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New Delhi, 19 November 2001


Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development




Address of Mary Robinson

United Nations High Commissioner For Human Rights





It is a deep personal honour to receive the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development. I regard this award as a recognition of the work for the promotion and protection of human rights that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has been pursuing in its short existence of some seven years.

Indira Gandhi, in whose memory this Prize was inaugurated, came from a family of pioneers. Her father, Jawaharlal or Pandit Nehru was the first prime minister of independent India and a close ally of Eamon de Valera in Ireland, when both countries were striving for independence; her aunt Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit was the first woman to serve as President of the UN General Assembly.

Indira was of course the first woman to hold the post of Prime Minister in India. No stranger to controversy, she was, and remains, a powerful figure, in many respects embodying and personifying the traditional concept of Shakti - feminine power - that finds its home in South Asia. Her fearlessness and her strength were, no doubt, part of the reason that a BBC global Poll last year found her to be the 'woman of the millennium'. She would no doubt have been amused to know that she beat Joan of Arc and the English Queen Elizabeth the First in that Poll, and from what I have read about her, she would have been capable of a very witty comment on the Poll itself.

I am struck continually by the energy and dynamism of this part of the world, and in particular the leadership it shows in many areas of the human rights struggle. A former recipient of this Prize, Trevor Huddleston the anti Apartheid campaigner, gave an example. In his acceptance speech he pointed to the role in the United Nations, first of Mahatma Ghandi, and later of the new independent India that insisted on bringing the policies of racial discrimination in South Africa to the attention of the world. It has been my privilege to oversee another stage in the global campaign against racial discrimination as Secretary General of the World Conference against Racism held recently in the South African city of Durban. It was in that city that Mahatma Ghandi first launched his non- violent movement against racial discrimination.

In a very real sense, I feel that the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi was with us, as the international community addressed for the first time the impact of slavery and colonialism on racism and intolerance right through into the 21st century.

And what about gender discrimination? As you would anticipate, in accepting this award as a woman, I am deeply troubled by the position of the girl child in modern India. I totally agree with the analysis by Amartya Sen in his lecture last week, in which he placed emphasis on the importance of female literacy to empower women. Indeed, I believe that the single most effective way to address poverty in India would be to enable girls and women to change from being passive recipients of social equity to becoming active agents of social change. When I was elected President of Ireland, I thanked those women who, for the first time, voted in a different way from their husbands, or simply came out and voted, and I said that “instead of rocking the cradle they rocked the system!” Girls and women in India need, literally, to rock the system!

The recognition of peace, development and disarmament as interlocking agendas in the Indira Ghandi Prize is not new. No doubt it was intended by those who established it in 1986 to remind us of that fact. I would like in my acceptance of this Prize to underscore the further link of these noble goals to human rights - a link which I know is also in your mind by honouring me with the award.

The UN Charter, when adopted in 1945, charged the organization with four main interrelated purposes - peace and disarmament, human development, human rights and the strengthening of international law. Emerging from the experience and horrors of the Second World War, these core principles were singled out as the pillars on which a new order could be built, with the ultimate goal of freeing mankind from the scourge of war.

The intricate and necessary relationship between human rights and peace is recognised in all the major international human rights declarations and covenants.

The Universal Declaration on Human Rights speaks of equal and inalienable rights as "the fountain of freedom, justice and peace in the world". Last year, at the UN Millennium Summit in New York, the international community, 'determined to establish a just and lasting peace all over the world', committed itself to making the right to development a reality for all and set out a clear programme for action based on humanity's shared values of freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility.

Let us recall that 'peace' is not simply the absence of war. Peace has a much broader reach, implying or subsuming a whole range of substantive values. Development and human rights both depend on peace, and simultaneously serve as factors propelling its achievement.

The recognition of this interdependence was to a certain degree lost in the early years of the United Nations as the various branches of the UN developed independently within their respective mandates. It is, however, firmly the thinking and practice of the United Nations under the present Secretary General, Kofi Annan. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights participates in all four UN Executive Committees - on Peace and Security, Economic and Social Affairs, Development Co-operation and Humanitarian Affairs. Human rights protection thus plays an important part in all aspects of international relations, spanning all phases of conflict.

The relevance and importance of human rights during conflict should never be underestimated. Of course humanitarian law - the law of war - operates in conflict, serving as a bulwark against the worst violations of rights. But side-by-side with that body of law, the core of the human rights agenda also remains in operation. Our work for the promotion and protection of human rights within or during conflict may manifest itself in a number of different ways, for example:


- Human rights monitoring with a view to more effective advocacy on behalf of the victims;
- The collection or chronicling of evidence in order to ensure accountability after the end of hostilities, and
- Human rights capacity building. It is the experience of my Office, and my own personal witness from such countries as Sierra Leone, that such capacity building can be engaged in at any time, and need not be postponed until the conflict is ended.

Human rights is an important element also in the settlement of conflict. It is vital to ensure that settlements are ethical agreements, which will promote and protect human rights rather than abridge them. It is something of a truism that the seeds of new battle are often sown in the unfair settlement of the old. Application of human rights principles and values to the settlement stage of the process is one method of countering that risk.

