UN, among which the Association Franciscans International and the Association Community Pope John XXIII, is united and solid.