RIGHTS-LATAM: UN’s Robinson Worried about Future of Democracy CORRECTION

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Jun 27 2002 (IPS) - The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, expressed concern about the growing scepticism evident throughout Latin America about the democratic process and predicted that this phenomenon will be aggravated by the region’s economic crisis.

Robinson is confident that the implementation of human rights-focused plans of action, with broad civil society participation, will provide the countries in crisis with the values needed to fill in the gaps of political consensus and to find solutions to political and economic problems.

Next week, the UN official will visit Latin America, where, she says, there is “a worrying level of cynicism and scepticism about the value of exercising a vote for government that changes nothing.”

“At times of economic downturn, this cynicism may worsen or deepen,” Robinson told a press conference Wednesday in Geneva, where the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights is located.

The crisis that has been wearing away at Argentina for at least three years, reaching its worst levels in the last six months, has hurt, to varying degrees, its closest trade partners – Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay and Chile – but also threatens to extend throughout the rest of Latin America.

In her description of the regional situation, Robinson stated that “there is still a very big divide between a small powerful elite and the vast majority of people who still have acute problems of poverty and lack of access” to opportunities to improve their plight.

The UN official pointed out that during her latest visit to Argentina, in October 2001, she witnessed “the beginning of the very serious situation of financial insecurity.”

Among the other characteristics of the crisis she saw there, she underscored the profound worries of families, the lack of knowledge about how bad the financial situation is, and the flight of capital out of the country, making situation worse for those who are unemployed.

“In those circumstances even the idea of a national participatory plan of action for human rights is a worthwhile idea because it is a way of providing the people a core of shared values that can be addressed even in a very serious economic situation,” said Robinson.

The idea of participatory plans of action emerged during the World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993. The initiative was conceived as a formula for granting greater power and participation to civil society in its relationships with government.

Brazil has already adopted a national human rights plan of action and Mexico is replacing an earlier executive plan with a participatory plan, reported the High Commissioner.

Robinson proposes fomenting this idea for all countries of Latin America as a way of involving all areas of government – executive, legislative, judicial – “but also ombudspersons and infrastructures, national human rights commissions and the widest range of civil society.”

The plans of action reinforce democracy because they “provide new tools for civil society to engage in discussion with government.”

Citizen organisations must hold governments accountable in complying with international commitments assumed under human rights accords, including the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Convention on the Rights of Child, and the Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination, among others, she said.

“These are rigorous areas where civil society, reinforced by this participatory plan of action, has tools to add to the ideal of democratic representation and to ensure accountable, transparent government,” Robinson stated.

Robinson will attend the Jul 1 inauguration of the seminar of Latin American and Caribbean experts, who are to discuss the implementation of the plan of action approved last year in Durban, South Africa, during the World Conference against Racism.

The Durban conference produced “entirely positive” results for Latin America and the Caribbean, says the UN official. The process prior to and after the UN-sponsored meeting “significantly helped states confront issues of racism, discrimination and xenophobia.”

Robinson cited the example of Brazil, where she said the problem of discrimination against Afro-Brazilians has been confronted as it never was before. Similar progress has been made in Chile, and in many other countries in the region, she said.

After Mexico, Robinson’s itinerary in Latin America will continue with a visit to Peru, where on Jul 8 she will attend a sub-regional workshop titled Human Rights, Development and Community in the Andean Nations.