On Inside Geneva this week: part three of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Host Imogen Foulkes talks to Louise Arbour, who served as UN Human Rights Commissioner from 2004 to 2008. She arrived in Geneva with a formidable track record.
As a prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, she had indicted Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes. In Rwanda, she secured convictions of rape as crimes against humanity.
"The work I did both with the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda were if anything a vindication for me of the significance of law, of the rule of law, as an organising principle in modern society," explains Arbour.
Leading the UN’s human rights work was a new challenge.
"These were very challenging times. 2004, you know, this was in the backyard of 9/11. It was, a new, dangerous, unknown world was starting to unfold with a lot of uncertainties, including on the human rights front."
New strategies were needed.
"When you arrive in the role of high commissioner for human rights, I think that’s part of the dilemma; how do you use your voice? Because I think to be the megaphone for the denunciation of injustices at some point becomes counterproductive, because it just illuminates how impotent the system is. It’s like you scream in the wilderness," she said.
That’s why this dedicated lawyer still tells us to follow the laws, treaties, and conventions we have.
"If you came from another planet and you just looked at the human rights framework; the universal declaration of human rights, all the treaties, the conventions, the work of the treaty bodies, you’d think you’d arrived in heaven. So why is it not the case?"
Join Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva podcast to find out more.
Please listen and subscribe to our science podcast -- the Swiss Connection.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
On Inside Geneva this week: part three of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Host Imogen Foulkes talks to Louise Arbour, who served as UN Human Rights Commissioner from 2004 to 2008. She arrived in Geneva with a formidable track record.
As a prosecutor for the former Yugoslavia, she had indicted Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes. In Rwanda, she secured convictions of rape as crimes against humanity.
"The work I did both with the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda were if anything a vindication for me of the significance of law, of the rule of law, as an organising principle in modern society," explains Arbour.
Leading the UN’s human rights work was a new challenge.
"These were very challenging times. 2004, you know, this was in the backyard of 9/11. It was, a new, dangerous, unknown world was starting to unfold with a lot of uncertainties, including on the human rights front."
New strategies were needed.
"When you arrive in the role of high commissioner for human rights, I think that’s part of the dilemma; how do you use your voice? Because I think to be the megaphone for the denunciation of injustices at some point becomes counterproductive, because it just illuminates how impotent the system is. It’s like you scream in the wilderness," she said.
That’s why this dedicated lawyer still tells us to follow the laws, treaties, and conventions we have.
"If you came from another planet and you just looked at the human rights framework; the universal declaration of human rights, all the treaties, the conventions, the work of the treaty bodies, you’d think you’d arrived in heaven. So why is it not the case?"
Join Imogen Foulkes on Inside Geneva podcast to find out more.
Please listen and subscribe to our science podcast -- the Swiss Connection.
Get in touch!
Thank you for listening! If you like what we do, please leave a review or subscribe to our newsletter.
This is Inside Geneva. I'm your host Image Folks, and this is a Swiss info production.
Speaker 2:In today's programme. I was educated by nuns, with a bunch of girls until I was 20 years old and went to law school, so maybe my interest in pluralism may come in reaction to having been so restricted in my horizons. Having been a judge for a long time, I was used to issuing orders that were complied with. I'm not allergic to conflict. Quite the opposite. When you arrive in the role of High Commissioner for Human Rights, how do you use your voice? Because I think to be the megaphone for the denunciation of injustices at some point becomes counterproductive. This was in the backyard of 9-11. It was a new, dangerous, unknown world was starting to unfold, with a lot of uncertainties and including, on that, human rights front.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome again to Inside Geneva. I'm Image Folks and, as many listeners know, we're devoting several podcasts this summer and autumn to human rights to mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Today we continue with the third in our series of in-depth interviews with those who have led the United Nations Human Rights Work over the years. Last month we talked to Mary Robinson, the second UN Human Rights Commissioner, and this month we talked to Louise Arbor. But before we hear from her, a little history. First, because Louise was not the third to hold the UN's top human rights job, but the fourth. The third was Sergio Vera de Mello, and it wouldn't be right for us not to remember him here.
Speaker 1:He was appointed by Kofi Annan in 2002, but then in 2003 he was asked to lead the UN mission to Iraq where, tragically, he was killed in August of the same year, together with 21 other people, when a suicide bomber attacked the UN headquarters in Baghdad. Twenty years on, that attack remains a pivotal moment for the UN's humanitarian work. If you want to find out more about that, there will be a special feature on Swiss Info's website. But now back to our interview with Louise Arbor, who joined us online from her home in Canada. Louise Arbor, very nice to see you and talk to you again. First question I suppose, going right back to your childhood, your education, when you were growing up, did you have a particular interest in passion for human rights. Is this where you expected to make your career?
