SECRETARY-GENERAL EMPHASIZES HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMANITARIAN LAW IN ADDRESS TO LUND UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LAW
Press Release
SG/SM/7009
SECRETARY-GENERAL EMPHASIZES HUMAN RIGHTS, HUMANITARIAN LAW IN ADDRESS TO LUND UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LAW
19990527 Following is the text of Secretary-General Kofi Annan's address to the Faculty of Law of Lund University, Sweden, delivered on 27 May:It is a great honour for me to be here. And it is a great encouragement for me to think that in front of me are young men and women who will devote themselves to the defence of human rights and the implementation of humanitarian law in the coming century.
My wife, as some of you may know, is a law graduate from your much younger sister faculty in Stockholm. Even so, she permits me to say that we are both thrilled to be here. We are especially glad to be here in May. It's a month which brings joy to students in many countries. But Lund's rite of spring has a magic all its own, thanks to your high white caps and your famous May Day hymn, "Blommande sköna dalar".
As we meet in the last spring of the twentieth century, it's about human rights and humanitarian law that I want to speak to you today.
Last year, we celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. I don't need to tell you that. Everyone in Sweden must know it, thanks to Telia [the Swedish national telephone company], which had the wonderful idea of putting an article of the Declaration on the cover of every copy of this year's telephone directory.
But we are not done with anniversaries. In fact, there are three important ones this year. One is the centenary of the first Hague Peace Conference, in 1899, which really marked the beginning of efforts to organize international affairs on a basis of cooperation and agreement, instead of the law of the jungle. Already then, 100 years ago, the great Powers of the time were so alarmed by the destructive weapons they were developing that they felt the need to try and prevent them from ever being used.
Given the carnage that followed only 15 years later, we can hardly call their effort a great success. But they did agree to outlaw one very nasty weapon, the "dum dum" bullet. So began a process which has led to bans on other horrible weapons, such as chemical and biological ones -- and now, at
last, anti-personnel landmines. The Hague Conference also set up the first institution to help States settle their disputes peacefully when they wish to do so: the Permanent Court of Arbitration. It is still there in The Hague -- I visited it last week -- and it does very useful work. I wish more States would make use of it, and more often.
Another anniversary we celebrate this year is that of the four Geneva Conventions, which were signed 50 years ago. They are the most comprehensive effort ever made to define what constitutes acceptable behaviour in wartime. That may seem a perverse thing to do. Some people say nothing should be done to diminish the horror of war, because the more people realize how horrible war is, the less likely they are to resort to it. Even Florence Nightingale, who had done more than anyone to mitigate the horrors of the Crimean War, by looking after the wounded, refused to support the founding of the Red Cross, because she feared it would make people think that war could be civilized.
But, the international community has rejected that argument -- rightly in my view. However much we may long for the abolition of all war, we have to face the fact that at best it is going to take a long time. Meanwhile, at least we need a minimum standard of humane conduct -- something that tells human beings how to treat each other even when they resort to the extreme measure of military force. And that is what the Geneva Conventions have given us: a set of universal rules by which those who make war must conduct themselves, whether the war itself is considered to be just or unjust.
The third anniversary this year is that of the Convention on the Rights of the Child -- the first Convention to combine articles of human rights with provisions of international humanitarian and refugee law. If you set that Convention alongside other treaties adopted over the past half century -- from the Genocide Convention of 1948 to the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women -- you will see that the Universal Declaration is no longer just a declaration. Its principles are now enshrined in an impressive body of international human rights law, by which the great majority of States have agreed to be legally bound.
Thanks to these treaties, individuals almost throughout the world are endowed with a comprehensive framework of rights, which, on paper at least, their governments are bound to respect.
On paper, I said. And there's the rub! Alas, practice is often very different. Since 1945, we have been spared conflicts on the cataclysmic scale of the two world wars. And since 1989, we no longer feel that we are living even under the threat of such a global conflict -- though we would be unwise to take that for granted. But, at the same time, we have witnessed a proliferation of small and middle-sized conflicts which, for those directly involved, are every bit as nasty as a world war.
- 3 - Press Release SG/SM/7009 27 May 1999
And, meanwhile, the nature of war, it seems, has in some ways got worse rather than better. Most wars nowadays are civil wars -- within States rather than between them. But they are "civil" also in the grim sense that civilians -- non-combatants -- have become the main victims. In the First World War, roughly 90 per cent of those killed were soldiers, and only 10 per cent civilians. In the Second World War, even if we count all the victims of Nazi death camps as war casualties, civilians made up only half, or just over half, of all those killed. But, in today's conflicts, civilians make up probably three quarters of all the casualties.
