Mary Robinson

The outgoing U.N. high commissioner for human rights talks about running afoul of the Bush administration over Israel and the Palestinians, ending the "cycle of impunity" and standing up to bullies.

By Ian Williams

July 26, 2002 | NEW YORK -- On Tuesday, the United Nations General Assembly approved Secretary-General Kofi Annan's nomination of Brazilian Sergio Vieira de Mello to become the next U.N. high commissioner for human rights. His term -- Vieira de Mello is just the third individual to hold the position -- will begin on Sept. 12 and he's sure to be watched closely -- by both human rights groups and the Bush administration.

After Vieira de Mello's nomination was announced on Monday, Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said, "[Vieira de Mello] brings to the job an impressive diplomatic and U.N. background, but he lacks hands-on human rights experience. The challenge he faces is to prove that he will stand up to governments and be an unwavering voice on behalf of the victims of human rights abuse."

As Vieira de Mello himself told Reuters, "The job in itself is a minefield ... It is the risk of politicization and how to manage that, how to ensure that human rights are not over politicized." And no one can vouch for his assertion better than Mary Robinson, the outgoing high commissioner, whose term ends on the now iconic date of Sept.11. It's common knowledge that her defense of the Durban Conference against Racism, which U.S. and Israeli representatives walked out of, her views on the Israel-Palestine conflict and her condemnation of the U.S. treatment of prisoners in Camp X-ray at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay provoked the Bush administration to oppose the extension of her term.

Robinson became the second United Nations high commissioner for human rights in June 1997 after resigning as president of Ireland. Before Robinson, Ireland's presidency was a ceremonial office, whose holder was expected to do little more than shake hands with VIPs and open schools and hospitals. But when Robinson -- a woman with socialist and feminist leanings -- was elected, it symbolized the changes in what had been a traditionally conservative and religion-dominated country. She stretched the boundaries of the presidency to fit her concerns, one of the most prominent of which was human rights. She made trips to places like Somalia and Rwanda, and in the Great Lakes region of Africa she coined the memorable phrase, "the cycle of impunity," to describe the process by which leaving mass murder unpunished encouraged others to do the same.

Her name had actually been raised as a replacement for Boutros Boutros Ghali at the head of the U.N., but although she was the right gender, Ireland was not in Africa, and that was where the consensus said that the next secretary general should come from. And when he did, Kofi Annan tapped her for the human rights job. As high commissioner for human rights, she brought a sense of urgency to the position, and the authority of a recently retired head of state. It irked the type of U.N. bureaucrats who would much rather file reports of massacres at the bottom of a cabinet than upset governments. For her, human rights transcended national affiliations. For example, just because China was big, or Israel had friends in Washington, was no reason to stay silent.

The word went around in the corridors of power in Washington and New York's U.N. headquarters. She was "difficult to work with." Just because the U.S. and Israel walked out of the Durban Conference, she saw no reason to close it down when the rest of the world stayed. She was forthright about abuses of human rights by both Israel and the Palestinian Authority: In Washington she was damned.

However, though she leaves the U.N. in a matter of weeks, Robinson refuses to limp like a lame duck. Recently, she was in New York to report to the Security Council on the massacres and the human rights situation in the Congo and was as forthright as ever before giving up what she calls "the day job."

Putting it politely, from the outside it looks as if the Middle East issue was the one that led to, shall we say, diminished enthusiasm for your renewal in office. Is that a fair assessment?

Indeed. It's ironic in a way, because the issue I'm most committed to is the integrity of the human rights agenda, and shaping it so it's not politicized. I applied that faithfully to addressing the problems both in the occupied Palestinian Territory and in Israel, and I have mentally, emotionally and intellectually tried to be bound by it. I may have made some mistakes but that is where I'm at, because that is essentially the core of why I took this job.

It was very interesting to me that it is not so perceived on the Israeli side. It may be because I've been over-appreciated on the Palestinian side. But I have condemned unequivocally suicide bombing, and reiterated the need for human security in Israel for political debate.

Even then, in 2000, it was very evident that the occupation is at the root of many of the human rights problems, and the intifada, which had started then, was only at the stage of stone throwing and young people being killed. Since then we have drive-by shootings and suicide bombing which is of course appalling and cannot be condemned strongly enough, certainly not justified by any cause -- but the Israeli responses are also excessive.

Next page: It's now accepted that human rights don't stop at borders