A Voice for Human Rights

Mary Robinson, Kevin Boyle, Kevin Boyle

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9780812203332
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Human Rights
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Few names are so closely connected with the cause of human rights as that of Mary Robinson. As former President of Ireland, she was ideally positioned for passionately and eloquently arguing the case for human rights around the world. Over five tumultuous years that included the tragic events of 9/11, she offered moral leadership and vision to the global human rights movement. This volume is a unique account in Robinson's own words of her campaigns as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. A Voice for Human Rights offers an edited collection of Robinson's public addresses, given between 1997 and 2002, when she served as High Commissioner. The book also provides the first in-depth account of the work of the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. With a foreword by Kofi Annan and an afterword by Louise Arbour, the current High Commissioner for Human Rights, the book will be of interest to all concerned with international human rights, international relations, development, and politics.

I
A Vision for Human Rights

Chapter 1
A Personal Vision

Mary Robinson frst spoke publicly about her vision for human rights and her ambition for her new post of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights two months after her appointment, when she gave the Romanes Lecture at the University of Oxford. She expressed forcefully her commitment to her entire mandate and to what would be her priority—the implementation of the human rights legal standards already agreed upon by the world community. She was equally forceful in calling upon the United Nations to take human rights seriously in all its activities and in her support for the reform program of the new Secretary General, Kofi Annan. Her commitment to reverse the historical neglect of economic, social, and cultural rights; to women’s rights; to poverty elimination; and to development as central human rights concerns all emerge, as does her belief in the power of civil society to be the engine of change. The speech was thus a remarkable early statement of a vision of how human rights protection could be made to work, and it was a vision that remained consistent throughout her five years as High Commissioner.

In her first full year of office the world marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Declaration is the foundation text of post-Second World War idealism and the entire international human rights movement. Her reflections on the Universal Declaration in Oxford and in a speech marking the fiftieth anniversary given in Tokyo confirm its influence on her own belief in universal and indivisible human rights. However, her distress at the continuing gross abuse of rights and freedoms throughout the world is also palpable. The Tokyo speech brings out her activist approach when she looks forward to building a global alliance to reverse the neglect of economic, social, and cultural rights and the right to development. A year later, on the award of the Erasmus Prize in Amsterdam, she addressed questions of human responsibilities and the challenge of gross violations in new human rights crises that had erupted in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and East Timor.

“Realizing Human Rights: ‘Take hold of it boldly and duly …’”
Oxford University Romanes Lecture 1997
Oxford, UK, 11 November 1997

On the morning I left Dublin, just two months ago, to begin my work as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Seamus Heaney gave me a beautifully bound copy of The Golden Bough inscribed with those encouraging words “Take hold of it boldly and duly …”

It seems fitting to repeat them here at Oxford and to do so as I avail of this first opportunity to reflect publicly on my new responsibilities. Until now I have been preoccupied with learning and doing, while recognizing that there was insufficient time to step back a little and think. The honor of delivering the Romanes Lecture for 1997 deprived me of any further excuse to postpone thinking.

It is a particular pleasure to return to this University and to follow in the footsteps of your distinguished Chancellor, who described himself to me as “last year’s man.” I would like to borrow from his Romanes Lecture the following reminder: “Oxford, both as a geographical entity and as one of the great academic communities of the world, is an irreplaceable national (and international) asset, and it is a duty upon us all to handle it carefully as well as imaginatively.”¹ Thank you for placing this asset at my disposal at a very early stage of what I have described as a daunting challenge.

The deep sense of loss felt internationally on the death of Sir Isaiah Berlin reminds us of the true strengths of this academic community. I invoke his name too because he was, as Bernard Crick reminded us, in the words Berlin applied to Pasternak, “a soldier in the battle for human freedom.”

Human freedom is that precious space secured by standards, laws, and procedures that defend, protect, and enhance human rights. We are all custodians of those standards. As the Vienna Declaration in 1993 stated, “Human rights and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all human beings.”² I do not propose to detail here the range of international instruments and mechanisms developed since 1948, but that body of substantive international human rights law is there because domestic protection of vulnerable individuals or groups is either absent or insufficient. Today, news reaches us faster than ever, and much of it concerns human rights violations. I chose the title “Realizing Human Rights” to put the emphasis on the problem confronting the international community, and for which I now bear some responsibility, of making human rights protection work.

The task is not easy, particularly because the expression “human rights” carries different meanings and resonates differently in various parts of the world and within countries depending on political preferences, ethnic association, religious views, and, importantly, economic status.

My own approach to human rights is based on an inner sense of justice. Perhaps that is part of me because I am from Ireland and have my roots in a past of struggle for freedom, of famine, and of dispersal of a people. Perhaps also it derives from my experiences as a lawyer and politician and, more recently, as a President privileged to visit and be a witness to profound suffering and deprivation in countries such as Somalia and Rwanda.³

I have been in listening mode over the past two months. In Geneva, and subsequently in New York, I met the Permanent Representatives of Governments in the five regional groups and had opportunities for bilateral discussion with senior members of a number of governments.⁴ I have also interacted with representatives of nongovernmental organizations and with the academic community as part of the wider civil society engaged in human rights issues. As I listened, I learned that the gap in perceptions of what we mean by human rights is even wider than I had thought. It is a gap that must be narrowed if there is to be a shared commitment at the international level to further the promotion and protection of human rights.

