Statement by Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights at the opening of the Commission on Human Rights, 55th session

Geneva, 22 March 1999

Mr. Chairman, distinguished delegates,

We meet today at the end of a century which has witnessed brutality on a scale without historical precedent. It has also charted a new course in the protection of human rights, and the preservation of human life and human dignity. This Commission was created in the shadow of war. But over the last half century, it has worked to define the human rights which are the foundation of lasting peace. Before we leave our troubled century, it is appropriate that we review some of the Commission’s achievements and reflect on the new challenges which face the international community in providing practical protection for the victims of violations. The Secretary General has called for making the next century the age of prevention. I believe these two words, protection and prevention, must define the Commission’s work in the years to come, as it builds on its already significant achievements.

For all of us, the greatest threat to human rights is war. But many of today’s armed conflicts are so grave in their effects, and so vast in their scale, that they create a sense of powerlessness. There is a danger that our response will not be equal to the challenge, but will rather be dwarfed by its magnitude. This was perhaps a reason why racism, torture, the denial of women’s’ rights, social and economic rights and the right to development, remained for so long at the margins of international action. But, over time, the Commission had the courage to address these great and fundamental issues, place them at the centre of international attention, and then make itself both a voice of conscience, and the practical instrument of change.

Today that courage is needed to face a different, and in some ways greater, challenge: how can we prevent the tragic violations committed in the course of conflict, and reconstruct the societies which conflict has destroyed? Traditionally, war was fought between states, and 90 per cent of the victims were soldiers. Today, conflict takes place within states, and 90 per cent of the victims are civilians - unarmed children, women and men, the elderly, the sick, and refugees. Today’s battlefield encompasses all of society, destroying the institutions on which future health, food, and shelter will depend. This destruction of the social and economic infrastructure then produces long term denial of the most basic social and economic rights.

Modern media technology has ensured that we can witness the atrocities as we go about our ordinary lives, but it has not given us the tools to halt them. I face this dilemma daily - of knowing but lacking the means to take effective action - as I read reports from our field offices in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Gross violations against civilians in these conflicts have become almost routine - I sometimes fear that the abnormal has become the normal. It is this dilemma that we must address together in order to respond to gross human rights violations.

Last June, with other humanitarian agencies, I urged the creation of an International Criminal Court able to provide justice to victims of conflicts. We spoke in the shadow of reports from Sierra Leone, where rebel forces had engaged in a terror campaign involving the systematic laceration, mutilation and severing of limbs of non combatants. Most victims were men, aged from 8 to 60, but the youngest amputee was a six year old girl whose arm was severed. Reports told of babies being taken from their mother’s arms, doused with petrol and set on fire, and of rape, including one multiple rape of a 12 year old girl. At one hospital, doctors reported that lacerations on the head of a 60 year old woman were the result of a failed attempt to behead her.

There should be no doubt in the mind of anyone that these are crimes, under national and international law. This year we commemorate two milestones in the history of human rights protection in situations of conflict: one hundred years ago, the Laws of War were codified and the Hague Conference set limits on the targets and weapons of war. Fifty years ago, the Geneva Conventions were adopted, giving protection to civilians in time of war. In l977, these principles of civilian protection were then expanded to cover internal conflicts. The first need today is not that we write new laws, but that we implement what already exists, where it really matters, which is on the ground. Much is already being done, through the Commission’s own work to identify fundamental standards of humanity, the Security Council’s review of the protection of civilians in armed conflict, and the ICRC’s important study on states’ enforcement of customary international law. We must also recognize that the well stablished body of humanitarian law, which binds individuals as well as governments, can be a source of strength to our still developing human rights law, not least on core social and economic rights such as food, water, and health.

In the last decade, many governments and UN agencies have reviewed how they can respond to conflict, both to provide humanitarian support to victims, and to rebuild war torn societies after the conflict ends. When the Security Council created the first criminal tribunals, to prosecute war crimes in Yugoslavia and genocide in Rwanda, it recognized the imperative of international prevention. Last year’s decision to create an international criminal court represents a major break through by governments to end past cycles of impunity, and establish individual criminal responsibility. Once states ratify the Rome Statute, which I urge them to do, the Court can begin its job, which is the job of any national criminal court: prosecution, education, punishment and deterrence.

