Ms. Navi Pillay With the new impetus given by the end of the Cold War to the concepts of freedom, democracy and human rights, 7000 participants gathered at the Vienna Conference in June 1993. They hold discussions on different crucial issues, such as universality, sovereignty, impunity, and how to give a voice to victims. The most important outcome of this conference was the creation of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action. This document underlined that human rights are universal, indivisible, interdependent and interrelated. The notion of universality is especially crucial as States were committed to the promotion and protection of all human rights for all people “regardless of their political, economic, and cultural systems.” Another outcome of the conference was to state that there is no hierarchy between the social, economic and cultural rights and the civil and political rights. This continued with the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the its other Optional Protocol that allows for individual complaints.
