FOREWORD BY THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOREWORD BY THE HIGH COMMISSIONER I am pleased to present this report, the first covering an entire year of my term as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. © OHCHR As I write this Foreword, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to challenge our societies and ourselves, presenting a colossal test of leadership and humanity. In these unsettling times, the importance of human rights has become even more evident. My Office has issued guidelines and recommendations to embed human rights at the core of the global response, engaging with the entire UN system to influence national action plans across the world. This is essential for an effective response and recovery - but also to ensure that we “build back better”, as enshrined in the COVID-19 and human rights report “We are all in this together”, released by the Secretary-General. As you will find in these pages, 2019 was a year marked by important developments worldwide, supported by our headquarters and 84 field presences across the world. With our assistance, fifteen national laws were adopted to combat discrimination in all forms. In North Macedonia, for example, we supported advocacy efforts by civil society organizations, leading to the adoption of a new law by the country’s Parliament in May on prevention and protection against discrimination. 4 UN HUMAN RIGHTS REPORT 2019 We also supported the development of the first system-wide United Nations Disability Inclusion Strategy, which aims to bring about structural change in the organization. It is the first UN accountability framework that operates across all UN pillars, without distinction, including climate action initiatives. As part of our efforts to pursue the Secretary-General’s vision of establishing a Prevention Platform and enhancing the UN’s role at the regional level, last year the emergency response teams based in Pretoria and Bangkok identified emerging risks in the north of Mozambique leading to improved response coordination and to the development of an early warning system in Myanmar. We also set up a new emergency response team for West Africa to work on risk analysis that influences UN responses in the field. In addition, the Office was instrumental in the deployment of two multidisciplinary light teams to Comoros and Malawi. With human rights components, they strengthened the UN’s preventive role in the run-up to potentially destabilizing elections. Moreover, as co-chair of the UN Sustainable Development Goals Task Team on “Leaving No One Behind, Human Rights and the Normative Agenda”, alongside the World Health