KARACHI: The Ambassador of Austria to Pakistan, Wolfgang Oliver Kutschera, and Assistant Professor of Constitutional and Administrative Law at Vienna University Dr Stefan Hammer addressed the members and guests at the Pakistan Institute of International Affairs (PIIA) on Saturday to talk of the challenges of human rights in today’s polarised world.
While introducing the gentlemen, PIIA’s Chairperson Dr Masuma Hasan said that she had had the privilege of serving as a bilateral and multilateral ambassador for three years in Austria. “Austria is a country of nine million people. It has a grand past and a very great presence. It is known as a cultural hub but it is also a diplomatic hub,” she added.
Dr Hasan also pointed out that some of the most important multilateral agencies are based in Vienna, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, the Commission on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice and the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. “I was privileged to represent my country in all these agencies,” she said.
“But Austria also hosts the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which was established in 1992. It also hosts the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organisation, popularly called the CTBTO, which was established in 1996,” she reminded. “From Pakistan’s point of view, the most important agency there is the International Atomic Energy Agency to which we sent our best diplomats,” she added.
PIIA members, guests hear Austrian ambassador and a professor from Vienna
The Austrian Ambassador, Wolfgang Oliver Kutschera, said that Pakistan is one of the partners in the European Union’s GSP Plus scheme, which gives it access to EU markets with progress and implementation of 27 international conventions covering four core areas that are labour rights, the environment, governance and human rights.
He said that among other things, GSP Plus illustrates in practical terms that human rights obligations and economic cooperation are closely connected. It shows how essential respect for human rights is for real life outcomes, economic stability and long-term access to international markets.
“Austria,” said the ambassador, “has long placed intercultural and inter-religious dialogue at the core of its foreign and cultural policy. Austria, today, is a diverse society. According to our 2021 census, nearly two-thirds of the population identified as Christians and 18.3 per cent identified as Muslim, making Muslims the second biggest religious community in Austria.”
He said that the diversity is particularly visible in Vienna where 41 per cent of children in public schools come from Muslim families while the rest comprise children from Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Jewish and secular backgrounds. “This is the Austria of today. Dynamic, diverse and evolving. And it demands thoughtful, respectful, inclusive dialogue to ensure that human rights remain protected for all,” he said.
“Austria and Pakistan share important values such as respectful religious diversity, tolerance and a rule of law. We also face similar challenges where public debates can become heated and polarised. In such moments, calm and honest conversation is essential to safeguarding the rights based societies we aspire to maintain,” he said.
The ambassador said that this year Austria started a flagship initiative, the dialogue residencies, supporting civil society exchanges on dialogue related projects. These residencies have already facilitated remarkable initiatives from bringing together people of different faiths together and supporting reconciliation across conflicting societies. “Each residency is tailored to local needs and developed with local civil society partners ensuring real relevance and sustainable impact. One such example of this is Professor Dr Stefan Hammer’s current visit to Pakistan,” he said.
While speaking on the occasion, Dr Stefan Hammer said that according to a widely shared perception, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations reflects a global consensus of human rights as it has been preceded by lengthy and cumbersome negotiations among drafters from divergent religions backgrounds. However, over time this assumption has proven fragile. “Since quite some decades, many voices, especially from the global south, claim that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Universal Human Rights Bill does not reflect the genuine global consensus but rather a Western concept of human rights marked by individualism, moral evasiveness and neglect of duties,” he said.
“On the one side, it is argued that at the time of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, de-colonisation was far from accomplished, African populations, especially, were still under colonial rule for quite some time. And thus could not represent themselves. Second, it is frequently being put forward that also the newly independent countries, which were the Universal Declaration signatories, had no genuine democratic government reflecting the will of the people,” the professor explained.
Published in Dawn, December 14th, 2025