[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 196 (Monday, December 11, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S18366-S18368]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              PRESIDENT ROBINSON'S ADDRESS ON HUMAN RIGHTS

 Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, yesterday was International Human 
Rights Day, a day to mark how far the world has come toward respect for 
human rights, and also a day to reflect on how far we have to go.
  In October, President Mary Robinson of Ireland gave an address at 
Yale Law School in which she discussed the often inadequate response to 
extreme human rights crises around the world. She spoke of the 
universal acceptance of the key principles of the international human 
rights movement and the value of activities by the United Nations and 
regional organizations which set human rights standards. Having 
recently returned from Rwanda and Zaire, she poignantly described the 
gross human rights violations there and the failure of the world to 
make an adequate response. At the end of her address, she notes that 
these basic principles of human rights are also at stake in Bosnia.
  When President Clinton visited Ireland 10 days ago, he invited 
President Robinson to the United States for a state visit in June 1996. 
I look forward to her visit, and I ask that her address at Yale be 
printed in the Record.
  The address follows:

        The Need to Honour Development Human Rights Commitments


                   SPEECH by PRESIDENT MARY ROBINSON

       It is an enormous pleasure to be here this evening. I 
     recall when I was studying law at a place just outside Boston 
     in the late '60s, this institution was referred to as ``that 
     other place in New Haven''. The compliment implied in not 
     naming that other place naturally whetted my interest, but 
     this is the first opportunity I have had to visit. I am 
     greatly honoured to be here as the 1995 Sherril lecturer.
       The title of my address this evening--the need to honour 
     developing human rights commitments--has been carefully 
     chosen to provide me with an opportunity to comment on the 
     state of our commitment at the end of the century.
       I use the term ``honour'' as opposed to ``compliance'' or 
     ``conformity'' because the lives and integrity of human 
     beings are at stake and because it calls on our notions of 
     dignity and moral obligation. The word ``commitment'' has 
     been chosen because it goes further than both legal or moral 
     obligation--while eccompassing both. It also connotes the 
     idea of being ``committed'' to a great cause at a higher 
     level of obligation, as well as a preparedness to take steps 
     to promote and further that cause, without interrogating the 
     legal necessity or obligation to do so. In the area of human 
     rights one can find no greater elucidation of the meaning of 
     ``commitment'' than in the Preamble to the Universal 
     Declaration of Human Rights. Lastly, I am conscious that our 
     human rights commitments are dynamic and not static. They are 
     constantly evolving and developing. At the end of this 
     millennium the honouring of developing human rights 
     commitments, to the best of our abilities and resources, is a 
     first order principle of national and international life.
       Yet we are all aware that major problems persist. Torture, 
     inhuman prison conditions, unfair trials, and famine have not 
     been eradicated although we take a certain pride in the 
     institutions and procedures that we have set up to deal with 
     them. Ethnic cleansing and the daily spectacle of civilian 
     casualties in Sarajevo remind us that the evils of the past 
     cast a long shadow. In a real sense the World Conference on 
     Womens' Rights in Beijing was all about the failure to honour 
     our commitments to women, particularly in the areas of 
     protection against violence and sexual abuse.
       We do not have cause for satisfaction. The essential theme 
     of my remarks, having returned a few days ago from Rwanda, is 
     that we should reflect even more on our political commitment 
     to invest our human rights mission with the resources that 
     match the strength of our beliefs, and that our failure to do 
     so--when confronted with situations such as that in Rwanda 
     which cry out for a more committed, more integrated and more 
     resourced response--compromises our achievements, blunts our 
     sensitivities to situations where gross violations are taking 
     place and diminishes our capacity to transmit these values 
     meaningfully to succeeding generations. In other words, 
     acquiescence to a low level of response is an affront to the 
     principle of the universality of human rights.
       As you will have gathered, I have chosen this title with 
     great anxiety--the anxiety, firstly, of a lawyer confronted 
     by the contradictions between promise and performance. The 
     anxiety, secondly, of a Head of State returning from a visit 
     to Rwanda and Zaire, who has been exposed in the literal 
     sense of that term, and for the second time, to the terrible 
     humanitarian aftermath of genocide and its accompanying 
     social, political and economic disintegration. A witness also 
     to the continued inability of the international community to 
     rouse itself sufficiently to bring greater hope and promise 
     to that land of despair and tragedy. The anxiety, lastly, of 
     a witness left speechless and fumbling for the correct and 
     appropriate response in the face of our own inadequacies as a 
     community of human beings when faced, eyeball to eyeball, 
     with human disaster on such an overwhelming scale.