Speaker 2:No, I know. In fact it's difficult for me to try to locate where the impetus for this kind of work came from. I mean, in a nutshell, I was educated in an extremely homogeneous environment, in a kind of girls' Catholic convent school that became a classical college. So essentially I was educated by women. I was raised by my mother, just with my brother. My father left when I was quite young and then I was educated by nuns with a bunch of girls until I was 20 years old and went to law school.
Speaker 2:So maybe my interest in pluralism may come in reaction to having been so loistered is that the word or sort of restricted in my horizons? And then law school was very defining for me. I still define myself essentially as a lawyer. I see, I'm very conscious of the fact that I see a lot of things through a very legal prism, more so sometimes than a political one, which is not always an advantage. So, and in retrospect I realized that this was my kind of political coming of age, the sense of the fragility, even a very solid, mature democratic institutions that could be challenged and that were actually quite fragile. Yeah, so this is it. I think it was a lawyer, a law teacher, a judge.
Speaker 3:From its first makeshift courtroom, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda went to work on a formidable task.
Speaker 4:Central Bosnia has been gripped by a madness apparently without end, village by village, with no mercy being shown on either side.
Speaker 1:The word atrocity has been used a lot in this war.
Speaker 4:Probably to war crime and maybe in the future there will be an investigation of the court of justice and the Hague or something like that.
Speaker 1:You, like some other human rights commissioners. You were also on tribunals. I think you worked on the Rwanda Tribunal, yugoslavia you are the woman who indicted Slobodan Milosevic.
Speaker 2:I think the work I did, both with the Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda, were, if anything, a vindication for me of the significance of law, of the rule of law, as an organizing principle in modern society. My background was mostly in criminal law and I would have never thought that in my lifetime criminal law would take this international positioning. After the Nuremberg trials, despite all kinds of multilateral efforts, it looked like this was not going to happen. And then, frankly, quite miraculously when you think of it, the Security Council of the United Nations, of all places, added law, criminal law, to its otherwise pretty empty toolbox of conflict management. Now, this had nothing to do with me, but it was revolutionary.
Speaker 2:I don't think the Security Council has done anything that imaginative since, because the traditional means of interventions declaration statements if you up the stakes a bit, sanctions if you go the ultimate limit, military intervention but personal criminal accountability of political and military leaders for the Security Council to launch that kind of initiative I think in retrospect, not realizing what Pandora they had taken out of that box was very impressive. But I came to it very much with a legal angle and I kept telling my colleagues all the time we must not try to play a political game. As a political actor, we are minuscule. As a legal actor, we are the only game in town. This is the way we need to move and maneuver. We need to have a lot of clarity about the integrity of the tribunal as a legal enterprise.
Speaker 4:Case number IT-9937I the prosecutor versus Slobodan Milosevic. In May 22nd I presented an indictment for confirmation against Slobodan Milosevic and four others, charging them with crimes against humanity, specifically murder, deportation and persecutions, and with violations of the laws and customs of war.
Speaker 2:And that's why the indictment of Milosevic was important, the charges that I brought, despite a lot of pressure to prosecute for genocide. Right at the beginning I didn't think we had the genocide case. I thought it would eventually be feasible to document it, but not so. We laid charges for crimes against humanity, war crimes. Now there was something strategic about it. You know why we, some might say, rushed to an indictment. In large part was because I was concerned that a peace deal may be negotiated in the war in Kosovo that would grant Milosevic not immunity but safe haven somewhere, putting him completely out of reach of the tribunal. So it might have looked like political posturing. It was purely tactical and strategic to advance the legal mandate of the tribunal.
Speaker 3:Yes, I can confirm that Slobodan Milosevic is now in the custody of the tribunal at the detention unit. His first appearance in court will be in a matter of days.
Speaker 1:What was it like when you saw him delivered to the Hague?
Speaker 2:So by then I was gone, I left the tribunal, I was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada and Milosevic was arrested I don't know about a year and a half later. And if you look at the few historical precedents that we have, I think this one is a classic one. He was arrested because he lost power internally, and the same is true of Charles Taylor. Currently, the legal instruments do not permit, frankly, any other kind of apprehension, particularly of leaders who can shelter themselves from the reach of international law just by staying home, essentially, and staying in power. But that's not eternal, as we've seen in that case. And, frankly, when we indicted him, it wasn't all that clear. His grip on power in Serbia at the time was still pretty strong. But history followed its course.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, I think I was landing in Australia at some conference when I heard that he was arrested. And you know, I don't want to say I felt vindicated and nobody has a crystal ball, but I had always said, if I did not firmly believe that one day he would stand trial in the Hague, I wouldn't waste my time doing this really hard job, I'd move on and do something that is more anchored in reality. It was anchored in reality, even though at the time I signed the indictment, I could not have written the script on how this would all unfold, but I was really persuaded. You know the long arm of the law. The law is very patient and, yes, and I still feel the same way today.
