UN Chronicle | Interview with Asma Jahangir, by Vikram Sura

Asma Jahangir, in Her Own Words
By Vikram Sura

Biography

UN Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, UN Photo.

Asma Jahangir is a human rights activist, lawyer, author and defender of freedoms, especially of minorities and women. She is a founding member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in 1986 and in 1995 received the Ramon Magsaysay award for "greatness of spirit shown in service of the people".

In 1998, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her as the UN Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human rights on extra judicial, summary or arbitrary executions. Since her appointment, Ms. Jahangir has visited Albania, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Mexico, East Timor, Nepal, Turkey and Honduras responding to the keenness of Governments to improve the situation, while also documenting human rights abuses. "It gives me an opportunity to pick up the issue from the ground and take it right to the top, to the UN level," she says.

In an interview with Vikram Sura for the UN Chronicle, Ms. Jahangir spoke about the connection between respect for human rights and economic prosperity, of democratic governance and violence by non-State actors and the UN role in making the "voices in the wilderness heard".

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In your decades-long experience as a human rights activist, how different is the reception and response when working on behalf of the United Nations?

My advice always has been for the UN to walk hand in hand with the growing awareness that people are reaching. I think sometimes the UN begins to lag behind. In other ways, I think my own experience as a Special Rapporteur has been very rewarding. It gives me an opportunity to look into different societies, to see the pains of humanity and at the same time to see how people have the resilience to overcome conflict situations, to overcome great difficulties, to build confidences between themselves.

In your 2002 interim report you had mentioned a growing expectation for the UN to intervene during armed conflict and extra judicial killings, but that the high expectations were often unrealistic given UN resources. How to address this and where to begin?

I think resources come with effectiveness of the UN. And it must go side by side. You have to attract resources from Governments. And if Governments think the UN is indispensable, they will have to put to its disposal the resources. I find today more than ever before, that it is an organization that is important at this juncture, because there is a lot of polarization in the world. And the United Nations is an organizational body where people, through their Governments, come together; and it can be the only place where there can be a melting pot.

There is an understanding that rights are universal, but there are some nations today who express some concern as to exactly how widely "universality" should be interpreted.

Let me say that there are some Governments who believe that human rights should be eroded in the name of social norms. But I work very much in my country as a foot soldier-if I may use that word-and I think that people want respect for human rights and it is very much universal. People know when their rights are infringed. They feel degraded; they feel humiliated; they feel hurt. People know when they have been wronged; they ask for justice. And there is no cultural difference that I have seen in these basic rights. When somebody is tortured, they know they are being tortured; when somebody is discriminated against, they know they are being discriminated against.

So cultural diversity is a non-argument.

I think cultural diversity makes human rights even richer. It is a part of human rights to actually respect cultural diversity, to encourage it. But cultural diversity does not mean inhuman treatment of other human beings.

Is there a crisis of governance-if one were to define it as a renewable social contract between the State and the people-in light of the deep concern you had expressed over atrocities by non-State actors and over the increasing number of civilians becoming the target in armed conflict?

Yes, it has a direct link with the type of governance that we think is good or bad governance. And the fact is the world is quickly forgetting its own lessons-that at the centre of governance are democratic principles. And today, these are being sidelined. And I find more than ever before that after September 11, every kind of governance-whether it is dictatorial or whether it is despotic-is acceptable as long as they are together in the fight against terrorism. That is a very worrying aspect for me. I see an increasing role of intelligence agencies; I find that resolution comes with military action as a first recourse rather than the last resort. These are patterns and cycles that will give rise perhaps to violence that may erupt at a future date but which remains subdued today.

What kind of violence will it be: between States or within States?

You started with non-State actors and I think violence by angry non-State actors. People's angers may remain pent up but it does erupt after a while, and the worrying part is that these are potential subjects of exploitation in the hands of those who may not actually believe that people's freedoms are precious. They use frustrations of individuals to put forward their own political agenda, which may be based upon hatred, which may be based upon prejudices, which may be based upon promoting their power base.

In your report you speak of instances of public opinion manufactured by media and Governments toward selective social cleansing and tendentious media coverage against sexual minorities. How could UN public information apparatus, on the other hand, counter such propaganda and multiply the message from you and your colleagues?

I think it is important, first of all, for the UN media to talk about the problem. I find there is a tendency to deny that a problem exists with prejudice against people with different sexual orientation, which results in a number of occasions of the extra-judicial killings of such people, which is what I reported about. It is a matter of concern that when such incidents take place, the media sort of looks to the victim and the character of the victim is assassinated, rather than looking at what has happened in the incident of excessive use of force or abuses by security forces on such people, purely on the grounds that they have a different sexual orientation.

What role does the public information apparatus of the UN play here?

I think, first of all, to say that it does exist to educate people that we cannot hate people to the extent of removing them, liquidating them, on this issue. Secondly, to publicize the reports of the Special Rapporteur where they have addressed this problem, for example, the Special Rapporteur on violence against women, and the report of the Special Rapporteur on independence of judiciary and lawyers. So these are some of the reports that I think people should know about because they [the Rapporteurs] are independent experts, who have to give a balanced report, who have to give a report that should not take into consideration expediency or should not compromise their integrity in reporting to the international community through the UN.

It's been four years for you as a Special Rapporteur and much more as a human rights activist. What, in your observation, promotes the commitment of nations to human rights?

Well, those Governments that can see that their society will only prosper if they have a strong commitment towards human rights. And Governments who do not link human rights to economic and other [kinds of] prosperity within the country tend to look away from human rights. It is the work of human rights activists to make that link-the link between democracy and prosperity, the link between people's security and the respect for human rights. I am convinced that today there are many more Governments that are beginning to see that they cannot neglect people's rights and that these have to be respected because there is a huge demand for it. And the demand is being heard louder and louder by Governments.

Why did you choose to accept the post of Special Rapporteur and how do you intend to tap into the resources of the UN?

I was offered to be a Special Rapporteur, and I was privileged to accept because I think it gives, as I said earlier, an opportunity to look at different societies. It gives me an opportunity to assess how people on the ground react and to be able to pick up the issue from the ground and take it right to the top, to the UN level. We have to work in coordination with different agencies of the UN, with different mechanisms of the UN, and to ensure that the work that we pick up and the sentiments that we pick up on the ground are actually brought to the notice of the UN, in a way that the voice that you hear in the wilderness of a country is added to the whole symphony of the UN.

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