The Chronicle Interview: Irene Zubaida Khan
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Irene Zubaida Khan joined Amnesty International as its Secretary General in its 40th anniversary year, as it began a process of renewal to address the complex nature of contemporary human rights violations. As the first woman, first Asian and first Muslim to guide the world’s largest human rights organization, she has expanded its perspective, putting people at the heart of policy. Since then, Ms. Khan has drawn attention to the plight of asylum seekers in detention, met with victims of massacres and led a campaign to end discrimination against those suffering from mental disabilities. She has also initiated consultations with women activists to design a global campaign by Amnesty International against violence on women.
Ms. Khan served as Senior Executive Officer at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991 to 1995, having joined in 1980. In 1998, she headed the UNHCR Centre for Research and Documentation and, in 1999, led UNHCR in The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and later that year was appointed Deputy Director of International Protection.
Giovanni Campi, Juliana Ribeiro and Horst Rutsch of the UN Chronicle spoke with Ms. Khan in New York on 5 October 2004.
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On human rights being a dangerous idea
Human rights represent a very powerful strategy for peace and security, for equity and justice in the world. This is why this issue is gaining root in the hearts and minds of people. At the same time, Governments are struggling to find a way in which to reflect it in the context of their own governance systems. If they are dictatorships, they see it as a threat; if they are democracies, they are ready to sign on to it. When a crisis comes, human rights are perceived as a nuisance, whereas for the people, they are a very powerful idea. Ordinary people like the women in Darfur do not call it human rights, they call it justice, but they’re talking about the same thing. There is a disconnection between the people and the Government that we need to bring together. And this is a huge challenge for us—a dangerous idea and an endangered idea. My own sense is that at the end of the day people will win, human rights will survive, but they are currently going through a very severe battering.
On the conflicting sets of values in human rights
The failure of human rights advocacy is that it has not been able to popularize that message of justice. Human rights have been seen as an elitist issue discussed among intellectuals. How do we make it as simple as possible for the world? I don’t think people can understand it very easily. The tension is between security and human rights. But the question that needs to be asked is, Whose security are we talking about? When you talk about security problems today, for example the war against terrorism, it very often affects everyone. When a bomb blows up on a train station in Madrid, the poor as well as the rich are affected by it.
However, there is a sense here that the security and human rights debate seems to be slanted in favour of the powerful and the privileged, and they are pushing it to the top of the agenda. People have been suffering from violence everywhere for years. The women in Darfur are as much in danger [of becoming victims of violence] as we are from bomb blasts here, but only recently has attention been given to Darfur. The conflict in southern Sudan continued to escalate for twenty years, the people in the Congo are not getting attention, and so on. If you were to ask what kind of security is needed in, say, a slum in Rio, you would likely get very different answers. It may be gun violence, unemployment, drugs and, in some cases, HIV/AIDS or corrupt justice systems—these also need to be seen as security issues.
In other words, when you talk about values, you have certain values that need to be projected. Are you creating safe and secure societies based on privilege and power in the guise of an agenda of security? Or do you want to create a human rights debate that really looks at the security of all people? And this is where two types of values have been sold in a very powerful way—one set saying, “look, you give up a few of your rights, you will be more secure”. And people are buying into that because it is a very simple agenda. It does not really cost very much to have our bags searched twice at the airport. So it is very easy for us to agree to be more secure.
What we don’t realize is that people who differ from us, who are not like us, and who are not articulate and educated, might be picked up and locked away. It is this particular strategy that is actually affecting people on the margins of society who we don’t really care or know very much about—refugees who don’t have voice in effect.
On the other side, you have a set of values asking that people be treated equally, so equally in fact that the guilty have as much rights as the victims. Now that requires sophistication and understanding which are very difficult to promote in a popular message.