How, then, should the Commission’s role evolve, so that its own mechanisms can more actively complement these initiatives and better respond to these challenges ? In asking this question, we should not forget that much of the Commission’s work already addresses prevention, protection, and reconstruction.

Through the special mechanisms and, more recently the growing field presences, the Commission monitors the violations which lead to conflict. In Kosovo, systematic discrimination against Albanians after 1990 was accompanied by torture and other brutal human rights violations, which created fertile conditions in which the seeds of the present conflict could take root. All stages of this tragic process were monitored with precision and impartiality by the Commission’s Special Rapporteur and then by the High Commissioner’s first field offices. This is an important form of early warning, to which I will return.

Other human rights initiatives are directly relevant to prevention:
- First, public reporting of massacres of civilians and of serious violations of international humanitarian law is the initial step in the parties realizing that they will be held accountable for their actions.
- Second, accurate and timely human rights investigations can dispel the propaganda and rumours which fan the flames of conflict. In many conflicts, the perception that vicious atrocities have been committed against one’s own people is the fuel used by leaders to ignite feelings of injustice and demands for retribution against the ‘other’. Combatants commit further atrocities and the conflict spirals. This has been recognized by Special Rapporteurs as they seek to sift the truth from war propaganda. To ignore proper human rights reporting during armed conflict is to surrender to the best propaganda machine.
- Third, human rights reports can illuminate the causes of war and the underlying grievances, inequalities, demands, and aspirations that feed the conflict and instability.
- Fourth: deploying human rights monitors can prevent violations and “diagnose” the institutional and human weaknesses which underlie them.
- Fifth, in the post-conflict phase, the authorities may need help to put in place national institutions to protect and promote human rights, to train and restructure the police and other armed forces, and through both to reduce the likelihood of renewed cycles of violations. In war-ravaged societies the best form of conflict prevention may be to strengthen national human rights institutions. This is a low-cost endeavor when set against the price of renewed conflict.

All of these are areas which the Commission, through its special procedures and field operations, can and does address, sometimes with other UN agencies and sometimes alone. They are part of a process of confidence building and reconciliation, of addressing the root causes of conflict in order to prevent its outbreak.

Making prevention a lasting proposition entails giving people a stake and a say in how their societies are run. Democracy and human rights draw their energy from the participation of the “regular” citizens. It is empowerment like this that leads to sustainable respect for human dignity.

The Commission’s reporting mandate gives it a unique role within the UN system through its capacity to identify situations where serious violations are likely to deteriorate into armed conflict. Giving an early warning of future danger, which then leads to action, is key to effective attempts to halt the vicious spiral, which I spoke of in the context of Kosovo, in which human rights violations escalate, are committed by both sides, and then move to the level of conflict. In reviewing its role, the Commission should ensure that the role of the special mechanisms in early warning is developed so that the reports of Special Rapporteurs are recognized as potential indicators of instability and future conflict, and - where appropriate - are acted on without delay, and effectively integrated into the wider UN system. For example, the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Summary Executions already requires her to draw to my attention situations where early action might prevent deterioration. This now enables me to give early warning of the most serious situations to the Secretary General and through the Executive Committees. I believe all Special Rapporteurs should, as a matter of course and between sessions, alert the Commission as well as myself to these situations, and make appropriate recommendations. As the primary body dealing with human rights within the UN, the Commission should have the capacity to respond effectively, without delay, and to seek implementation of the recommendations in consultation with other parts of the UN, and regional bodies. We cannot change the Rwandan tragedy, but we must learn its lesson, so that the reports of Special Rapporteurs can become the prelude to action by the Commission.

I welcome the Bureau’s enquiry into strengthening the Special Procedures. I have no doubt that, on their part, Special Rapporteurs must be given the facilities they need to implement their mandates. In order to strengthen the support which my Office provides, I have initiated a review, which will be completed shortly. But the greatest obstacles in the path of Special Rapporteurs are the failures, and in some cases refusals, of governments to invite their visits, and secondly to act upon their recommendations. These are issues which I hope the Commission will address as a matter of urgency.

The treaty bodies can also play an important role in prevention. The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has shown the way in the efforts of a treaty implementation body to pursue preventive courses of action. It is essential that we build and expand upon this experience - within the Committee and in other treaty implementation bodies.