The broad mandate of my office, created by the General Assembly resolution of 20 December 1993, entrusts me, I believe, with a particular responsibility to bridge that gap.⁵ The means at my disposal are modest, the tools being mainly advocacy and persuasion. Nonetheless I take the very breadth of the mandate as the starting point, because it is clear that the gap in perception is widest when the term “human rights” focuses specifically on civil and political rights on the one hand or, at the other end of the spectrum, emphasizes the importance of the right to development. My responsibility as UN High Commissioner is to adopt and to foster a rights-based approach across the whole spectrum of civil, cultural, economic, political, and social rights; to promote and protect the realization of the right to development and specifically to include women’s rights as human rights, as we were reminded by the 1995 Beijing conference.⁶ It is useful to have a timely opportunity for an open and, I hope, frank debate on all of this. That opportunity presents itself.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Next year we mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This Declaration, I believe, ranks as one of the great aspi-rational documents of our human history. It embodied the hopes and even dreams of people still scarred from two world wars, newly fearful of the Cold War, and just beginning the great liberation of peoples, which came about with the dismantling of the European empires.

The Universal Declaration proclaims the fundamental freedoms of thought, opinion, expression, and belief and enshrines the core right of participatory and representative government. But just as firmly and with equal emphasis it proclaims economic, social, and cultural rights and the right to equal opportunity. It was to be “a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations,” and the rights and freedoms set forth therein were to be enjoyed by all without distinction of any kind, such as race, color, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth, or other status. Twenty years after its adoption the basic tenets of the Declaration were endorsed in the Teheran Proclamation of 1968.⁷ These rights and freedoms were developed in greater detail in two United Nations Covenants, the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, both of which entered into force in 1976.

The Universal Declaration is a living document. To commemorate it in the closing years of this millennium, the debate must give more priority to current complex human rights issues: the right to development, the recognition of the rights of indigenous peoples, the rights and empowerment of people with disabilities, gender mainstreaming, and issues of benchmarks and accountability in furtherance of these and other rights. There are also now many more participating governments than were present on 10 December 1948 and many more voices from the wider civil society. The challenge will be to engender a similar commitment to a shared vision so that such new rights concerns will form part of a renewal in our time of the vision of 1948. The challenge is to ensure that they are encompassed in the opening words of the preamble to the Universal Declaration: “Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world …”

The Failure to Achieve

The international system’s achievements to date in implementing human rights standards cry out for fresh approaches. As we prepare for the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration, I have told my colleagues that I do not see this as an occasion for celebration. Count up the results of fifty years of human rights mechanisms, thirty years of multi-billion-dollar development programs, and endless high-level rhetoric and the global impact is quite underwhelming.

We still have widespread discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, religious belief, or sexual orientation and there is still genocide—twice in this decade alone. There are forty-eight countries with more than one-fifth of the population living in what we have grown used to calling “absolute poverty.”

This is a failure of implementation on a scale that shames us all. So much effort and money and so many hopes have produced such modest results. It is no longer enough to hide beyond the impact of the Cold War and other factors limiting international action in the past. It’s time instead for a lessons-learned exercise.

One lesson we need to learn and to reflect in our approach is that it is of the essence of rights that they are empowering. Poverty is a violation of numerous basic human rights. Furthermore, the increased recognition of the feminization of poverty makes it vital to link into the international protection of human rights the energies and approaches of the thousands of international and national networks of women’s groups. This link between rights and empowerment is very much in my mind as I begin to identify my own priorities. One of these must be to respond to the directions of Secretary General Kofi Annan in his report last July on Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform that “the High Commissioner will undertake an analysis of technical assistance provided by the United Nations entities in areas related to human rights and formulate proposals for improving complementarity of action.”⁸ The report also notes: “The Office of the High Commissioner should be able to provide its advice for the design of technical assistance projects and participate in needs assessment missions.”

What the Secretary General had in mind were the various United Nations programs that, for example, assist democratic processes, strengthen good governance and the rule of law, support the reform of the judiciary and legal system, and train security forces. In addition, many United Nations programs affect economic, social, and cultural rights and the rights of the child. The analysis sought by the Secretary General will respond also to the admonition in the Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, which “urges all United Nations organs, bodies and specialized agencies whose activities deal with human rights to cooperate in order to strengthen, rationalize and streamline their activities, taking into account the need to avoid unnecessary duplication.”

The Vienna World Conference on Human Rights

Which brings me to the other international event we will mark next year: the five-year review of that World Conference on Human Rights convened in Vienna in the summer of 1993.⁹ The Conference concluded by adopting a Programme of Action, which identified particularly vulnerable individuals and highlighted the need for continual review of measures taken to ensure adequate protection of the rights of these groups. Women, minorities, indigenous peoples, children, persons with disabilities, refugees, migrant workers, and prisoners were seen as particularly vulnerable. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action was endorsed by a resolution of the General Assembly, which also established the post I now occupy.

