Bertrand Ramcharan, Acting High Commissioner

First of all Pierre good friend, Noeline good friend, other good friends, first of all thank you very much for organizing this Conference, thank you very much for bringing these Human Rights defenders from the front lines, thank you Front Line for bringing the front line defenders.

Dear Friends,

In the history of the Human Rights Movements the idea that we will get the International Community to accept that all states should live by certain basic standards that was nothing easy thing to accomplish. At the time of the drafting of the Covenant of the League of Nations there was a proposal by Japan that the Covenant of the League of Nations would have an article on non discrimination and the powers at the time would not allow this article to go into the Covenant of the League of Nations. If you read a booklet by a man called Fred Noldy from the Commission on International Affairs of the World Council of Churches it is a little booklet that Noldy xxxxxxxxxx San Francisco Conference and he tells his story that notwithstanding the fact that there was all of this inter war preparation for a charter that would be built on the foundations of human rights. At the San Francisco Conference as the Cold War was enveloping the San Francisco Conference it took the efforts of non governmental organizations to get the human rights xxxxxxxxxxxx of the charter. I tell you this story to say to you that the story of international human rights, the story of the international standards, the story of the international movement of human rights is very much a story of people like you who have fought for this ideal in xxxxxxxxxx in organizations and people like you who validate the human rights idea by serving on the ground and so for all those of you who are here as human rights defenders my thoughts to you are the gratitude that you are taking the risks while some of us are preaching the word and I have enormous respect for the fact that you are here.

If you look into the records of the drafting of the universal declaration of human rights you will see there that the determined role played by non governmental organizations also in shaping this vision of the universal declaration. I would like to start here to tell you that the story of human rights in the 20th Century, the story of human rights in the 21st Century is a story that I will call of concentric circles. At the centre of three concentric circles there is a duct that I will call the principle of commitment. It is the principle of commitment to a world grounded in respect of human right, the vision of the charter and outside of this first duct there is a small first circle is what I will call the circle of ground achieved. We have made some progress in the norms and we have made some progress in what all xxxxxxxxxxxxxx would call conscientisation about human rights. And outside of my first circle there is another larger circle which I will call the circle of immediate opportunities. These are things that perhaps we might be able to achieve in the coming period and when I think of this xxxxxxx of circle my thoughts go to issues such as how to protect you on the ground and my thoughts go to how to protect the victims of trafficking in he world. Just to give an example, but I think that the notion of the expanding circles tells us that there are talks that we can do in my second circle, the circle of immediate opportunity and beyond that there is a much wider circle, it is the circle of gross violations of human rights. I have read some of the testimonies that the human rights defenders have presented here, it is a story that we know rather well that outside there there is torture, there is executions, there is violence against women, there is religious and intolerance, there is lack of freedom of opinion, there is arbitrary detention and the list goes on and on and on. I just met the Press before I came in here and they asked me “are things getting worse than they used to be” and one of us can answer that question but I always like rather to give the answer that in my presentation of the circles the concentric circles, hopefully it invokes in our minds an optimistic picture of the challenge of human rights.

As you meet here to-day to honour the former High Commissioner, a man who spent all of his life in the service of the United Nations (his professional life), a man who spent most of his professional life in the field, one of my colleagues said of him that perhaps a snap shot of his philosophy would be that it was not in the pursuit of an ideal that he lived his life but it was rather in efforts to improve a life completely and this notion that one can act to help the individual person threatened with violations of human rights the thought that one can help to protect the human rights defender, the thought that one can come together in the way that you are coming here to rally together, to share experiences together, to say that yes this cause is a good cause, yes this cause is a just cause and yes this cause of human rights is a cause that we can win, then that would be a way of improving a life and so today I thank you for being here, I thank you for the tribute that you are paying to our late High Commissioner and I thank you for the inspiration that we will all take from his life.

The organizers asked me to comment on what is the significance for the United Nations of the events in Baghdad and what is the significance for the Human Rights Movement of what took place in Baghdad. Let me tell you that two or three, I think it was 60 died on the Tuesday and I think it was on the Friday I was on a plane going into Baghdad before going to Brazil to pick up his body and to bring it back to Geneva and then to go to Rio and I was thinking this very question. The act of going into Baghdad to bring out a former United Nations leader, he was killed in Baghdad as the Special Representative of the Secretary General for Europe but he was the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and I thought I was not sure that there would be a ceremony in Baghdad Airport but I thought that I had somehow to demarcate for myself the significance of this moment and in my computer I wrote the following which I used in a ceremony as we took him out from Baghdad and I would like to just refer to the parts of what I said on that occasion. My thoughts then were the thoughts that I have here to-day about the significance of what took place in Baghdad.