       The contradiction, witnessed painfully in Rwanda, between, 
     our lofty human rights values on the one hand, and the 
     pressure of reality on the other, provokes a natural and 
     human response. I hear the words ``Never again''--the call 
     that became the `leitmotif' for the development of human 
     rights this century--and am deeply dismayed and angered at 
     the human capacity for self-delusion.
       But this despair should not lead us to be distracted from 
     the real advances that have been made, at both the regional 
     and the universal level, in the protection and promotion of 
     human rights and in the central position that the concept of 
     human rights now occupies in the world stage.
       In a very short space of time three key ideas which 
     underpin the entire international human rights movement have 
     come to be accepted universally. They are all connected to 
     what can be called the principle of universality.
       First, that countries can no longer say that how they treat 
     their inhabitants is solely their own business. The concept 
     of human rights has torn down (though not completely 
     destroyed) the sometimes oppressive veil of domestic 
     jurisdiction. The role of the media in showing us the 
     dramatic pictures of civilians being cut down in Sarajevo, of 
     the famine in Somalia or of the genocide in Rwanda, has 
     contributed immeasurably to strengthening this development. 
     The global village has highlighted our global 
     responsibilities.
       Second, that the effective protection of human rights is 
     indissociably linked to international peace and security. 
     Internal disorder, civil war, heightened regional 
     and international tension can in our recent history, be 
     causally related to violations of human or minority 
     rights. Respect for human rights is thus essential for 
     genuine peace.
       Third, that human rights are universal and indivisible. The 
     principle of universality of human rights was asserted by the 
     Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is the central 
     pillar on which all else rests and has come under increasing 
     attack over the last decade under the guise of ``regional 
     particularities''. To the great credit of the World 
     Conference on Human Rights, the principle that the protection 
     of human rights is a duty for all states, irrespective of 
     their political, economical or cultural system, was 
     emphatically re-affirmed. Let me quote from Paragraph 3 of 
     the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by 
     consensus by the member states of the United Nations:
       ``All human rights are universal, indivisible and 
     interdependent and inter-related. The international community 
     must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, 
     on the same footing and with the same emphasis.''
       Side by side with the development of what I have called the 
     principle of universality stand the vital standard-setting 
     activities of the United Nations and regional bodies such as 
     the Council of Europe, the Organisation of American States 
     and the Organisation of African Unity. The catalogue of human 
     rights and freedoms set out inter alia in the United Nations 
     Covenants, the European Convention on Human Rights, the 
     American Convention on Human Rights, the African Charter of 
     Human and People's Rights and other major human rights 
     treaties form the central core of a corpus of universal human 
     rights standards encompassing both civil and political as 
     well as social, economic and cultural rights.
       There are several remarkable features about standard-
     setting activities which merit being highlighted in an era 
     where the emphasis--quite properly--is on enforcement and 
     effectiveness.
       The first is that the relevant treaty standards not only 
     define the States' international obligations to its 
     inhabitants and to the international community at large but 
     also directly impact on the content and quality of national 
     law. In many countries these standards have the force of law 
     and can be enforced directly through local courts. Indeed, 
     some of the most important principles, for example the 
     prohibition against torture and slavery, have become part of 
     the customary law of nations. International norms have also 
     become an essential vade-mecum for NGO's, providing them with 
     a focused set of standards to guide them in their work and 
     judgment. In these different ways, the specificity of 
     international human rights law can exercise a vitally 
     important influence on national arrangements and can lead to 
     an improvement in people's lives. I believe that the role 
     human rights law has played, and continues to play, in 
     shaping the legislative agendas of the new democracies in 
     eastern and central Europe, not to mention the new South 
     Africa, cannot be underestimated. The authoritative 
     interpretation of these standards by the European and 
     American Courts of Human Rights and by other treaty bodies, 
     adds a further important dimension to the effectiveness of 
     this process.
     
[[Page S18367]]

       My second observation is central to the theme of developing 
     human rights commitments. Standard-setting, regionally and 
     universally, is a continuous on-going process. The UN Torture 
     Convention and the Convention on the Rights of the Child are 
     examples of the developing nature of the law. But regard must 
     also be had to the numerous and increasingly influential non-
     treaty standards embodied in instruments such as the Standard 
     Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the Body of 
     Principles for the Protection of All Persons under any form 
     of Detention or Imprisonment or the Declaration on the 
     Elimination of Violence against Women.
