Human Rights Day is not just a date on the calendar. It is a mirror.
It asks us who we are, whom we defend, and what we refuse to ignore.

Years ago, I met a group of courageous women in a displacement camp. They had endured oppression and sexual violence, brutal attempts to erase their agency. Yet they sat with me not as victims, but as architects of their own future, drawing strength from scars the world too often refuses to see.

Their dignity, their determination, their refusal to be defined by what was done to them, those moments still guide me. They remind me that human rights are not abstract principles. They are lived realities: breathed and rebuilt every day.

Across the world, more than 120 million people have been forced from their homes. Approximately four billion people - half the planet - lack any form of real social protection. One in three women will experience violence in her lifetime. These are not just tragedies. These are failures of our collective courage.

And yet, every day, colleagues from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and our partners from the UN family and beyond take risks that few witness. They negotiate safe passage through frontlines. They rebuild homes and schools before the dust has even settled. They defend the defenders: the activists, the journalists, the community leaders who hold the line between justice and fear.

Their actions tell a simple truth: human rights are not optional extras for peaceful times.
They are the foundation stones of stability, development, and trust. When leaders silence dissent or exclude communities, we must say clearly: development without rights is instability in disguise.

So in every policy we help draft and every programme we deliver, I want us to ask:

Would this protect women like the ones I met that day?
Would this expand their freedom?
Would this honour the courage of human rights defenders?

If the answer is no, we start again.

UNDP will not whisper from the sidelines. We will stand alongside governments willing to choose justice, and we will challenge - respectfully, constructively, but unambigously - when power is placed above people.

We will be clear:
Climate justice is a human right.
Digital access is a human right.
Equality is not a favour granted, it is an obligation owed.

So today, I offer three commitments on behalf of UNDP:

First: we will support the protectors.
We will support human rights defenders, civic space, independent media, and community-led justice systems.

Second: we will put rights at the centre of development financing.
Every dollar we mobilize will ask not only what it will build, but also whom it will empower and whom it will leave behind.

Third: we will speak with moral clarity.
Impartiality must never be an alibi for silence.
Where dignity is threatened, we will challenge it.
Where political will is missing, we will call for it and engage with governments to support them to uphold their human rights obligations.

Human Rights Day is not about what we celebrate.
It is about what we choose.

And I ask you - governments, partners, citizens - to choose with us.
Fund the work. Protect the space. Champion the defenders.
Because the world is listening and history is taking notes.