I said on that occasion that I have come here today to take him home and that I saluted him and I paid tribute to him and I said that my colleagues in the office of the High Commission of Human Rights through me, pay their respect to him and we honour him and we say that the ideals of the universal declaration of Human Rights will never leave the land if Iraq because a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights had died for it. I said on that occasion that human beings die but the universal declaration of human rights is for all times and all places and that triumph is inevitable in Iraq and elsewhere. I really felt that I have to see that the death of a United Nations High Commissioner in Iraq must have significance for Iraq and for the world and then also I found myself thinking not only as the Deputy High Commissioner than Acting High Commissioner for human rights but in my career I had been for five years and Paul Kavanagh was in the office of the Secretary General at the time and I was for five years head of the speech writing service of the xxxxxxxxxxx and sometimes when you do that kind of job, even when you have given it up, you find yourself thinking a lot about what events mean for the United Nations and where the organization is going. So I felt the thought that the death of a senior official must mean the triumph of the universal declaration also had to be transposed to the charter of the United Nations and I said this I wrote this on the plane going into Baghdad. My colleagues in the United Nations Secretariat also honour xxxxxxxx all of our colleagues who had perished in this abominable act of violence and I said that dear colleagues throughout the United Nations system and in the world at large we shall cherish your memories, I was speaking of the colleagues some of whom I knew xxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxx and some of the other colleagues that one had worked very closely with over a number of years and I said on that occasion we say to you that the United Nations shall live because of your sacrifices. We shall make it so for the triumph of the United Nations Charter is inevitable and that the vision of peace grounded in justice in respect for human rights and in economic and social progress is eternal. You will notice that I felt that death must vindicate the universal declaration and that death must vindicate the charter, I felt this deeply going into Baghdad and this is what I still feel because you have asked me to tell you what I think is the significance of what took place in Baghdad. And then addressing those who were there including senior officials from the coalition authority I said that on this occasion as we take home our fallen special representative from the Secretary General we think of our Secretary General Kofi Annan and we are in solidarity with him in his efforts to uphold ideals of the United Nations Charter. I really felt going in there that we had to hold onto the universal declaration, we had to hold on to the charter and we had to hold on to the leader of the United Nations, the Secretary General and for the people of Iraq I said this, “On this occasion as we take our High Commission of Human Rights home, let me say that we in the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights are determined to support the people of Iraq in their quest for human rights, to contribute to the collaboration of a constitution anchored in universal human rights, to contribute to the modernization of the Iraqi laws in the light of international human rights xxxxx, to help in the establishment of a National Commission on human rights, help in the development of programmes of human rights education, to help in the promotion of human rights injustice for women, to help promote the protection of the rights of minorities, to help promote the rights of refugees and displaced persons, to draw inspiration from the history of Iraq in the quest to bring home the universal declaration and to support the Iraqi peoples quest that justice be brought to those who are responsible for gross violations of human rights”. Why did I make this list on such an occasion. I really felt that the death of a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in a country must have meaning for that country and I felt that even in this moment of grief the United Nations must demarcate the policy and I said so. The death of a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights must have meaning for the future of the Iraqi people. We know that the Iraqi people would want our High Commissioner’s death to give life to human rights in Iraq and I said that as we take our High Commissioner home we offer to the Iraqi people the precepts of the universal declaration of human rights and we shall walk the journey of human rights together.

Colleagues, this speech is on the website of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and when you ask me organizers what I thought was the significance of this event I place before you today the thoughts I had with me in the plane and the thoughts that I articulated in Baghdad and I remain loyal to the notion that tragedy must reinforce the charter, tragedy must validate the universal declaration and tragedy must lead us to walk the journey of human rights together with the Iraqi people.

Well now you have asked me to say something about the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders and where I see this work going and I would like to tell you the following.