I say "probably" because the truth is that no one really knows. Relief agencies like the Red Cross and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees rightly devote their resources to helping the living, rather than counting the dead. Armies count their own losses, and sometimes make boasts about the number of enemy they have killed. But there is no agency whose job it is to keep a tally of civilians killed. The victims of today's brutal conflicts are not merely anonymous, but literally countless.
Why have civilians become the main victims of conflict? Not so much because of the weapons used. High-tech weapons are increasingly precise in their aim -- at least when the people firing them know precisely what they are aiming at. But most casualties in recent conflicts have been caused by relatively unsophisticated weapons -- in some cases, such as Rwanda, not even firearms. More often than not, the killer can see the person he is killing.
My friends, the awful truth is that civilians today are not just "caught in the crossfire". They are not accidental casualties, or "collateral damage" as the current euphemism has it. All too often, they are deliberately targeted.
All too often, today's conflicts are fought in the name of ethnicity. One group of people is encouraged by its leaders to believe that its very existence is threatened by another group -- that the two of them simply cannot live side by side in peace and safety. And all too often, this belief becomes self-fulfilling. People are convinced that they can go on living safely in their homes only if their own ethnic group forms the majority in the area, or even in the State. Sometimes even the presence of a minority from a different group comes to be seen as a threat. So then, it becomes a question of hitting before you are hit -- of driving out or even exterminating the "other" before he does the same to you.
Perhaps extermination, in the literal sense, is still the exception rather than the rule. Let us hope so. But even when the aim is only to secure a territory by expelling its population -- "ethnic cleansing" to use the horrible expression that is now current -- the maltreatment and massacre of civilians becomes a key part of the strategy. Terror, you see, is the most effective way to make people leave their homes.
- 4 - Press Release SG/SM/7009 27 May 1999
Every able-bodied male belonging to the target group comes to be seen as a potential "terrorist", who supposedly has to be killed before he kills. But that does not mean that women, children and the elderly are always spared. Far from it! We have all seen the ghastly pictures from Sierra Leone, of children whose hands or feet have been hacked off, to send a grim message of terror to the rest of the population. We have all read of women being raped, in Bosnia and now in Kosovo, as part of a systematic effort to humiliate and terrorize their families. Last week, among refugees in Albania and Macedonia, I heard many such stories.
At the Blace border-crossing with Kosovo, I held the hand of a 100-year old woman, who asked me with tears in her eyes: "How could this be happening to me at this time in my life?" I spoke to a young mother who only three weeks before had given birth to a child while hiding in the mountains. A woman holding a three-year-old boy told me that her last memory of her husband was when he was arrested and taken away. She has not heard from him since.
In the Stenkovec Camp in Macedonia, I listened to an old man whose entire village had been in flight for two months, seeking refuge wherever possible, and finding it only now. In Albania, in the Kukes camp, I visited a young woman in a field hospital who had been shot in the leg as she fled her home with her newborn baby. On the border between Albania and Kosovo, I visited a small family in a tent who, with extraordinary dignity and quiet courage, welcomed me, and asked only that they be allowed to return to their homeland. I could only tell them: that is what we want, too. Indeed, that is what the world demands.
What I saw in those camps reinforced my profound outrage at what has been deliberately inflicted upon the people of Kosovo. It renewed my conviction that we must find a solution as soon as possible -- a solution that secures the safe and speedy return of this people to their homes, with their political and human rights respected.
It is clear that codifying human rights and principles of humanitarian law is not enough. We have the codes now, and that is very important: if you want to make people behave better, it is much better to start from an agreed set of rules. But the really hard work of getting them implemented is still ahead of us. And it has to be carried out on different levels. At one level, we must put an end to the culture of impunity, which too often makes it easier for the person who kills 10,000 people to escape justice than for the person who kills one. That is an obscenity, which the world is rightly determined to correct.
To deal with the appalling crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, the Security Council set up two tribunals, which are now hard at work. Their prosecutors are legally obliged to bring to justice all those responsible for crimes against humanity. All of us -- and especially governments -- must give them the support and cooperation they need. Future criminals will not be
- 5 - Press Release SG/SM/7009 27 May 1999
deterred if present ones are seen to be getting away with it. I think today we all have heard about the indictment of President Milosevic and other officials of his Government by the former Yugoslavia Tribunal in The Hague. That is beginning to show that the court can have teeth.