One of the prime movers in building the consensus in Vienna for that post was Ecuador’s Ambassador and now Foreign Minister, José Ayala-Lasso. He was then handed the challenge of being the first High Commissioner. He moved prudently—building a more solid and durable consensus for the role of the post, beginning reform of the human rights secretariat in Geneva, and enlarging the activities of the new Office to include substantial field presences in the wake of the genocide in Rwanda, in Cambodia, and elsewhere. When the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education was proclaimed by the General Assembly to begin in 1995, he initiated a plan of action for its implementation that I propose to build upon.

And what of the role of civil society? In his reform proposals last July, the Secretary General noted that “civil society constitutes a major and increasingly important force in international life,” but he continued, “Yet despite these growing manifestations of an ever more robust global civil society, the United Nations is at present inadequately equipped to engage civil society and make it a true partner in its work.” He urged “all United Nations entities to be open to and work closely with civil society organizations that are active in their respective sectors …”¹⁰

My predecessor saw the need to link more effectively with nongovernmental organizations. I too feel a particular responsibility, as the person charged through my mandate both “to enhance international cooperation for the promotion and protection of human rights” and “to coordinate the human rights promotion and protection activities throughout the United Nations system,” to give leadership and with my colleagues to forge partnerships with, and channel the energies and effectiveness of, the broad constituency that constitutes the human rights community worldwide.

The Mandate of High Commissioner

It will not be easy to achieve. Commentators have noted that the High Commissioner’s mandate was carefully worded and balanced—reflecting the concern of a number of governments that they were creating a post which might shine an unwelcome light on some neglect of their citizens’ rights. Professor Philip Alston, in a recent article, described the quest to define the role of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as “neither fish nor fowl.”¹¹ He points out that whereas the tasks given to the High Commissioner have continued to expand, including significant field operations, it has been necessary to supplement the inadequate resources from the regular UN budget by seeking voluntary special-purpose contributions. I share the broad thrust of his analysis. Indeed, recognizing that voluntary contributions from governments will continue to be an important source of funding for programs and activities, I am taking the step of writing to all governments so that support for our activities will be as inclusive as possible.

I am also very conscious of the difficult task of developing an appropriate balance between the use of consensual diplomacy and the moral voice on behalf of victims, which speaks out in defense of human rights. It helps to have only one agenda, the fulfillment of my mandate, and to recognize that there are many friends in the international human rights community ready and willing to help in meeting the challenge.

I would like to focus briefly on the coordinating role of the High Commissioner, which has been given new impetus in the Secretary General’s reform-package proposals of last July. There is an oft-cited quote attributed to Ian Martin—the former Secretary General of Amnesty International—that the High Commissioner for Human Rights should wake up each morning thinking how best to protect human rights. I agree with him but would go further. The protection of human rights requires that every United Nations staff member should wake with the same thought and work committed to that end.

Almost by definition and certainly according to its Charter, the United Nations exists to promote human rights. Somewhere along the way many in the United Nations have lost the plot and allowed their work to answer to other imperatives. This is the root cause of much of the criticism that is leveled at the Organization—you hear it couched in terms of complacency, of bureaucracy, of being out of touch, and, certainly, of being resistant to change. There is an opportunity now to recapture the lost purpose of the United Nations. I hope to contribute to this work under the leadership of Secretary General Kofi Annan by helping to shape a framework for action, which will result in an Organization driven by human rights standards.

Mainstreaming

I believe profoundly in the relevance to our global community of the human rights standards built up over more than fifty years. Not only are all human rights universal, indivisible, interrelated, and interdependent; they are also inherent in human nature and pertain to the individual. Realizing and implementing these human rights standards is a core value of the Secretary General’s reform proposals. The language is explicit, and I quote: “Human rights are integral to the promotion of peace and security, economic prosperity and social equity”; and again, “A major task for the United Nations, therefore, is to enhance its human rights program and fully integrate it into the broad range of the Organization’s activities.”¹²

The first step has already been taken by assigning each entity in the UN system, with the exception of my Office, to one of four Executive Committees. These committees are the central tool in ensuring coordination in the system, focused on peace and security, humanitarian affairs, economic and social issues, and development operations. The Secretary General has asked me to participate in each of the four committees and to assess, in due course, whether this is a more effective way to “mainstream” human rights rather than having a fifth executive committee concerned with human rights.

In a practical way, human rights h...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Kofi Annan
• Introduction by Kevin Boyle
• Part I - A Vision for Human Rights
• Part II - Fighting for Equality and Nondiscrimination
• Part III - Dimensions of the Mandate of High Commissioner
• Part IV - Building Human Rights Protection
• Part V - Continuing Challenges
• Farewell Speech
• Afterword by Louise Arbour
• Appendix 1 - Key International Legal Instruments
• Appendix 2 - High Commissioner for the Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights
• Notes
• Index
• Editorial Acknowledgments