The address to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights by the U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan this April 7 is a wake-up call to the global human rights movement. This speech marks a moment in the development of global human rights standards of far greater importance than the Vienna Conference of 1993.
For the reasons identified by the Secretary General, the global human rights movement has ossified. Instead of fighting for meaningful change, it has grown cynical and withdrawn from many of the critical issues facing our time. Among his remarks on the need for bold and comprehensive changes to the U.N. approach to dealing with human rights, the Secretary General at last laid emphasis firmly on implementation. He stated that
“The cause of human rights has entered a new era. For much of the past 60 years, our focus has been on articulating, codifying and enshrining rights. That effort produced a remarkable framework of laws, standards and mechanisms the Universal Declaration, the international covenants, and much else. Such work needs to continue in some areas. But the era of declaration is now giving way, as it should, to an era of implementation.”
The Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC) has made exactly this point for a long time now. In February 2002 it emphasised that the time has arrived to move from articulation to implementation of human rights, as envisaged by article 2 of the of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Inaugurating its bimonthly periodical article 2, the ALRC noted that the provision of adequate remedies for human rights violations by legislative, administrative and judicial means has been neglected. Despite the enormous volumes of annual literature on human rights, there is hardly any mention of article 2, and a lack of relevant international jurisprudence. Most recently, it expressed the same in a statement at the opening of the sixty-first annual session of the Commission on Human Rights: “Open letter to : Let us rise to meaningful dialogue”. The Secretary General’s comments now make it possible to at last begin strenuous international efforts for implementation of human rights standards in accordance with the principles established under article 2.
Foremost among the Secretary General’s recommendations arising out of his recent “In larger freedom” report is that the Commission on Human Rights be replaced with a Human Rights Council. He has proposed that the council “be a standing body able to meet when necessary rather than for only six weeks each as at present. It should have an explicitly defined function as a chamber of peers. Its main task would be to evaluate the fulfillment by all states of all their human rights obligations.” Such a mechanism would undoubtedly strengthen the prospects for domestic implementation of human rights, which is the point at which they are given meaning. Among the advantages of a standing body would be the ability to intervene more swiftly and directly into human rights crises, such as that overwhelming Nepal at present, upon which the Commission on Human Rights has gazed impotently and mutely.
The Secretary General has stressed that the proposed Human Rights Council “must be a society of the committed”. Commitment should be tested in terms of accountability, representativeness and manifest demonstrations of will. The Commission on Human Rights has lost most of its credibility due to needless political manoeuvring and the use of human rights rhetoric to protect national reputations rather than human rights themselves. Consequently, it has been rendered ineffective. If the new Human Rights Council is directly appointed through the General Assembly and emphasis is placed on electing members with solid records on human rights standards, then it may indeed lead to the greater demonstrations of commitment needed.
The Secretary General has also proposed changes to the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights. The ALRC together with its sister organisation the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has repeatedly pointed to the need for such changes. Most recently, to mark International Human Rights Day on 10 December 2004, the AHRC wrote an open letter to the High Commissioner urging that the global human rights dialogue be made more relevant to countries where basic rule of law issues prevent even the most rudimentary rights from being realised. The AHRC noted that at present in the highest levels of the U.N. there is not even the most elementary understanding of these problems. As a result, corrective action has been impossible. Regrettably, the High Commissioner’s office can be counted among these. Successive High Commissioners have had nothing to offer human rights defenders in most parts of the world for want of understanding about the scale and nature of the problems faced.
Hopefully the Secretary General’s suggestions will provoke a critical review of the office and dialogue on the High Commissioner’s role. In the past, attempts to engage in incisive and probing discussion have been treated as if acts of disloyalty to the human rights movement. One of the reasons is that petty bureaucrats have managed the office of the High Commissioner. Deep commitment to human rights has not been among their characteristics. More commonly, they have been persons with extremely narrow vision which, accompanied by undue arrogance, has caused them to react harshly to all proposals for reform. Their efforts have done much to incapacitate the Commission on Human Rights and the office of the High Commissioner.
International human rights groups, which have shied away from serious critiques of the Commission’s performance, should now enter into active discussion on the proposals of the Secretary General. Above all else, they should do so to ensure that the bureaucrats who have dragged down the Commission be prevented from killing off his new proposals before they are brought into serious public discussion. The recommendations for the High Commissioner at the Vienna Conference arose from great aspirations that have been unnecessarily limited by problems associated with the workings of the office itself. The same cannot be allowed to happen again. In fact, these proposals by the Secretary General mark a much greater challenge and turning point for the international human rights movement than anything to come out of Vienna.
The Secretary General also proposed major changes for the functioning of treaty bodies, which are the independent guardians of those human rights negotiated and accepted over the years. He stated that they must be able to “better carry out their mandates
to function as a strong, unified system”. Among these bodies, one deserving particular attention is the Human Rights Committee. Although the strongest of treaty bodies, the Committee needs to be much improved. At present the delay in dealing with individual complaints is too long, making efforts in the international by victims of rights violations as futile as those initiatives undertaken in domestic institutions. State parties also use the delays to gain an advantage against the complainants. Another problem that the ALRC has pointed to in the past is that the recommendations from treaty bodies are often too general to be useful. Recommendations should come from a detailed understanding of the defects of a domestic system and the areas where correction is needed. It is also commonly and rightly pointed out that treaty bodies lack the means to follow up on their concluding observations with state parties.
The Asian Legal Resource Centre calls on the human rights community to awake. The unwillingness or incapacity of the human rights movement to engage critically with international human rights agencies makes international human rights organisations, in particular, complicit in its decline. The Secretary General’s historic commentary has created an opening for change. The coming months should see much sober and open debate on his proposals, with detailed suggestions for their proper implementation. At long last we have a reason to smile. Let’s make the smile last.