       However it seems clear that it is in responding to the most 
     severe and pressing human rights problems that much progress 
     needs to be made. Can there be any doubt that the credibility 
     of the international community's attachment to the cause of 
     human rights is intimately bound up with its ability to 
     respond effectively to situations where human rights are 
     being grossly violated? The Secretary-General of the United 
     Nations recognized this in his 1992 report on the work of the 
     UN when he observed that while the UN was responding 
     adequately to ``normal situations'' it had not been able to 
     act effectively in the area of massive human rights 
     violations.
       We seem to have created for ourselves the following 
     paradox. The human rights developments that have taken place 
     since the end of the Second World War have led to the 
     creation of international courts of human rights to enforce 
     state obligations, to important standard-setting activities 
     by the UN and regional organisations, to the creation of 
     teams of special rapporteurs to examine disappearances, 
     torture, political executions or situations in particular 
     countries. We have recently created a High Commissioner for 
     Human Rights to be the focal point for human rights action in 
     the UN system. All these positive advancements are in a 
     sense, directly related to the political commitments made 
     following upon gross violations of human rights earlier this 
     century.
       Yet the institutions we have created appear to be stricken 
     with inertia and paralysis when confronted with the 
     reoccurrence of the very evils that have led to their 
     foundation. Of course, we cannot stop wars and we may be 
     unable to foresee or forestall outbreaks of violence on a 
     massive scale. And there will always be countries in the 
     world where human rights are trampled underfoot. But doesn't 
     honouring the commitment require us to respond to this 
     unacceptable paradox and to the deep international concern 
     about gross violations? Does it not require us to assume 
     collective responsibility and to develop institutions and 
     processes to anticipate, deter, prevent and terminate gross 
     human rights violations?
       It is in our response to these questions that future 
     generations will determine whether our great treaties were 
     merely splendid baubles, worthless pieces of paper or genuine 
     commitments that we sought valiantly to honour.
       Central to this concern is the possibility of taking 
     preventive action through the effective operation of early-
     warning devices. But alarm bells must be listened to. In the 
     case of Rwanda they were loudly rung by the NGO community and 
     by the Special Rapporteur for Extrajudicial, Summary or 
     Arbitrary Executions in his reports prior to the Rwanda 
     genocide in April 1994.
       It is difficult to speak of the situation in Rwanda today 
     with restraint and without anger--the more so against a 
     background of what happened there and how the world 
     responded. Could the international community not have done 
     more? Could we not do more today? Has the United Nations 
     honoured its human rights vocation? Has the international 
     community, behind the persona of the United Nations, honoured 
     its human rights commitments?
       I ask these questions because my own sense of justice has 
     been outraged by what I have witnessed there in a manner 
     which defies my powers of articulation and explanation. The 
     facts plead for themselves.
       A year ago I visited this small country in the aftermath of 
     the genocide of up to a million people and the breakdown of 
     civil society. The structures of government had been 
     destroyed by the killings and the massive exodus which 
     followed. In the capital, Kigali, I saw appalling evidence of 
     that genocide. In many churches thousands who had fled for 
     sanctuary were slaughtered.
       Returning a year later I noted courageous progress by the 
     Rwandan Government in rebuilding their society, and 
     appreciated the access they gave me to the places I felt I 
     must see. On this visit I travelled to Nyarabuye, near the 
     Tanzanian border, where a hilltop church and school complex 
     have become a national place of commemoration. The bodies of 
     several thousand men are in mass graves outside, where they 
     had tried to defend the women, the children, the old people. 
     Inside I was shown the heaped, rotted bodies and decayed 
     clothes of those women and children in room after room of 
     dark school buildings.
       In witnessing these conditions my mind has been drawn back 
     inexorably to the Irish famine of the last century. I 
     recalled the images given voice by the Irish poet and Nobel 
     Laureate, Seamus Heaney, in his poem ``For the Commander of 
     the Eliza''. A routine boat patrol off the coast of West Mayo 
     tacks and hails a row boat crew in Gaelic:
     ``. . . O my sweet Christ,
     we saw piled in the bottom of their craft
     six grown men with gaping mouths and eyes
     bursting the sockets like spring onions in drills
     six wrecks of bone and pallid, tautened skin,''
       On my first visit a year ago the prison population was 
     under 9,000. Now it is over 53,000, in conditions which have 
     been described by NGO's as a humanitarian nightmare. I 
     visited one of the prisons, in the southern city of Butare. 