Speaker 3:Alligations of Russian war crimes have been well documented throughout Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.
Speaker 1:The unthinkable has happened here. We have seen the cool face of Putin's army.
Speaker 2:The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant against Vladimir Putin and another Russian official.
Speaker 1:Just quickly yes or no, because you are the one who first indicted a head of state. I think Putin's been indicted. Do you think we're going to see him in the dock?
Speaker 2:I felt that way about Milosevic, and I really feel the same way about those who are accountable to international institution, including the International Criminal Court. I firmly believe that the day will come that they will be given let's put it this way the opportunity to appear and defend themselves in a court of law. I think that's that's the project, and that's very much worth supporting.
Speaker 1:Can I move on then to? You were appointed UN Human Rights Commissioner. Did you have a hesitation, or were you? That's it. No, that job's for me.
Speaker 2:No well, I had hesitation. I was on the Supreme Court of Canada. It's a lifetime appointment. There's mandatory retirement at 75.
Speaker 2:I had a very long way to go and, quite honestly, people don't quit the Supreme Court of Canada and when I accepted the position there, I assumed that I would be there for the long run. So when Kofi Annan called me and actually that phone call itself was completely surreal first, when I heard he wanted to speak to me, I thought he must want a reference for someone. And then on the phone he said I would like you to come and replace Sergio. Well, that's in my mind.
Speaker 2:I'd forgotten that when Sergio was killed in Baghdad, that he actually was the High Commissioner for Human Rights, because this was a pretty strange assignment for a High Commissioner to take on a mission, particularly of that level of danger, as it turned out, and it had been almost a year since this happened. So when he said I want you to come back to the family and to replace Sergio, I thought what he wants me to go to Baghdad. What does he want from me? The conversation was totally surreal and then, when he finally spilled it out, my first reaction was no. To me it was just I cannot leave the Supreme Court of Canada, and it took months, basically, where I just said I can't and I never thought of it again, and so it's months later that it got revived and I talked to myself.
Speaker 1:Kofi Ann talked you into it eventually.
Speaker 2:Very persuasive, and you know, having worked with him before, I also believe that he would have my back, and vice versa.
Speaker 3:At home and abroad. Luisa Arbor is known for taking principled stands and speaking truth to powers that don't always want to hear it. In 2004, she returned to the arena of international politics, now as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, but the shockwaves of September 11th would reverberate far beyond the borders of America in the months and years that followed. What is Guantanamo today? It began as a secretive place, isolated from the world so as to hide the truth of what took place within its walls.
Speaker 2:And these were very challenging times. 2004,. This was in the backyard of 9-11. It was a new, dangerous, unknown world was starting to unfold, with a lot of uncertainties and including, on that, human rights front.
Speaker 1:You talked about it being a very challenging time, and indeed it was. I mean, I had just started in Geneva, I think when you started your job I had just was just in the door. What preoccupied you most? Was there a particular situation?
Speaker 2:Well, it was a challenging time, I think, on so many levels. The more visible one to the world was the post 9-11 world, the Bush administration in the US. So that was the political broad context when you got into the UN system. There were other layers of complexity and challenges and the UN machinery itself was in the process of reform because in 2006, we moved from the Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council. So member states were also struggling with what they wanted to do with this animal. And the third challenge that was not maybe very visible outside, but that was a huge problem for me, was that we were too absent from the field. The office of the High Commissioner was anchored in Geneva and it was very difficult to convince staff members to deploy to the field and to get the UN system to accept us as players and partners, particularly in peacekeeping missions, but even a self-standing part of UN country teams. So all these were playing out at the same time at a time where the human rights agenda worldwide was under enormous stress.
Speaker 1:If you look now, un human rights has teams and offices and monitors in all sorts of places, including in Ukraine, so that must be a source of satisfaction to you.
Speaker 2:Yes, just to negotiate inside the UN system a place for a human rights office in peacekeeping mission so that the substantive analysis content voice of human rights would have this kind of independent stream, was an enormous internal battle. And we entrenched the principle of regular human rights reporting from field missions. Without that I think the office would have shriveled into a kind of norm developing abstract present. So I still believe that the field work. It's very challenging for member states. You know you're never welcome anywhere but it's where it's happening. It's. You know, if you're going to say something credible you have to say it from the implementation of norms. That is hard.
