U.N.-HUMAN RIGHTS: Mary Robinson Named as Rights Commissioner

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 12 1997 (IPS) - Irish President Mary Robinson’s appointment to become the second U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has won the praise of human rights activists dismayed at the record of her predecessor, Jose Ayala Lasso.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan announced Robinson’s appointment Thursday, calling her post one of the most important in the U.N. system. Robinson has been regarded for months as the top contender for the post, which was vacated earlier this year when Ayala Lasso returned to his native Ecuador to serve as foreign minister.

Robinson, president of Ireland since 1990, has until December to serve her own term. “I realise that she is a sitting president,” Annan said. But he said he hopes she could step down from her post early, saying that “it would be happy and preferable if she could assume her functions before the start of the General Assembly,” which convenes at the end of September.

During a meeting with Annan at the United Nations last month, Robinson declined to discuss her chances to become High Commissioner, but said that Annan had assured her that “human rights will be at the centre of the United Nations’ work.”

That is a hope that many human rights activists have had since the post was created by the General Assembly following the 1993 Human Rights Conference in Vienna. Many human rights officials now believe Robinson could be the right choice to bring human rights to centre-stage at the United Nations, following what many of them believe to be three lacklustre years under the low-key Ayala Lasso.

“We are very pleased with this choice,” Joanna Weschler, U.N. representative of Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “She is someone who is a human rights professional, and who has written and spoken very thoughtfully about human rights.”

Combined with her stature over nearly eight years as Irish president, Robinson could also be expected to speak forcefully about human rights conditions, she added.

Both Robinson and her major competitor for the post over the past few months, Costa Rica’s Ambassador in Washington, Sonia Picado, have been effective at giving voice to human rights concerns, noted Andrew Clapham, spokesman for Amnesty International. Robinson, he said, could use the post as a pulpit to speak out against abuses more than Ayala Lasso did over his term.

Amnesty International, in a recent report, stressed the importance of expanding the human rights debate throughout the U.N. system, rather than keeping rights “marginalised within the small space allowed to human rights at the United Nations.”

Although the report noted Ayala Lasso’s role as a “travelling diplomat” discussing human rights, it faulted him for the “chasm between the expectations and the delivery” in that role.

“The rights of women and indigenous peoples have never been properly supported; economic, social and cultural rights have been trumpeted with rhetorical rectitude by governments — but never properly tackled by the U.N. programme,” the report argued.

Robinson herself criticised the United Nations’ human rights work following the genocide of as many as one million Rwandans in 1994. Speaking to reporters at the United Nations shortly afterward, Robinson emphasised the need for the world body to speak out against the massacres and to find and prosecute its perpetrators.

Robinson also lobbied world leaders to treat the Rwanda crisis as genocide and to work accordingly to punish those involved in organising it. She was the first head of state to visit Rwanda after the genocide, and took the opportunity to see the work of U.N. human rights monitors stationed there.

Robinson’s concern over Rwanda, and her outspoken comments on the need to try war criminals in that country and in the former Yugoslavia, reflect her own career as a human rights lawyer. From 1987 until when she assumed her presidency, Robinson was a member of the International Commission of Jurists — based, as is the Human Rights Commission, in Geneva.

All those factors made her, in the words of one human rights activist, the person “with the guts to stand up and use the post to advance the cause of human rights.”

Nevertheless, the regional politics that underlie all U.N. appointments made Annan’s picking of Robinson an uncomfortable one for some in the developing world. Some Latin American leaders had hoped that, following Ayala Lasso’s departure, the post would be filled by another candidate from their region — with most rallying behind Picado, a human rights activist as well as diplomat.

Picado secured the early support of most Latin American governments and last month won an endorsement by the 113-member Non-Aligned Movement, one of the major coalitions of developing nations. But, after meeting with Annan two weeks ago, she announced that she would not accept the High Commissioner post but “would consider other positions that were offered.”

“As the only real Third World candidate” in the race for the post, she said she felt that officials from the South should be represented fairly in the work of the Human Rights Commission.

In announcing Robinson’s selection Thursday, Annan pointedly noted he would soon appoint a candidate from the developing world to the post of deputy high commissioner. Clapham noted that the deputy position is actually as important as the top spot, since the deputy will oversee all the daily work of the Geneva-based Commission.

There is also expected to be created a new post in New York for yet another deputy, who would coordinate human rights work among U.N. peacekeeping missions. Picado said she did not expect to fill the deputy posts, but sources here expect both jobs to go to candidates from the South.