Former U.N. human rights head challenges West to enforce basic human rights in spread of democracy

Admonishing the silence of the international community in the face of human rights violations, Louise Arbour, former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, challenged the world to meet the ideals set by Franklin Roosevelt: freedom from fear and want and freedom of expression and religion, which form the heart of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Arbour delivered the Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels World Affairs Fellowship Lecture "Human Rights for All: Beyond Our Reach?" to more than 400 people in Kennedy Hall's Call Auditorium Oct. 21, hosted by the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies. Arbour served as high commissioner from 2004 to 2008 and as a former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.

"There is probably no more challenging political issue for the international community than to seriously enhance the protection of 'all human rights for all,'" she said.

After World War II, a divide formed between the East and the West because of differing priorities and governmental ideals, Arbour said. In developing countries such as China, the need for food, shelter, health and education took priority over civil and political rights. Western countries, including the United States, however, feared that should these countries gain economic, social and cultural rights, free market practices would be hampered. Thus they preferred to see these rights as political aspirations rather than enforceable rights. This rift between East and West has been influenced by policies of democracy promotion by Western nations, Arbour said.

"The Western governments promote civil and political rights that their political traditions view as the hallmark of democracy," Arbour said. "However, they foolishly impose prematurely the finished products on countries unprepared to embrace them."

At the same time, the Group of 77, a loose coalition of developing nations including China, Palestine and Sudan, have expressed suspicion of the hidden agenda of the West's promotion of human rights. They denounce human rights advocacy as neocolonialism and cultural imperialism, designed to protect Western economic interests.

Arbour cited the universality of human rights as a way to counter these claims. "Universal rights are derived from a range of cultures, different value systems and different traditions that have led to international treaties, consultations and civil society actors," she pointed out. "There is no dominant or culturally superior point of view that yields … the universally correct position."

Western countries must move beyond their attempts to integrate discussions of human rights into the political arena, she said. Western democracies also need to address their own human rights shortfalls head on, such as their lack of transparency and lack of judicial review in the prosecution of prisoners of Guantanamo Bay.

In 2006 the Commission of Human Rights was replaced by the Human Rights Council (HRC) to become a monitoring forum ensuring that rights were enforced, norms be implemented and standards adhered to.

"This institutional reform was not only unsuccessful but destroyed the effectiveness of the commission as a normative body," Arbour said. To be really serious about human rights implementation, Arbour supports creating a human rights court in addition to the HRC. But, "there is no sign of movement in that direction," she said.

"As we continue to deploy all efforts to prevent and to resolve conflicts, we must ensure that political expediency does not overtake the protection that international law extends," said Arbour, whose visit also included meetings with students.

Nina Zhang '09 is a writer intern at the Cornell Chronicle.

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