Delegates Adopt Sweeping Human Rights Declaration : Conference: 170 nations pledge to seek stronger freedoms worldwide. Women and minorities in spotlight.

After 11 days of intense diplomatic maneuvering, representatives from more than 170 nations buried their differences Friday and adopted a far-reaching declaration intended to strengthen human rights everywhere.

The 32-page document, produced by the first U.N. World Conference on Human Rights in a quarter of a century, rejects the contention of a group of countries, mostly Asian, that cultural differences mean that human rights also have to differ. Instead, it reaffirms the principle that “the universal nature of these rights and freedoms is beyond question.”

It also endorsed in exceptionally firm language the concepts of equal rights for women, children and minorities; raised the prospect of creating a powerful U.N. high commissioner on human rights, and called for “a substantial increase” in funding for existing U.N. human rights efforts.

The declaration, which is certain to shape the debate and actions on the crucial human rights issue over the next several years at least, will be submitted to the U.N. General Assembly in New York later this year.

Although the document, called the Vienna Declaration and Program of Action, fell short of the hopes of many human rights activists, its sweep and tone, coupled with the absence of any of the major setbacks that were feared at the start of the conference, left Western delegates generally pleased at the outcome.

“The World Conference on Human Rights has produced a strong, forward-looking document,” John Shattuck, U.S. assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, told delegates at the meeting’s closing session late Friday evening. “The conference has broken new ground in showing the profound relationship between human rights, democracy and development.”

Earlier, Shattuck told reporters that endorsement of this linkage constituted an important base from which to develop a major theme of President Clinton’s foreign policy. In an opening day speech to the conference June 14, Secretary of State Warren Christopher had stressed the Clinton Administration’s new priority on human rights issues in the post-Cold War era.

The head of Amnesty International’s official delegation, Helena Cook, also declared the conference result a qualified success.

“I definitely have a feeling that constructive steps have been taken, especially when you consider the fiasco of the pre-conference organization,” she said.

She hailed the declaration’s forceful wording in passages acknowledging the equal rights of women and demanding an end to discrimination and violence against them.

However, both Shattuck and Cook also expressed reservations about some aspects of the declaration, while other human rights advocates issued harsher assessments.

An official Amnesty International statement, for example, labeled the conference a “summit of missed opportunities.”

“The document doesn’t respond to our expectations,” said Reed Brody, executive director of the Washington-based International Human Rights Law Group. “It is a lot of half measures. The U.N. has responded only in part to outside pressure. Now it’s up to us to make sure it follows through. We’ve got to keep the pressure up.”

Brody cited as examples a weakly worded provision for the protection of media freedom; the absence of any figures attached to the commitment to increase funding for U.N. human rights monitoring operations; the lack of progress in establishing an international tribunal to prosecute human rights offenders, and what he called the document’s “weak wording” on the controversial idea of a U.N. high commissioner for human rights.

Cook also criticized the declaration’s language on the commissioner, which states that the conference “recommends to the General Assembly . . . as a matter of priority, consideration of the question of the establishment of a high commissioner for human rights.” “It falls short of a firm recommendation for the office,” she said.

Activist groups have frequently cited creation of a high commissioner’s office as a vital step in generating greater awareness of human rights violations and achieving effective enforcement of these rights.

It was also a proposal supported by many Western delegations, including the United States, but strenuously opposed by some, mainly Asian, countries.

With active discussion of the declaration left to the last day and a half of the conference, the very inclusion of the commissioner concept in the final document is said to be largely due to the skills of the conference drafting committee chairman, Gilberto Saboia, who is Brazil’s ambassador to the U.N. office in Geneva.

After about 20 hours of nearly nonstop debate, Saboia seized on the applause generated from an endorsement of a two-paragraph draft. According to those present, he quickly declared a consensus and gaveled the measure through, reportedly against subsequent vehement objections from the Syrian delegation.

“The applause was driven by relief and exhaustion,” said Gerhart Baum, head of the German delegation.

In some respects, the conference’s success can be measured as much in terms of what delegates prevented as by what they achieved.

Poor pre-conference organization, coupled with the powerful assault spearheaded by China and other Asian countries against the idea that human rights are universal in nature, had put a number of non-government groups and some Western delegations on the defensive early on. As the conference got under way, some said their main goal had shrunk to preventing any erosion of the 1948 U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Others worried that the differences between delegations would be so great that a final document might not even be possible.

“The results here are somewhat better than we expected,” Shattuck said.

Although the final declaration notes the need to consider cultural, regional and national differences, it reaffirms that “all human rights are universal” and that “it is the duty of states, regardless of their political, economic and cultural systems, to promote and protect all human rights and fundamental freedoms.”

U.N. officials also said a shift in U.S. policy linking the concepts of human rights and the right to economic development helped to avoid another pre-conference fear that the meeting would degenerate into a North-South confrontation, with poorer Third World countries demanding vast commitments of foreign aid as the price for concessions on human rights issues.

Instead, the final document for the first time defines development as a human right.

On Thursday, the conference broke its own agreement to avoid discussion of specific human rights violations and voted 88-1 to condemn the ongoing slaughter in Bosnia-Herzegovina, only a few hundred miles away.

The resolution, presented by Pakistan’s former foreign minister Agha Shahi on behalf of the 51-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, also called for an end to the arms embargo against Bosnian Muslims.

The United States and most other Western countries abstained from the vote on grounds that the resolution distracted the conference from the larger issue of building a global human rights framework. Russia cast the lone dissenting vote.

Without referring directly to Bosnia, the Vienna Declaration “calls on all states to take immediate measures . . . to combat the practice of ethnic cleansing and bring it quickly to an end.”