Mary Robinson

The United Nations organizations in Geneva are in a green complex above the hurly-burly of the city. Sheep graze in a meadow beside the parking lot. The offices and meeting rooms of the high commissioner for human rights take up several floors of a modern building. The marble lobby echoes with loudspeaker announcements of meetings on such subjects as torture, child prostitution, religious intolerance and land reform. People who have come 10,000 miles to present testimony against the oppression of their governments, and functionaries of the same governments who will impugn their testimony, wait patiently for their turn before the subcommittees. The crying of children and the mourning of widows that appear nightly on the television news are far away.

Mary Robinson, a lawyer and former president of Ireland, has been the United Nations high commissioner for human rights since 1997. She is at the forward edge of a human-rights establishment that hopes to end abuses through publicity, persuasion, boycott or even force. The armed ideologies of the world have not responded well so far, but human-rights activists hope that by continuing the pressure the tide will turn.

Shortly after taking office, Robinson helped commemorate, in 1998, the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The original document set the standards for the U.N. effort in that area. Since then, Robinson has insisted at every opportunity on the necessity of making human rights a cornerstone of every country’s politics and procedures.

The high commissioner is a no-nonsense internationalist. Her voice retains the lilt of Ireland, but she is not one for blarney. She gets to the point directly and stays on it. Her reports on her visits to areas in turmoil are evenhanded and unrhetorical. Her objectivity and willingness to hear all sides make the enormous tragedies she describes even more vivid.

Robinson was born in Ireland on May 21, 1944, and graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, and Harvard Law School. She passed the Irish Bar in 1967 and the English in 1973. She was a member of the Irish Senate from 1969-89 and the president of Ireland from 1990-97. She married in 1970 and has two sons and a daughter.

*

Question: The annual session of the Human Rights Commission, the 56th since the United Nations was founded, ended last month. What was accomplished?

Answer: It adopted two new instruments relating to children, [one] on child soldiers and [another] on sale of children for purposes of prostitution. It also adopted a resolution establishing . . . a special representative for human-rights defenders, it adopted a number of rapporteurs in the economic area . . . and there was a special dialogue on poverty as a human-rights issue.

The country situations are the most political part of the [commission’s] work, and I think it was significant that there was a resolution adopted on Chechnya, which is, I think, the first time a resolution has been adopted concerning a member of the permanent five [the five countries--the United States, Russia, China, France and Britain--in the 15-member Security Council that have permanent seats]. . . . [The] country resolutions . . . tend to be the focus of interest, but looking at it and assessing the way in which the commission is developing, I thought that the overall spirit was more cooperative.

Q: You visited Chechnya recently with what many considered less than promising results. (Robinson was denied entry to refugee camps and refused an interview with Vladimir Putin, now Russian president.) Did your visit do any good?

A: It was important to accept the invitation to visit Chechnya, and indeed the region, Ingushetia and Dagestan, and to report to the commission. The report was referred to during the debate by members of the commission, and they adopted the resolution, which gives me, as high commissioner, and our office a considerable mandate in relation to further developments. At the moment . . . we are advising and supporting the establishment by the Russian Federation of an independent national commission of inquiry. . . .

Q: Have there been any human-rights complaints about the new Austrian government?

A: The primary concern, in relation to Austria, is a matter for the European Union and, potentially, for the Council of Europe. There aren’t any specific instances that have been drawn to our attention or appear to have surfaced. In a more indirect way, there is a concern, already expressed in Geneva, in the context of the preparatory committee of the world conference against racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia. . . . The participation of . . . far-right parties that have expressed strong views, anti-Semitic views, is raising concern, and that concern has been expressed on the floor of the preparatory conference.

Q: Your office has human-rights observers in 27 countries. Cuba, China, Burma, Saudi Arabia and even the Chechnya region, to mention some, are not among them. How do you choose 27 and not choose others?

A: It’s not a simple matter in that sense, and these field presences and operations vary in the work they do. It’s important to draw a distinction. Some of the field presences are connected with advisory services and technical cooperation. That’s done at the request of governments. Our office has a queue of governments in developing countries wanting help in building that capacity, either in reinforcing their judiciary, establishing national commissions or having national plans [for enhancement of human rights], training, human-rights education, etc. We are under a lot of pressure to respond to these requests.

