ITHACA, N.Y. -- Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and most recently the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, will be the 2003 Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellow at Cornell University, April 21 and 22.

Robinson, who served as the high commissioner from 1997 to 2002, will present the Bartels Fellowship Lecture Monday, April 21, at 8 p.m. in the Alice Statler Auditorium of Statler Hall on campus. Titled "Human Rights and Ethical Globalization," the lecture is free and open to the public.

Tickets are available at the ticket office at Willard Straight Hall, the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies at 170 Uris Hall and at the door. A reception immediately following the lecture will be held in the Statler foyer.

Robinson, 58, assumed responsibility for the United Nations human rights program on Sept. 12, 1997, at a time of great change. When she took up her post in Geneva, the Office of the High Commissioner and the Centre for Human Rights were consolidated into a single Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to better face existing and emerging human rights challenges.

As high commissioner, Robinson gave priority to integrating human rights concerns into all the activities of the United Nations. She also oversaw a reorientation of the priorities of the office, which began to focus its work where it mattered most: at the country and regional levels. As part of this focus, she traveled during her first year as high commissioner to Rwanda, South Africa, Colombia and Cambodia, among other countries. In September 1998, she was the first high commissioner to visit China, signing an agreement that is expected to lead to a wide-ranging program of cooperation for the improvement of human rights in that country. She sent human rights workers to Indonesia and to countries in Europe and Africa, and strengthened human rights monitoring in such conflict areas as Kosovo in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Robinson joined the United Nations after a seven-year tenure as president of Ireland. As president, she placed special emphasis on the needs of developing countries, linking the history of the 19th century Irish famine to today's nutrition, poverty and policy issues, thus creating a bridge of partnership between developed and developing countries.

Robinson's visit to Cornell is hosted by the university's Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. She will meet with students and faculty from a variety of areas, including law and public policy, economics, ethics, and city and regional planning, and with students from such groups as the Cornell Political Forum, Amnesty International and the Cornell Tradition.

The Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellowship was established at Cornell by the Bartelses in 1984 to foster a broadened world perspective among students by bringing distinguished international public figures to campus. Henry and Nancy Horton Bartels are both members of the Cornell Class of 1948.