Mister President,

Mr. Special Rapporteur, the EU welcomes your work and firmly supports your mandate.

The EU commends the gender perspective of your work to ensure the realisation of these rights for all women and girls and the focus on the impact of climate change and democratic governance.

Your reports, including the most recent one, urge the international community to act on specific challenges for persons and groups living in vulnerable situations, such as persons with disabilities and indigenous peoples. We thank you for your recommendations, which call ia for identifying valuable lessons from indigenous peoples’ worldviews and knowledge. In this sense, securing full participation and upholding the principle of free prior and informed consent is a core principle of EU policy.

International cooperation is needed to realize these rights and the EU promotes a human rights based approach to inclusive and sustainable development through initiatives such as the EU funded Rivers project.

We note with great concern the challenges faced by human rights defenders worldwide, particularly environmental and indigenous human rights defenders. The EU calls to implement preventive measures, duly investigate killings and bring perpetrators to justice.

Mr. Special Rapporteur, the first UN conference on water since 1977 will be held in New York next March. In that perspective, how can we best ensure that the human-rights based approach is taken into account in its run-up and during this conference itself?

I thank you