press conference on launch of ‘human rights learning –- a people’s report’

 

Human rights, a strategy for development and a way of life protected by law, were not only relevant when violated, Shulamith Koenig, founder and Executive Director of the People’s Movement for Human Rights Education, said today at Headquarters.

At a press conference sponsored by the Permanent Mission of Slovenia to launch Human Rights Learning -– A People’s Report, she said it had been written to help make a simple and concise case for human rights at the community level.  “We, the people, do not know human rights,” she stressed, noting that most of the resources for the United Nations Decade for Human Rights Education (1995-2004) had been given to schools.  The world needed to develop a new political culture based on human rights, the recipient of the 2004 United Nations Human Rights Award added, quoting former South African President Nelson Mandela.

Richard Goldstone, another Movement board member and a former Justice on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, described the report as a wonderful resource for teachers and other people involved in human rights learning.  Offering “a peculiarly South African perspective”, he attributed the success of that country’s anti-apartheid movement to its bottom-up nature.  Human rights could not be enforced if people did not know about them, whereas if they did know, they could make demands on their fellow citizens, particularly in the area of minority rights.

Fellow board member Walther Lichem, former Austrian ambassador to Canada, said the Movement’s approach emphasized everyone knowing their own human dignity, an idea that must penetrate political systems and conquer public space.  The report offered a strategy to motivate citizens to learn, know, and act in accordance with human rights and human dignity.

Eva Tomič, Deputy Permanent Representative of Slovenia, said that even after the United Nations Decade of Human Rights Education, there was still a long way to go before such efforts could become effective and meaningful.  The report provided an extremely valuable civil society perspective.

A correspondent, referring to atrocities by the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army in northern Uganda, asked how the international community should balance demands for justice with efforts to end conflict.

Mr. Goldstone, a former Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, replied that the global community must decide whether or not it believed in global criminal justice.  If so, there could be no amnesties for the worst perpetrators of war crimes.  Governments like that of President Yoweri Museveni in Uganda treated international criminal justice like a faucet that could be turned on and off, whereas the International Criminal Court should be treated as a last resort.

While conceding that there could be some cost in bringing war criminals to justice, and that it could make achieving peace difficult, he noted also that it could make peace easier, as with the indictments of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, which had prevented their participation in and potential sabotage of the Dayton Peace Agreements.  If Ugandan leaders believed they needed time to negotiate peace, they could make their case to the Security Council and have proceedings delayed for a year, but it would be mistake if principles of justice were subverted for short- or long-term political advantage because no one knew if a peace treaty would fail.

Asked about the link between human rights and sustainable development, Mr. Lichem said there could be no development functions without societal development, particularly capacity-building, to function in public space.  When dictatorships collapsed, people were challenged to relate in a new way to other ethnic or religious communities in an abstract public space.  Societal development was concerned with relationships among people.  Nationalistic, racist or intolerant societies lacked that societal capacity and were condemned to failure.

When asked about the failure of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice to consult the people of Bakassi on the agreement between Nigeria and Cameroon over control of that formerly disputed area, Mr. Goldstone said failure to consult people constituted a colonial approach.  Consultation was required if dignity was to be respected and agreement was unlikely without it.

Asked how human rights could be promoted without imposing a culturally-sensitive agenda, Ms. Koenig quoted Abdullah Naim, who wrote that the only universal thing was the effort by groups of people to protect their own dignity.  That principle could be used in human rights learning, as demonstrated by successful efforts in Mali and India to tie human rights learning into local cultural traditions and history.

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For information media • not an official record