……….. the special representative of the Secretary General on human rights defenders in the room and I do not know if I have told her the story but I must write it up one of these days. In the days when it was very difficult to get the United Nations to act on allegations of violations of human rights a Canadian diplomat came to see me to say that I am under instructions to do something about the situation of Andrea Zackeroff. If you look at the records of the Commission on Human Rights in the mid 1970’s you will find many skirmishes on this case but the idea that the United Nations Commission on Human Rights could act on an individual case had not yet been established, there were very few precedents and so when we thought about this could there be a way of dealing with the Zackeroff case we came up with the idea – let us call for a United Nations Declaration on the rights and responsibilities of individuals and organs of society to act for the universal realization of human rights. Let me tell you that as the one who drafted the resolution that called for this declaration I would invite your attention to the closing preamble paragraph of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and you will see that the title of this declaration copies almost word for word the concepts in the closing preamble paragraph of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and that’s why you find in the title of this declaration the declaration on the rights and responsibility of individuals, groups and organs of society to promote and protect universally recognized human rights and fundamental freedoms and that’s because the general assembly proclaimed the universal declaration to the end that everyone all individuals and all organs of society shall strive by teaching and education to promote the realization of the rights in the Universal Declaration. I have a number of reasons to tell you this little story, its part of the history of the declaration but more importantly at the time when the human rights movement could not defend its own in the Commission on Human Rights we had to resort to some xxxxxxxx to get the issue on the agenda and it would take many many years to get this declaration through the first Chairperson of the drafting group of the commission that worked on this was ………. Robertson of Australia but I remember the moment I came back to the human rights programme when this declaration was adopted and you could see that this declaration had inspired the non governmental organizations in such a way as few things had inspired the human rights movement for a long time because there was this deep passion that human rights have to be protected at home, that front line activists that have taken the risk and that the human rights movement must be in solidarity with those who are the front line activists and the story of the three cases that were placed before us these are stories that are unfortunately far too prevalent. I suppose I will tell you a little bit about the history of the background to this to say to you not that it was a great thing that was done in launching the drafting of the declaration but to say to you that in my imagery of the expanding circles at that time of the adoption of the declaration we were able to put something into my second circle. We were able to put something into the circle of immediate opportunities and now the United Nations has a special representative who is in contact with human rights defenders in all parts of the world, she spoke to me yesterday, she is endeavouring her utmost to be in solidarity with you, to draw inspiration from you, to visit you, but you know there is still much more to be done for the protection of human rights defenders on the ground and it leads to the question – what can the human rights movement do still to protect human rights defenders. I use this expression “the human rights movement” because I think it is important to have in one minds eye the efforts of governments, international organizations, regional organizations, non governmental organizations, the media and the public at large and the world of learning as I often think especially in the four months that I have been I have spent a lifetime in human rights and in the four months that I have been acting high commissioner I have often asked myself this question, how is it that I can actually present an issue so that it can make a difference at the end of the day the thing that we have most in our favour is to generate conscience on an issue and also to place the spotlight on an issue with a view to rallying public support over an issue. In my 30 years in the human rights business I have seen many times when organs of the united nations where I would have liked them to act more vigorously in the defence of human rights and in to-days world you find, for example, it’s a very difficult debate as to whether you can act against gross violations of human rights in organs of the united nations and I am asking myself all of the time what is the way of generating conscience on an issue.

Recently before xxxxxxxxxxxxxx left Liberia I thought long and hard about this issue. Liberia had been in Civil War for 13 years, so many people had died, there was peacemaking in xxxxxxxxxx, there was peacemaking in the United Nations, what was it that I could do as the acting high commissioner at least to register conscience and what I did was that I asked my colleagues to do a report documenting the violations of human rights over the 13 years in Liberia and I presented this report to the Commissioner on Human Rights. I had no elusions that what I was doing would necessarily have a dent on the situation but I felt that I was giving expression to conscience, I felt that I was documenting the violations of human rights and I felt that I was placing it there for the verdict of history. Now you have this issue, the Declaration, the special representative and the problems on the ground and we have the same issue here how can we generate conscience on this issue, how can we draw upon the wealth spring of support of the human rights movement and at the end of the day the only thoughts that I have are to document the violations, to expose the violations, to use the media to press for accountability and to call for the rallying of conscience.

In the office of the High Commissioner what do we do. We have a situation where we have the special representative, we try to support the special representative with very modest staffing support. The United Nations gives us $22M a year from its regular budget and we double that from voluntary contributions and what we have 35 of these xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx representatives in working groups and we have very little resources to give to the special representatives and in this kind of situation I must call upon you also to know the situation that we are in and to help generate support for the special representative as you are doing and I must call upon you also to continue to put the pressure upon us to see that in a mandate of this nature that we are there walking the course with the special representative. I am being very open with you because at the end of the day I should not pull wool over your eyes, I am trying to present the issue to you as honestly as I know how.