     It was built for 1,500 inmates, but was home to 6,276 men, 
     216 women, and 102 youths. Nearly all--except the 56 infants 
     imprisoned with their mothers--are awaiting trial on charges 
     of complicity in last year's genocide. Flying in by 
     helicopter we saw prisoners perched on the tin roofs 
     surrounding a central courtyard. They live there day and 
     night. The courtyard is full. Every building is jammed with 
     inmates, so that there is no room to lie down. Walking 
     through the prison with the Director and a Red Cross official 
     there was no sign of serious malnourishment or dehydration, 
     but the overcrowding is so severe--in some prisons four per 
     square meter--that some suffer from oedema and gangrene. 
     Although there are no exact figures, it has been estimated 
     that there are three hundred deaths every week. In Rwanda, 
     there is a sense among some that only death can bring release 
     from captivity. No trials, national or international, have 
     yet taken place. A Commission set up to screen detainees has 
     led to an insignificant number of releases. The International 
     Committee of the Red Cross--to whom I pay warm tribute--are 
     simply overwhelmed. Its field workers provide food, water, 
     and some health care to these 53,000 detainees held in 
     numerous detention centres.
       The human rights situation in Rwanda today is a complex and 
     inter-related one. The principal human rights problems are: 
     arbitrary arrest on the basis of accusation, arbitrary 
     detention with no court process, inhumane conditions of 
     detention, and impunity for past human rights violations. 
     Other violations occur on a lesser scale; they include 
     torture and arbitrary killings.
       There have been two particular human rights initiatives in 
     response to the scale of this problem: an International 
     Tribunal to try the main perpetrators of the genocide and a 
     human rights field operation under the High Commissioner for 
     Human Rights. The inadequacies of both initiatives show all 
     too clearly our failure to understand the fundamental 
     necessity to integrate a resourced human rights response with 
     the peacekeeping role and the humanitarian relief.
       Following my visit last year I urged upon all Heads of 
     State the importance of establishing the International 
     Tribunal without delay and beginning the healing process 
     through prosecutions of the ringleaders. It was approved by 
     Security Council resolution last November but one year later 
     there has not been a single indictment, although it is hoped 
     to have the first prosecutions before the end of this year or 
     early next year. When I met the Deputy Prosecutor in Kigali 
     last week he confirmed that the problem was lack of 
     resources.
       The Human Rights Field Operation in Rwanda was entrusted by 
     the UN system and by the Government of Rwanda with the 
     following integrated mandate: (a) to carry out investigations 
     into violations of human rights and humanitarian law; (b) to 
     monitor the ongoing human rights situation and through its 
     presence, prevent future violations; (c) to co-operate with 
     other international agencies in re-establishing 
     confidence, and thus, to facilitate the return of refugees 
     and displaced persons and the rebuilding of civic society; 
     and (d) to implement programmes of technical co-operation 
     in the field of human rights, particularly in the area of 
     administration of justice as well as of human rights 
     education.
       This is a uniquely proactive mandate. But speaking to field 
     officers on the ground I learned of their great frustration 
     in seeking to implement it. Lack of financial resources means 
     that there has been inadequacy in the logistics, in the 
     planning, in the administrative and operational 
     professionalism. Those who know about human rights, who have 
     creative ideas about addressing them, are without a budget 
     for such projects. I am told that what UNAMIR spends in a 
     week, or what is spent in the refugee camps in a week, is 
     more than the human rights budget for a year. The development 
     of a human rights culture is a complex undertaking, 
     especially in post human rights disaster situations. The UN 
     took an important step by creating the human rights field 
     operation. But it needs to go further to build up a corps of 
     professional and creative agents of social change, properly 
     deployed and supported, who have access to the funds and 
     flexibility needed to address effectively human rights 
     problems.
       In the context of Rwanda I can see more clearly now how 
     broad based and varied the needs are: whether it is resources 
     to develop an infrastructure for the supreme court judges who 
     have been appointed there within the last few days, or the 
     provision of human rights materials and training for local 
     soldiers and police, or the production of public information 
     campaigns relative to human rights in co-operation with local 
     human rights N.G.O.'s and womens groups, there is above all 
     the challenge to react in a timely and effective fashion to 
     support movement in the direction of compliance with human 
     rights.
       I am convinced we have the legal standards, the expertise, 
     the necessary experience and the resources to draw upon in 
     order to honour our commitments. The peace-building 
     operations in Namibia, El Salvador, 

[[Page S18368]]
     Cambodia and Haiti and the deployment of trained human rights monitors 
     there have shown this to be the case. Can we justify the lack 
     of commitment to play an active and properly resourced role 
     in helping to reconstruct and redevelop Rwanda?
