The World Trade Organization especially has been seen as totally heartless and ethics-free by design. Have you really given them a heart transplant?
It's true that trade ministers going into the WTO meetings don't bring with them, as I believe they should, a consciousness of the commitments their governments have made to ratify covenants and conventions. Equally, we don't have a situation that it's in the front of the mind of the IMF. In a country like Argentina, where there are problems, is there sufficient consciousness to help such a government that has ratified the covenant on economic, cultural and social rights, or the Convention on the Rights of the Child to carry through on that, and to progressively implement these rights, or is the emphasis all on structural adjustment? So we need "joined up" government that brings the human rights commitment into the WTO.
At the moment, many governments all over the world are joining up to throw human rights overboard as part of the struggle against terrorism using Sept. 11 as an excuse. If you think you'd made progress before, don't you see lots of it evaporating?
It's a very serious concern. I was struck last month when we had the annual meeting of the rapporteurs and the coming together of the chairs of the treaty bodies, that all these experts were concerned about the deteriorating situation after Sept. 11. We all recognize the importance of human security, of coalitions against terrorism, of Security Council Resolution 1473 [calling for joint action against terrorism], but nonetheless the impact on the ground is very worrying for human rights. Governments are using it to clamp down on human rights and freedom of expression -- human rights defenders branded as terrorists; the harsh climate for asylum seekers and refugees. The worrying thing is that secure democracies such as the U.S. are not holding the standards properly. Just look at the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, and even more so those who have been arrested under immigration laws with no access to lawyers and no information. Nobody knows exactly what his or her situation is.
You have worked hard to engage China, and you were attacked by some of the Irish press for pandering to the occupiers of Tibet. How successful has your engagement with the Chinese been?
In fact, I was impressed by how far we've been able to come since that first visit [to China] in September 1998. When I go back in August for a workshop on the independence of lawyers and judges, it will be my sixth visit as high commissioner. We've had an intensive series of workshops with them, on reeducation through labor, on the police and human rights, devising a human rights training manual for the police, on human rights education and to insert human rights values in the [school] curriculum on secondary and tertiary levels.
But I have no illusions. None of this means we have changed things overnight. On the other hand, nor does a technical cooperation program mean that I don't speak out on human rights issues. Every time I've been in China, I've been very tough on how they treat the Falun Gong, on their treatment of political dissidents. When I went in November after Sept. 11, I made the point to them that they were using it to be more severe on the Uighur population, branding them as terrorists in a way that had not been done before.
So I take up all these issues: They do say to me now, "We know your habits." But that being said, I'm impressed with the progress we've made. When the Chinese sign a covenant, they do it for Chinese reasons -- and they are quite serious about it. So we shouldn't underestimate what can be done. Even some of the federations, like the All China Federation of Women, are becoming more and more independent and more and more concerned with the rights of women.
Also, the last time I was there they were taking courageous stands as women in their own area to bring home that the denial and stigma attached to HIV/AIDS meant that there would be a rampant HIV/AIDS problem.
One phrase you coined that will surely live on is "the cycle of impunity." You used it in Central Africa to describe how each person who committed genocide thought they could get away with it because their predecessors had. Has the International Criminal Court put the brake on the cycle, or is it just symbolic?
I really think the ICC is an extraordinary step forward, a very important institution, a way of symbolizing that we are going to end impunity for egregious human rights violations. It may take time, but now there is going to be a permanent court, and you can be brought before it if you haven't been before a national court.
I really regret, first of all, the "unsigning" of the statute by the United States. You know, we deal with the integrity and strength of what we build up in human rights, and part of it is that when we sign and ratify instruments we stand by them. What the U.S. has done is to create uncertainty. Signing is usually an indication that ratification is on the way. Now if other countries are under pressure on human rights instruments they've signed, they may say "Well, the U.S. can unsign a treaty, then so can we."
Secondly, I found the controversy about peacekeepers to be very sad. The political resolution of it has angered the human rights community, but it's more important that we get back to strengthening the court. There have been 76 ratifications. Mexico and others are on the way. There will soon be 100 or more.
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