Honorary President of Oxfam Mary Robinson on Human Rights

Posted: 6 January 2003

Her Excellency Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland, served as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002. Widely recognized as one of the world's most eloquent and courageous defenders of human rights, she delivered the following remarks on Human Rights Day in Moscow, Russia.

Her Excellency Mary Robinson, Honorary President of Oxfam International.

The starting point of the Universal Declaration and of the many covenants and conventions which have followed from it is the dignity and worth of the individual human being. Article One says it all--"all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." ...and I would add sisterhood.

The focus is on the individual. We do not ask how we should treat human beings in order to have a well ordered society. Rather we ask how to organize society to ensure the development and well-being of people. This has been fundamental to the UN's approach to human rights and economic development for the past fifty years.

The 30 articles of the Universal Declaration set out the rights we now call human rights--to life, liberty and security, to equality before the law, to nationality, to privacy, to freedom of movement, freedom to worship or not believe, to own property, freedom of assembly and association, to take part in government, to work and to rest, to an adequate standard of living, to education.

The Declaration's 28th and 29th articles then place the individual person in the community, recognizing that everyone has duties to their community in which alone the free and full development of his or her personality is possible. The 29th article recognizes--explicitly--that rights and freedoms shall sometimes be limited by laws solely to guarantee the rights and freedoms of others and the requirements of morality, public order, and the general welfare in a democratic society.

This is no invitation to anarchy or unbridled individual rights. Neither should these rights be negatively considered "entitlements" in the welfare sense of the word. There is nothing incomplete or unbalanced in the Universal Declaration. The Declaration distills the wisdom of the great traditions of east Asia and the strong sense of community found throughout Africa. It provides a moral underpinning for the development of global neighborhoods, whether in terms of trade, computer networks, or environmental protection.

The Declaration also offers guidance for societies emerging from totalitarian systems and exploring the confusing challenges of democracy such as the Philippines or countries of the former Soviet Union. A popular new piece of jargon--"good governance"--is really a common sense application of fundamental human rights principles--encompassing economic, social and cultural rights, and civil and political rights.

There is no universal model for implementing human rights. Only the rights themselves are universal. We see the demand for rights in the flowering of democracy and the fight for social justice in Latin America; we see it in the fall of Suharto, after his people demanded a fairer distribution of economic and political rights; we see it in Nigeria, where people wonder why power and wealth are reserved for so few; and we see it throughout the world as indigenous people struggle against exploitation.

A rash of 50th anniversaries this decade has been accompanied by a tendency for congratulation and celebration. However, the situation of human rights today gives no cause to celebrate 50 years of the Universal Declaration. The reasons are obvious. Two of the 50th anniversaries celebrated this decade were the liberation of Birkenau Auschwitz and the end of the siege of the great Russian city of Leningrad. But what lessons have we learned? The Holocaust in Europe did not teach us to avoid the genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda. The lessons of Leningrad did not help the people of Sarajevo, who endured their own hell for more than two years. We could all add our own stories...

...These 50 years leave me rather somber. The fault is not in the Universal Declaration--truly one of the great documents of human history. It speaks to the heart and soul of every person on the planet; it inspires and can bring out the best in us all. But for most people, it remains a light on a distant hill...