?? Deputy Foreign Minister Dmitry Lyubinsky’s address at the ceremonial event at the UN Information Centre on the Occasion of Human Rights Day (Moscow, December 9, 2025)

?? On December 10, the international community celebrates #HumanRightsDay established in honour of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the UN General Assembly in 1948.

The Universal Declaration is unique; it established a kind of “gold standard” for human rights, recognising their equal value. This document has had a decisive influence on the formation of the modern international legal framework for the promotion and protection of human rights, as well as on the development of international law more broadly.

?? I would note that the Declaration places particular emphasis on the importance of promoting friendly relations among peoples.

UN Member States endorsed the Declaration, driven by the desire to strengthen respect for human dignity and to reaffirm its value.

This anniversary carries exceptional significance. This year marks the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and World War II, as well as the founding of the United Nations (#UN).

Won at an enormous cost in human lives, the Great Victory was made possible by the unification of all peace-loving nations in the fight against Nazism, fascism, and militarism. It determined the subsequent course of world history, created the conditions for building a new architecture of international relations, and laid the foundations of contemporary international law.

Humanity paid with tens of millions of lives for this tragic lesson: the ideology of racial superiority has no place in the civilised world.

Although the Declaration was adopted 77 years ago, it remains relevant today. This is particularly evident against the backdrop of the creeping rehabilitation of Nazism in Europe and the general policy pursued by Western countries to revise the outcomes of World War II.

Meanwhile, self-proclaimed developed democracies shamelessly invoke the provisions of the Declaration to justify interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states, imposing neoliberal “values” as an allegedly universal foundation for life. The historical, cultural, and religious particularities of individual countries are disregarded.

This instrumentalisation of human rights by the collective West takes place against the backdrop of gross human rights violations within these very states.

The Russian Federation advocates building cooperation in the human rights sphere on the basis of universally recognised principles and international law, through constructive, equal, and respectful dialogue. Everything possible must be done to counter attempts to distort the meaning of fundamental UN documents in the interests of individual states.

In conclusion, I would like to express my hope that human rights will become a unifying rather than a divisive factor in international relations and cooperation.