Other field operations may result from [commission] mandates. For example, in Burundi, field operations . . . expressly monitor the human-rights situation and report. . . . The situation in Colombia is that the government agreed to a field operation [to enhance compliance with human-rights norms] with a monitoring component, so it’s an even more sophisticated situation. Our colleagues monitor and report to me, and I make a report to the commission. The government sees that report, doesn’t always like what it sees but accepts this procedure. Basically, for the monitoring-type field operations, either the commission, with its political membership, decides that it will pass a resolution giving this mandate . . . or it may be that a government will accept a mandate with that type of monitoring operation. . . . This is a very interesting development in human rights, because it is a kind of early-warning system; it’s preventive.

Q: Has there been much debate about terrorism as a violation of human rights? Or does human-rights protection limit itself to government oppression?

A: That requires a distinction between state terrorism, which clearly would be a violation of human rights in the traditional sense, and . . . the role of non-state actors, as we tend to call them. Already, [their] liability under international humanitarian law and the increasing need to look at the way in which non-state actors can be . . . held accountable for human-rights violations are being considered. We do report on the activity of non-state actors in terrorism when they are present on the ground. . . . For example, in Chechnya, I included in my report the concern of the Russian Federation about what it characterized as acts of terrorism.

Q: It seems as if the number of human- rights organizations, both official and nongovernmental, keeps growing. Do you think there are any ways this large human-rights establishment masks problems by meetings, reports, resolutions, commissions of inquiry and so forth instead of confronting the abuses head-on?

A: It’s true that at the international level, it’s difficult to have a high level of efficiency. But we are improving human-rights mechanisms and machinery. The fact that it is quite elaborate simply reflects the importance of human-rights issues on agendas of governments and on the agenda of civil society. . . . Where you have governments reporting on human-rights issues . . . these reports are important intelligence gathering, but they will not be effective unless you can also have input from civil society. So, we have nongovernment organizations involved in either having input into the official report, which we encourage, or else providing separate information. . . . I’m encouraging the establishment, at the national level, of independent human-rights commissions, because I believe that they’re a very significant development. This is for both developed and developing countries. At the moment, there are 35 countries with accredited, independent human-rights commissions, meaning they fully comply with the General Assembly’s standards of independence, plurality of membership, proper resources, etc. We are advising some 50 countries contemplating establishing such human-rights commissions. There’s a maturing there. . . .

Q: A traditional belief of diplomacy is that nations have only one interest--their self-interest--and that they shouldn’t interfere in human-rights abuses, or perceived abuses, in other countries because that doesn’t affect their national interest. How do you respond?

A: Part of the progress over the last 50 years has been [a recognition] that human-rights concerns don’t stop at borders. If there are serious violations of human rights, they are of international concern, and rightly so. . . . It’s accepted by the world community, and it’s implicit in the Universal Declaration [of Human Rights] and the United Nations Charter. There is a concern at the moment about how far that [human-rights] concern can go, and that focuses on the question of humanitarian or human-rights intervention of a military nature. . . . But the fact that governments report to treaty-monitoring bodies in Geneva, that they accept visits of rapporteurs and that there are [human-rights] debates here annually . . . all of that indicates how far we have come, and we have to build on that.

Q: It seems that every week there’s a new crisis. As the people say, the “dogs bark and the caravan moves on.” Do you find this a problem?

A: It’s a [frustrating] problem. I also worry about what has been called a dumbing-down of investigative journalism. . . . My task is to give leadership in embedding a human-rights culture. It’s complex and sophisticated, and you need a media that are willing to get more deeply into the issues, including the basis for conflicts. . . . Let’s take the case of Sierra Leone. I was there last June. We are heavily involved in advising on the truth and reconciliation commission there and on the international human-rights commission. There had been a lot of [press] focus on that. In a way, there needs to be a refocus, because now, with the United Nations peacekeeping presence there, we’re seeing more violence and the recent kidnapping of some human-rights personnel. It needs a lot of sustained, rounded journalism that links what happened to what’s happening now and helps to promote a climate to move on. Sierra Leone must move forward and needs the institutions and the support for that. And the media can help to generate more funding, more public interest. *