Mr Secretary General, chairman, ambassadors, and your excellencies — good afternoon. It is with great honor and humility that I accept the opportunity to speak before you. As a scholar, as an activist, and as a citizen, I am profoundly interested in the plight of the Palestinian people as well as the broader ethical, moral, and political implications of their struggle for freedom and justice, as well as equality. As such, this annual convening represents a critical intervention. It also represents a site of possibility.

On the other hand, it shows considerable irony. As you well know, this year marks the seventieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This declaration was produced out of the rubble and contradictions of World War II, and it was intended to offer a clear ethical and moral outline of the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings, irrespective of race, religion, class, gender, or geography, are entitled.

This declaration, of course, has been far from perfect, both in design and in execution. Too often we have framed human rights through the lens of the West. We viewed it through the gaze of colonialism, and we have assessed them through the limited prism of our own experiences. Simply put, the powerful have too often attempted to universalize their own particular and local values.