IT IS TIME TO BRING MESSAGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS TO FRUITION FOR ALL PEOPLE, SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS AT AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
Press Release
SG/SM/6484
HR/4354
IT IS TIME TO BRING MESSAGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS TO FRUITION FOR ALL PEOPLE, SECRETARY-GENERAL SAYS AT AMERICAN BAR ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE
19980312 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Human Rights Declaration, Genocide Convention Anchors of International Human Rights RegimeFollowing is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's address to be delivered this evening at the American Bar Association conference commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide:
I am happy and honoured to be your speaker this evening. Your agenda over these two days, addressed by such an eminent gathering of scholars and experts, is a source of hope and inspiration.
You have come together in celebration: to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; and to recall the fiftieth anniversary of the first General Assembly resolution calling on Member States to study the possibility of establishing an international criminal court.
You have also come together in utter solemnity: to remember our obligations to our forefathers, who proclaimed a vision of human rights for all the world's people; and to rededicate ourselves to do better where we have failed or fallen short.
The touchstone for this work, the guiding star for this anniversary year, is the inherent dignity and worth of every human being.
My good friend Elie Wiesel, who you are honouring tonight, has spent the better part of a lifetime fighting to uphold this most basic of human rights and speaking out for justice whenever and wherever rights are trampled upon or denied.
It is appropriate tonight that we turn for further inspiration to Elie's earliest work, the book Night, his renowned account of the Nazi death camps. The book contains the following passage:
"Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Never shall I forget those flames ..."
With these words and thousands more since, Elie has been our guide, our witness, to the bloodiest crimes of a bloody century. He found strength to live again, to write again, and most importantly for all of us to become one of the world's most passionate defenders of universal human rights.
Emerging from the darkness of the Holocaust -- rebuilding himself from a devastating encounter with evil -- Elie has given us light. I would like to join you tonight in saluting his achievements and to thank him for becoming such a good friend of the United Nations.
I want also to stress that the Holocaust was a calamity not only for the Jewish people, but for all others persecuted during the Nazi era, and indeed for all humanity. As such, it has lessons for all humankind.
I believe that the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, so quickly after the Holocaust, proves that we have begun to learn those lessons. For if human rights are to have any meaning at all, none of us can remain indifferent when anyone's rights are violated anywhere. The German theologian Martin Niemoeller said it perfectly with the following famous words:
"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up."
The duel between darkness and light continues.
Consider the newspaper reports of just the past few days. One photograph showed a policeman, armed with truncheon and shield, kicking and beating an old man who was defenceless save for his cane. Yet a second, more hopeful story told how women around the world are speaking out for their rights and banding together to protect themselves against domestic violence.
Consider, too, the experience of the United Nations itself. In recent years, peacekeeping operations in El Salvador and Mozambique have helped the people of those countries turn their backs on civil strife, and their energies towards the work of democracy and development.
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Elsewhere, however -- in Rwanda and in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- the horrors of the Second World War -- the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations -- the likes of which we said should never happen again, have recurred. Genocide has become a word of our time, too.
So we move both forward and back. Peace spreads in one region as hatred rages in another. Unprecedented wealth coexists with terrible deprivation. Globalization knits us closer together, while intolerance keeps us apart.
But while much of our progress is fragile, some achievements endure. One such achievement is the Genocide Convention, which was born out of the experience that a person stood a better chance of being tried and judged for killing one human being than for killing 100,000.
Another is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United States takes justifiable pride, and enjoys universal respect, in the fact that its own Declaration of Independence more than 200 years ago was among the affirmations of human rights, freedoms and dignity that led to the Universal Declaration.
Yet, the roots of the Universal Declaration exist in all cultures and traditions, and can be found in the teachings of all the world's great religions. The Declaration itself was the product of debates among a uniquely representative group of scholars, a majority of whom came from the non-Western world. The Declaration's universality today is founded on its endorsement by all 185 Members of the United Nations.
Together, for 50 years, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention have been the anchors of an international human rights regime that sets out the rights of women, children, refugees, minorities, indigenous peoples and others, and which helps protect against torture and racial discrimination.
But for the same half century -- almost as long as the United Nations has been in existence -- the need has remained largely unanswered for a means to prosecute and punish persons responsible for genocide and crimes against humanity. In the absence of an international criminal court, and in the face of grave violations and atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, the Security Council established two ad hoc tribunals. Those tribunals have made significant progress and are setting important precedents.
Earlier this week, for example, a Bosnian Serb paramilitary officer pleaded guilty to the charge that he had raped Muslim women during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, making him the first person to plead guilty to rape as a war crime.
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Still, an international criminal court remains the missing link in the international legal system. Such a court could remedy the deficiencies of ad hoc tribunals, such as the risk of selective justice. It could take over when national criminal justice institutions are unwilling or unable to act.
It could help end situations in which atrocities and conflict work in vicious tandem, in which each slaughter is the parent of the next, by guaranteeing that at least some of the individuals responsible are brought to justice.
It could help end impunity by upholding the principle of individual criminal accountability, the principle that all individuals in a government hierarchy or military chain of command, without exception, from rulers to private soldiers, are accountable for their actions.
A court, in short, will put warlords and future war criminals on notice.
We have an opportunity to achieve this three months from now, when a conference of plenipotentiaries convenes in Rome to adopt a convention on the establishment of an international criminal court. In this anniversary year, as a blood-soaked century draws to a close, I cannot think of a more fitting occasion to complete the vision of the Genocide Convention. We must do all we can to replace the law of force with the force of law.
Our time -- this decade even -- has shown us that man's capacity for evil knows no limits. But I remain equally convinced of our capacity for good, for positive works that bring hope to those in despair and which infuse our lives with humanity and meaning. It is time to embark on a new stage in our shared journey to bring the message of human rights to fruition for all people. Let this be the year.
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