Human rights values, as they relate to conflict, require accountability. Without accountability there can be no justice. I refer both to judicial accountability - that is the prosecution of persons suspected of war crimes or crimes against humanity - but also to non-judicial accountability through traditional means and the variety of truth and reconciliation processes. This ensures that impunity cannot continue. On all my visits I encourage states to sign and ratify the Rome Statute for the establishment of an International Criminal Court, and I hope that India will soon accept to sign and ratify this important landmark.

Human rights are also central to post conflict situations. The challenge and opportunities to build sustainable peace by entrenching attention to human rights in the aftermath of conflict is nowhere more clearly seen than in the situation of Afghanistan. As you know, Lakhdar Brahimi, the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, has presented to the Security Council a “roadmap” for the establishment of effective and stable governance and a programme of reconstruction. Promotion and protection of human rights is at the heart of the planning. Afghanistan needs to break the pattern of human rights abuse, establish a safe environment for its women, men and children and ensure judicial accountability for criminal acts. I am seeking to ensure that all interim governance initiatives will respect human rights and uphold the principle of accountability.

With regard to the future, it is crucial, and Mr. Brahimi emphasises this, that strong governmental institutions be established, with full participation of women, which will have the capacity to promote and protect all human rights in a non-discriminatory and effective manner. Side by side with these we must support Afghan civil society, including the community of human rights NGOs. I am pleased to report that my Office is already fully engaged in the necessary planning – though ever mindful that our role is to support and not substitute for Afghan efforts.

Kofi Annan has challenged us all to make the twenty-first century an age of prevention, shifting our focus from a culture of reaction. Although this may sound a daunting task, it is of course a necessary step towards the attainment of peace.

Essentially the human rights goal must be to attempt to break the cycle of hatred, of intolerance and of violence. Human rights education is a powerful tool in this regard. It can serve as a counter to a culture of ignorance or intolerance. It provides and develops a space for participation; it drives a demand for responsive institutions of State, which in turn provide alternatives to conflict.

However this is not the complete story: true equality - both material and in terms of parity of esteem - must also be sought if conflict is to be prevented. This is where, once more, the nexus between peace, human rights and development comes into focus. There can be no enjoyment of human rights by all where some are excluded by disadvantage, discrimination and prejudice. For human rights, development and the rule of law act as the counter-force to the destructive ideologies of hate that inevitably spiral into conflict and violence.

Never has this point been more clearly evident than now. In the current international crisis, there may be some who suggest that human rights, including the issue of racial discrimination, must take less priority. It is sometimes claimed that concern with human rights gets in the way of winning the peace or defeating terrorism. Experience throughout the world, including in the case of the island of Ireland, demonstrates that this is wrong thinking. We must condemn and combat terrorism. But there can be no stable peace, no true human security without human rights and real public participation. There can be no true enjoyment of human rights by all where some are excluded by discrimination and prejudice.

On the evening of the 8th of September I had a sense that our true achievement at Durban had been to forge an effective preventive agenda for every country in the world. Three days later, following the terrible attacks in the United States, my immediate response was that this preventive agenda is even more crucial.

It has also been timely that we are in the International Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations, which has enlarged the common denominator of values and principles, including the values of liberal and participatory democracy, rule of law, and tolerance. The notion that there were two groups of civilizations -- one which perceived diversity as a threat and the other which saw it as an opportunity -- was a simplistic and dangerous one. Dialogue among civilizations can address the ignorance caused by ethnocentrism and lead to the understanding that all human societies possess their respective civilization and culture.

Dialogue is necessary if peace is to be possible. In this regard India and its neighbour must continue to seek the path of dialogue over their difficult problems. Let me, with all humility, refer to the experience of the island from which I come. The conflict in Northern Ireland has proved a long drawn out one. Now there is hope born out of patient dialogue and co-operation between the two states directly involved, the United Kingdom and Ireland. The most important shift in thinking, which led to the possibility of peace, arose when the two states came to see that they had a shared problem and that they should work together for a solution.

On disarmament, I would like to remind you of an aspect of Nehru's legacy that has been somewhat lost in recent years. For under his stewardship, India became an influential force within the non-aligned movement. His policy of peaceful coexistence with all nations, and his vision as early as 1954 of a treaty for comprehensive nuclear disarmament, bears recall.

I believe there can be no better tribute to Indira Gandhi, or to her father Nehru, than for the objectives of peace, development and disarmament to become a reality throughout the South, and especially the South-Asia region. Let India continue this legacy and lead the way in non-violent conflict resolution. For we see that sustainable development is impossible without the full participation of the people; that it is impossible in the absence of full human rights. We see that human rights are integral to peace and security, economic development and social equity. They propel peace and development, reinforce the rule of law and link the goals of development, disarmament and peace.

What the great poet Rabindranath Tagore wished for India, in his poem “Let my Country Awake”, I wish for our apprehensive world – Let me end with the poet’s words:

“ Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth; ”

Thank you.