On the question of impunity in Darfur
In Darfur, impunity and security are identified as two areas where there has been no progress. Impunity is a difficult issue, as we are basically asking the Government that has supported the militia to now prosecute that very same group. This is a government that is actually a military government. We are asking them to turn on themselves. In such situations, one needs to look at other systems as well.
There is an international system of addressing impunity that has developed. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a source of hope, and for the human rights people it has been a huge source for optimism. The Court is under a lot of pressure. The ironic situation in Darfur is that the UN Security Council could possibly refer it to the ICC to investigate. One Council member has called the situation there genocide and the Council must get engaged if it is genocide. It could turn the case to the ICC to go out and prosecute, but it cannot do it as some members have not yet ratified the statute of the Court. In this area of impunity, we have a kind of mixed message. There is political will to the extent that it has come into being, which is also very important. But there are some Governments that are supporting it, while others are not quite sure if they will support it, and some outright oppose it. There is a huge sense of ambivalence in this area. Governments are in some way going down the path but not yet far enough.
What is very clear, as far as the people are concerned, is that there will be no peace and reconciliation in Darfur unless there is justice. If you have lost family members, if you have seen your village destroyed, if you have had your cattle stolen and your whole life and livelihood destroyed, it is not enough to just say, “Fine, you’re now safe, go back”. It won’t happen; we know that this won’t happen. You need a political process, a lasting settlement and also a legal process of regress—helping people get back somehow what they have lost. What I saw in Darfur—everywhere I went and every person I spoke to—was a total lack of trust in the Government. How does the Government restore that trust when it was never there in the first place? It will never be able to create trust as long as the Janjaweed are allowed to march through the camps with their guns and are sitting in Khartoum as guests of the Government. If the Government were to go ahead and prosecute, it would send a message that it is serious about tackling past abuses. What we have seen in other situations is that justice is an important part of confidence-building—that is why in Sierra Leone or in other places, tribunals have been very, very important.
On the relevance of economic, social and cultural rights
Justice, even in Amnesty International (historically we have worked on political prisoners and prisoners of conscience justice), was seen as legal justice, and only recently has there been a shift so that it also means social justice. In the human rights context, the label “justice” applies to civil and political rights, as well as social rights. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, there is no distinction between those two sets of rights. This came up later during the cold war when they drafted the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, with the East on the one side and the West on the other. Somehow, the two sets created a “Berlin Wall”, and that wall is only now coming down. It is a very important issue today when one looks at the globalized economy and its impact, because there is a lot of discussion going on about the transfer of resources, debt relief, trade issues and so on.
Governments from the north and the south are talking about equity and justice among States. But how do you make sure that equity trickles down to the people on the ground? And that is where human rights and economic, social and other rights bring in the notion of accountability—they bring in the notion of people’s dignity, their participation in governance and their empowerment. These are very important issues today, especially when you are looking at globalization, where the world is getting wealthier but also more polarized, more unequal. There is more money, but more divisions as well.
Economic and social rights bring something to that debate. Amnesty International is not opposed to globalization, but we want to examine the impact of it. When you privatize health or water, then the issue becomes the right to health and the right to water. What does that mean to those who are left out of that system? Human rights bring another angle to economic debates, which look again at people. That is why it is very important to look at trade investment or development from a rights’ perspective. This is precisely why you find development organizations talking about a rights-based approach to development; they realize that when it comes down to people, you need a tool, you need some system.
On the role of the UN and other organizations
I hope the United Nations will begin to define economic, social and cultural rights in ways that they can be implemented and measured. If you look at torture, fair trials and civil rights, so much work has been done that we know what is and what is not torture. We know what is a fair or unfair trial—these standards have been set up. But how do you measure the right to health so that you can actually hold a government accountable? It is the same with the right to water. A lot of work remains to be done.
There is good work being done in UN committees, such as the Committee on Economic and Social Rights, and that is very important. I think it is important to incorporate that into the work of other UN agencies so that they learn about it; otherwise, it will be kept as a technical aside. Another important role for the United Nations is its political role, making Governments recognize the importance of economic and social rights. In the United States, for example, there is still an argument as to whether economic and social rights are rights at all, and this is more than 55 years after the adoption of the UN Charter. There are political and technical roles.