This year we also mark the tenth anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. In its short life, this innovative instrument has achieved almost universal acceptance, and should now define the legal framework for all national policy making concerning children - in situations of war, as well as in peace. This is why the draft optional protocol on child soldiers should be adopted without delay. The involvement of children in conflict is not simply a violation of a child’s rights. It affects the ways a conflict is fought and the likelihood of a successful transition to peace. It is no co-incidence that states in which children have become combatants should be among the states where it is most difficult to create an enduring peace. Children without education, economic security and family life, often the poorest of the poor, whose only security has been the gun, do not find it easy to build the institutions of peace when they leave childhood to become the adults of the next generation.

I am convinced that we can engage in constructive international cooperation to rid our world of the gross violations of human rights to which I have referred and to set in place the foundations for every child, woman and man to be able to enjoy decent life chances in peace and freedom, and with dignity and respect for human rights. I am encouraged by the constructive regional cooperation that is taking place around the globe to help human rights take roots and to chart practical courses of action at the national level. Alongside efforts within the framework of regional conventions in Africa, the Americas, Europe and the Arab world, the Asia-Pacific Regional Workshop has demonstrated its worth as a forum for such practical cooperation. The Workshop is an annual forum to exchange information and experience on national plans and national institutions for the promotion and protection of human rights, for the development of human rights education, and the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights and the right to development.

The forthcoming Ministerial Meeting of the Organization of African Unity devoted to human rights will be an important occasion to build upon regional and sub-regional strategies for the advancement of human rights within that continent. We are cooperating closely with the OAU and other partners in these efforts. Likewise, our cooperation with the OSCE is deep and substantive in relation to monitoring, technical cooperation, promotion and protection of human rights. In the inter-American region, we are cooperating closely with the Organization of American States and with other sub-regional institutions.

I attach a great deal of importance to these regional activities. They provide welcome opportunities to deal with human rights issues in practical and constructive ways, based on the experiences of countries on a day-to-day basis. It is my intention to make a concerted effort to enhance and further develop these regional efforts. I have already deployed regional human rights advisers on the ground in some regions and it is my intention to do so in other areas as well.

In addition, recognizing the crucial role of parliaments in ratifying international human rights instruments and enacting implementing measures, we have deepened our links with the Inter-Parliamentary Union.

I would draw attention to the important preventive role the World Conference on Racism can play, given the many conflicts in which racial and ethnic discrimination are underlying causes. I urge this Commission to ensure that the preparatory process receives appropriate attention.

One of the Commission’s most significant recent achievements is the Declaration on the Rights of Human Rights Defenders, which was adopted by the General Assembly on 9 December. This Declaration codifies rights which already exist in our international standards, and is a first step towards their implementation. I know that many of these men and women, who are our civil society delegates, live a life of terrible fear. This was brought home to me in a very personal way during last year’s Commission. A number of the representatives of small NGOs working in difficult circumstances pleaded with me to ensure their protection when they went back to their home countries. Violations ranged from torture to arbitrary detention to hunger and homelessness, from violence against and trafficking in women and children to child labor, from illiteracy to deaths from lack of access to safe water. The freedom accorded to human rights defenders is an acid test of a society’s practical commitment to human rights, and in protecting these courageous men and women we protect the wider population. I therefore urge you to consider how we can monitor violations of the Declaration.

As we end the century, we should recognize the price which human rights paid to conflict during the cold war. This Commission grew up in a polarized world in which the two sets of rights - civil and political, and economic, social and cultural - were appropriated, one by the “east” and the other by the “west”, and each devalued the rights claimed by its opponent. This irrational separation produced a dysfunction, which - at its extreme - made access to certain rights by ordinary men and women dependent on where they had been born in the bipolar world. Happily, we have achieved much since the bitter divisions of the cold war were finally set aside ten years ago. The Commission has taken steps to correct these historical imbalances through the new thematic mandates which focus on issues which are central to social and economic rights - extreme poverty and education are only two examples. The Committee on Economic, Social andCultural Rights has reminded us that core rights may not be disregarded even when sanctions are imposed under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.

There is now, at last, a recognition that the old reasons, or excuses, for selecting one set of rights over the other are no longer valid. As we enter the new century, we do so with the knowledge that enjoyment of all human rights, including the right to development, is the cornerstone of peace and security, and the key to preventing future conflict and building a common future.