       Tragically the same questions arise when we consider the 
     fate of up to two million refugees, many of whom had 
     participated in acts of genocide, living outside Rwanda's 
     borders in camps in Zaire and Tanzania, of whom more than 
     50,000 died last year of cholera, dysentery and dehydration. 
     Their continued presence in these countries has transformed 
     the Rwandan problem into a regional crisis which could 
     deteriorate, with unthinkable consequences, at any moment. 
     Yet, apart from bouts of forced repatriation in August 1995, 
     voluntary repatriation has been limited and vulnerable to 
     events in Rwanda. Refugees are afraid to return, many of them 
     fear being accused of having participated in genocide by 
     those who have recently occupied their properties. The 
     apprehension of reprisal killings, the massacre in Kibeho in 
     which thousands of internally displaced persons were killed, 
     the mass arrests, inhuman prison conditions, the lack of an 
     effective judicial system and the control exercised by camp 
     leaders though intimidation and hate propaganda--are all 
     factors which have effectively impeded the process of 
     voluntary repatriation.
       An added and poisonous complication is that mixed in which 
     the civilian refugee population are some 20,000 Hutu soldiers 
     and 50,000 militia who are believed to have regrouped and 
     rebuilt their military infrastructure. They have been accused 
     by NGO's of diverting humanitarian aid and effectively 
     holding the refugees hostage. Calls have been made, in an 
     effort to break in logjam, to remove weapons from the camps 
     and to isolate those responsible for incitement to violence 
     and hatred.
       The refugee situation is intimately bound up with 
     developments inside Rwanda. The policy of voluntary 
     repatriation can only be implemented when conditions inside 
     Rwanda have sufficiently improved. In a climate where 
     detention, on the basis of finger-pointing only, is perceived 
     as the equivalent of a death sentence, deadlock is 
     inevitable. We should understand therefore that assistance 
     given in helping Rwanda to rebuild its institutions and 
     restore justice and the rule of law is a humanitarian 
     investment which will contribute to break the refugee 
     deadlock, rescue the children from the shadow of the machette 
     and the horrors of genocide. In doing so, to lessen regional 
     tensions and lay the basis for the future.
       Should we not listen carefully to those members of the NGO 
     community on the ground who have been telling us, patiently 
     but persistently for many months now, that if more assistance 
     is not given by the international community to managing the 
     refugee crisis by taking appropriate measures, both within 
     and beyond Rwanda's frontiers, a further human disaster will 
     ensue?
       I have mentioned earlier that the Vienna Declaration has 
     re-affirmed the vital principle of universality. At the World 
     Conference we had an extraordinary opportunity to evaluate 
     the legal and political structures underpinning our human 
     rights commitments. Rwanda has put to the test our capacity 
     to honour those commitments with the structures and processes 
     we have developed. I fear that we are floundering. 
     Universality has been described as an unblinkered view with 
     no dead angles. But in failing to honour our commitments are 
     we not damaging the very principle of universality? Are we 
     not permitting ourselves a dead angle? And if we so permit, 
     what is the value and worth the principle afterwards? And how 
     will we be judged by succeeding generations if we stand idly 
     by?
       In his address on the occasion of the opening of the new 
     Human Rights Building in Strasbourg, Vaclaving Havel referred 
     to the war that was raging in Bosnia. He made the point--
     uncomfortably on such a festive occasion--that while we were 
     all watching helplessly, waiting to see who would win, we had 
     completely forgotten that what was happening just a few 
     hundred miles away from the peaceful plains of Alsace was not 
     just a war between the Serbs and others. It was a war for our 
     own future--it was a war that was being waged against us all, 
     against human rights and against the coexistence of people of 
     different nationalities or religious beliefs. It was a war 
     against meaningful human coexistence based on the 
     universality of human rights. As he put it, it was an attack 
     of the darkest past on a decent future, an attack of evil on 
     the moral order.
       As usual his perception is unerring. What happened in 
     Bosnia was a conscious assault on the universal human rights 
     ideal. Rwanda is the same type of assault because the 
     genocide was targeted at destroying the agreed political 
     accommodation of the Arusha Accord. We must not think of it 
     as just another tribal war. We cannot distance ourselves from 
     what is happening in the prisons in Rwanda or in the refugee 
     camps. We have stood by and witnessed a genocide of a million 
     people followed by the fastest refugee exodus in recent 
     history. What is happening today in Rwanda is our problem 
     because it interrogates and tests the mettle of our 
     strongest-held convictions. Our capacity to react to this 
     human tragedy is a significant challenge to our commitments 
     to human rights at the end of the century. It is not too late 
     to honour them.

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