What can Amnesty International and others do? I think we have been, to some extent, party to this blindness to economic and social rights, and for years we have behaved in ways similar to western Governments, giving priority to civil and political rights and ignoring economic and social rights. It is incumbent on us to equally promote the idea of economic and social rights. We are looking at projects that show the justifiability of those rights, so that one can go and win a case in court on the right to health. Non-governmental organizations like us can do that. We also need to work with local NGOs, because the real value of human rights lies in the communities and with human rights defenders, the indigenous groups, the local, not international, human rights organizations. There needs to be a link between the global and the local, in the same way that it is necessary within the UN system. Whatever you do at the international level, at the end of the day it is the national implementation that makes a difference.
On revitalizing the UN human rights mechanisms
The UN Commission on Human Rights has an important purpose in standard setting—the treaties, the framework of human rights; much of it has come through the Commission and related machinery. But the system has singularly failed to promote consistent implementation of these mechanisms, because of a tendency to either give prominence to national interests or gang up one faction against the other. The Commission has become a kind of bazaar where you go in to barter and see what you can get for yourself or your own particular political group. There is no doubt that we need a human rights commission in the UN system, because we need a forum where Governments can make policy decisions on human rights, where they can come together and rise above the national interest and make broad decisions on human rights, as they do on security and other issues. How to get there is, of course, a harder task, particularly now.
I have participated in many sessions of the Commission on Human Rights, but the last couple of years I have been struck by the polarization and the strong sense of anger on both sides. Some of that anger is due to a huge sense of injustice. The powerful States dominate–for example, Guantanamo does not even emerge on the agenda and then you try to pass a resolution on Sudan—so in that battle people are lost. Who could rise above that to provide leadership in that Commission? I can only look to the UN Secretariat—the Secretary-General and his representative, the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
We have seen in the Security Council how the Secretary-General’s leadership has made a difference. On the International Criminal Court, it was Kofi Annan’s leadership that made a difference. Similarly, when it comes to the Commission on Human Rights, the High Commissioner has to take a stronger role to guide Governments out of the impasse they have gotten themselves into and put forward criteria that are applied consistently and fairly to the performance of States. I think it is very important that States are held accountable. Human rights should follow a peer review system, but there must be a sense of equality and justice in such a system, and the High Commissioner can play a very important role in creating that.
On human rights treaties and monitoring mechanisms
Treaty bodies serve a purpose by producing a huge amount of information. But that information is not always used properly, probably because there is just too much of it, as well as an overload of the system. Also, those who report properly are usually the ones that need the least attention, and those who don’t report we have to focus on. Many Governments say the system is flawed. Because there are so many treaty bodies (the reporting often contains the same information with slightly different wording), States parties have to produce one report after another. In many cases, the bureaucracies churn out information rather than do something about the problems. There have been proposals about rationalizing the system, perhaps creating fewer reporting bodies but examining all the treaties and also looking at the linkages of the treaties. You have the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, children’s rights Convention, the Convention for the Elimination of Discrimination against Women—there are relationships between these treaties, and clearly there is a need for rationalization of the treaty bodies.
It might be possible to have coordinated reports where the Government provides input on a number of issues to one treaty body. That might actually make it easier for an oversight of the treaties because some treaty bodies tend to look at only one aspect. The more you coordinate the individual parts, the better the system gets. And it is probably because of that that there is a resistance on the part of Governments to have a coordinated singular body overseeing their reporting. These proposals have been put forward, but in the past had been knocked down. Another very important tool that has worked very well is the special rapporteur system, and that is because you have independent individuals who are able to go out and see what the situation is and produce reports. It gives credibility to the issue. I think that is something that probably needs to be looked at and used more.
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