But ad hoc tribunals, set up only when gross violations have already occurred, are not enough. It must be clear that the same standards of justice will be upheld wherever in the world such crimes are committed. And that is why the International Criminal Court, whose Statute was adopted in Rome last year, is so important. So far it has been signed by 82 States and ratified by two. I can think of no better way for States to mark the millennium than by taking all necessary steps to bring the court into existence, with as near universal participation as possible, in the very first years of the new century.
Criminal justice is vital, because it can provide a deterrent. But many other elements are required if human rights are really to be protected and humanitarian law is really to be enforced. If we look at those countries which have a relatively good record in this respect -- and I am glad to say Sweden is one of the best -- we see that they, by no means, rely only on deterrence to make people behave well.
If people abstain from violence, and seek to settle their differences in a civilized way, it is because, over a long period of time, they have learnt to expect such behaviour of themselves and of each other. It is because they live in a society with institutions which enable them to vent their grievances peacefully, and to look for solutions which take everyone's interests into account. Such a society cannot be created overnight. Nor can it easily be rebuilt once conflict has torn it apart.
It is much more difficult to make it work when resources are scarce, and many people are hungry -- as is the case in too many countries today. But money and wealth by themselves are not enough. Indeed, sudden economic changes, which enrich one part of a population while plunging others into insecurity, can often bring about a decline of civility and a rise of violence even when the average income goes up.
That is why, at the United Nations, we focus more and more on civil society and good governance. It is also why we see our development work as integrally connected with our work for peace and security. We have learnt that development which neglects social and political factors is often derailed by conflict -- and, conversely, that conflict prevention and post-conflict peace-building are doomed to failure unless they enable a society to develop.
It is very difficult for people to earn an honest and healthy living in the midst of conflict; and people who are prevented from earning an honest and healthy living are more likely to get involved in conflicts in the first place. There is a vicious circle of war and poverty, which must be replaced
- 6 - Press Release SG/SM/7009 27 May 1999
by a virtuous circle of peace and prosperity. And that is what the United Nations is all about.
In conclusion, I should like to remind you of three outstanding Swedish internationalists, among many examples this country has given us of universal values in action. One is my great predecessor Dag Hammarskjöld, who also spoke at this University, exactly 40 years ago, and whose summer house at Backåkra I visited earlier today. It should hardly be necessary, here of all places, to recall the career of the United Nations second Secretary-General -- the son of a Swedish Prime Minister, who himself served in Government before becoming Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1953.
During his term of office, Hammarskjöld put in place the main elements of peacekeeping, which have served the international community through the cold war and up to the present day. And as you know, he made the supreme sacrifice when his plane crashed, on 18 September 1961, during a mission to bring peace to central Africa.
My second example, Folke Bernadotte, was not only the first United Nations mediator; he was also the first United Nations envoy to die in the cause of peace. But before he gave his life to his mission to Palestine, Count Bernadotte also served an institution to whom we owe almost the very concept of humanitarian law: the Red Cross. Bernadotte learned early on that humanitarian intervention requires its own brand of courage. When negotiating to free prisoners from Nazi camps during the Second World War, he knew his task was to "negotiate with the devil in order to free people from hell". Too often, it seems today that is also the role of the United Nations.
Finally, let me evoke a name of special significance both to me and to this place -- the name of Raoul Wallenberg. As some of you know, I am married to his niece. And here in Lund, an Institute bearing his name is devoted, appropriately enough, to the study of human rights and humanitarian law.
His name should be significant for everyone. He was a diplomat representing a neutral country in time of war. But what his example tells us is that humanity is more important than neutrality. As human beings, we cannot be neutral -- or at least we have no right to be -- when other human beings are suffering. Each one of us has a duty to intervene. It doesn't matter what you do. Even just to shout "This is enough, I can't take it anymore", is action. Each of us has to intervene -- to do what he or she can to help those in need, even though it would be much safer and more comfortable to do nothing.
Raoul felt this duty, and he paid a terrible price. To this day, his fate remains a mystery. But the greater mystery is this: why, when such appalling crimes were being committed and such terrible suffering endured, did so few individuals react like him?
- 7 - Press Release SG/SM/7009 27 May 1999
It is a question which should challenges all of us. In his place, how would I have acted? More important still, how would I act today, and how will I act in the future?
If all of you take these three Swedish heroes as your inspiration, and resolve to act as they did, I have no doubt you can make the coming century the one in which human rights and humanitarian law are at last implemented -- not just in treaties and declarations, but in real life. Let yours be the new spring, of which you sing so eloquently in your May Day hymn: "Klarare våren talar/Bättre vi den förstå". [More clearly the spring speaks/Better we understand it.]
* *** *