If I move on beyond the role of the Office to the role of the High Commissioner herself or himself, I would say that the role of the High Commissioner should be to act in support of the special representative, to act in support of you and to try to complement in particular cases and I would ask you when you are deliberating here and as you present your individual stories, to think hard about this issue that I am trying to place before you, how is it in a situation where we know that human rights defenders are targeted in many parts of the world, how can conscience be mobilized in such a situation and when you come to the conscience issue you come to the whole problem of human rights, you come to issues of governance in countries, you come to issues of the lack of the rule of law in many countries, you come to issues of the lack of democracy in many countries, you come to issues such as the failure of the courts to protect human rights within countries, you come to issues such as countries which do not have functioning national protection systems and the thought that I must place before you then is to protect human rights defenders we must act for the protection of human rights at large and in the world that we are looking at it’s a world of a lack of democracy in many instances, a lack of the rule of law in many instances, a lack of accountability in many instances, and all of these problems that I have mentioned earlier, torture, executions, disappearances, violence against women, religious intolerance, arbitrary and xxxxxxxxx detention and the list goes on and on.

Before I came in here I met the media and they asked me does this mean that we are receding but that is not my language. I have been seasoned in a career at the United Nations xxxxxxxxxxxx however, rough the going is we have to persist in this endeavour. Now could it be that I am right in what I say to you that the protection of human rights defenders is part of the process of protecting human rights at large and if that is the case then we come to many issues of policy and law that we need to think through also. The whole human rights movement is based on the premise that governments accept international obligations and that they must carry out those obligations. It is the theory of the strict compliance with international human rights laws and then we know that many developing countries, I do not excuse this, but many developing countries, the state of their economy, the state of governance, the functioning of the international economy makes it difficult for them even to afford some of the things that are in the covenant of civil and political rights or economic social and cultural rights. And what is the issue of policy, what is the correct line of policy for us. The correct line of policy for us in my view is that we must continue to insist on strict compliance with the international human rights norms that a country has undertaken but I must, nevertheless, place before you these problems - governance, lack of the rule of law, lack of democracy, and the problem of fairism and then this very difficult situation we must find ways of holding on to the human rights idea.

Our Secretary-General has told us that as we take the human rights work in the future there are three strategic ideas that must guide the United Nations reforms in human rights in the future and that’s what I will end on.

First of all our Secretary General has said, let us act for enhanced implementation of the international human rights conventions, let us help xxxxxxxxxx when they ratify the convention to take the convention home and to put in place the laws and institutions required to implement the convention. Secondly our Secretary General has said, let us act so that the special representatives and rapporters can render even greater service in the protection of human rights because these special procedures are the front line protection actors in the United Nations Human Rights Movement and finally, our Secretary General has said, let us look in each country at what is its national protection system and by the national protection system the Secretary General in his reform report asks six questions.

First, is the constitution of a country in compliance with international human rights laws. Its not a big thing but its an important thing strategically because if it’s the constitution is saying to the country - you must walk the course of human rights.

Second, is the country endeavouring to modernize its laws keeping in mind international human rights laws. Why is this important, because you the human rights defenders, you the citizen in the country can go before the courts and say this is the measure of protection that is required in the international human rights laws.

Third, our Secretary General is saying, are the courts in a country able to apply international human rights laws, can a citizen go before the courts and say in this context that in the struggle against terrorism one may not derogate from the right to life or the right not to be tortured. It is important that this kind of issue one should be able to test it in the courts.

Fourth, our Secretary General is asking still on the concept of the national protection system. Are human rights being taught in the schools to the children, human rights education. I spent four years in these negotiations in the former Yugoslavia and in one of those years we were simultaneously on the peacemaking and the peacekeeping xxxxx and when I sat with the negotiators in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia, the issue that came up in my mind most of the time was how can one generate attitudes of tolerance and respect that would prevent a xxxxxxxx of this nature in the future and the only answer that I could give myself was, human rights education. Its an important strategic idea.

Fifth, for a national protection system our Secretary General is asking – do we have arrangements to monitor the situation of vulnerable parts of the population. Are there pockets of the population such as indigenous people, minorities, women who are xxxxxxxx to whom we must be pay particular attention and then finally,

Thank you for bringing these human rights defenders here, thank you for rallying the cause, thank you for saying that as they promote and protect we must act for their protection and ladies and gentlemen there is no magic wand in human rights work, it is a work of constant endeavour and at the end of the day human rights protection is generated at home and at the end of the day unless we can show that there is the functioning national protection system in the country then we are bound to have difficulties. Thank you for being here and thank you for your commitment to human rights.