Speaker 1:Just saying you know the field work is the hardest to do and that you see the reports as very valuable. But we're coming to the nub of why, perhaps since you were in office, this particular job human rights commissioner has come to be called the UN's toughest job, because basically, you don't get to be the world food program and deliver food to hungry people, you don't get to arrange safe places for refugees. You have to tell governments you know what you need to do better. Did you find that difficult?
Speaker 2:Well it's. Having been a judge for a long time, I was used to issuing orders that were complied with. I came from a very mature legal system where, you know, there's the litigation at its very adversarial. I'm not allergic to conflict, quite the opposite. I've lived in very conflictual environments, domestically and internationally. But then there's a rational debate, there's an adjudicator and my role was to resolve an issue, issue an order which left some people unhappy, but to try to do it in a way as to not aggravate the antagonism of the parties, but try to speak to the losing side with a respectful voice, but a firm one. Issue an order and then the next day the order is executed. End of conversation.
Speaker 2:When you arrive in the role of commissioner for human rights, I think that's part of the dilemma how do you use your voice? Because I think to be the megaphone for the denunciation of injustices at some point becomes counterproductive, because it just illuminates how impotent the system is. It's like you scream in the wilderness and it yields absolutely no remedial action. And I still believe to this day that this is part of the dilemma of the human rights community. Starting with the High Commissioner, but with all the civil society organizations, is the danger of seeking comfort by cheerleading, by speaking to each other about how right we are and how unjust the world is, and acknowledging that there's no causation, there's no consequence or very little. All these strategies, whether it's naming and shaming, whether it's denouncing, whether all forms of engagement, advocacy, the measurement of impact is overwhelmingly discouraging at times.
Speaker 1:This is what the war in Sudan looks like on the ground. Every day, there are more reports of arson looting murder and rape.
Speaker 3:The brutality now on full display for the entire world. In the town of Bucha, ukrainian authorities say they have found hundreds of men, women and children killed.
Speaker 4:This mounting evidence already suggesting the new Taliban is very much like the old. Amnesty International has documented a massacre of nine Hazara men.
Speaker 1:Let's come a little bit up to 2023, hasn't been a particularly old-spicious year so far, sadly. You mentioned the challenges of 2004 and you mentioned the Bush administration Interestingly. Just earlier today I was talking to somebody about the fact that we're going to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. At what point? Because people feel they're less respected, we attach less importance to them. Now, do you think this century there has been maybe dating from 9-11 an erosion? Do we care about them less? Do we respect them less?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I don't think we're in a particularly good place, which doesn't mean that the project is over and we should just abandon an ideal that I still believe is more than worth pursuing. I think the human rights framework, as a kind of organizing principle for humanity, is unbeatable. I think it's more than a worthwhile project. But I think those who champion the project have to be willing to do a very sober analysis of where some of our own failings may have contributed. You can't fix others, but you can fix yourself. So if there are some shortcomings on, I would say, on our side, on the side of the champions of the human rights project, if we could at least fix those, maybe we have a better chance. And I see a couple of fault lines in the project. One, I think, is kind of a birth defect of the entire project, which is the schism between economic, social, cultural rights and civil and political rights. And I think it's been reflected in the West, which endorsed the human rights agenda vigorously, but with a clear preference for civil and political rights and an unwillingness to embrace economic, social and cultural rights as rights. Believing in good faith or otherwise, I don't know that capitalism would just generate these benefits. They didn't have to be enshrined in a rights agenda. They would be the byproduct of a healthy, free market economy. Well, I think they've been demonstrably proven wrong, but that tension has been there.
Speaker 2:The second one is the dominance of the Western embrace of the agenda has had, I think, two consequences.
Speaker 2:The first one is, as the West was promoting its so-called values, others started to notice that, happily for the West, its values always coincided with its interests.
Speaker 2:And the second one is the West were always in a position of asking others to do something that was hard for them to do. But when it came a time where the West was asked to do something that was hard for it to do, it choked. And the examples of, I think, the post-911 world showed how the US was very quick to even reconsider fundamental norms like the absolute prohibition on torture. And now, if we look at the entire migration agenda, it's even more apparent how, for once, when Europe and America are asked and that includes Canada are asked to do something that's hard for them to do, this time there are nowhere to be seen. But they were very strong proponents of telling others to abandon some of their cultural norms on sexual identity, even on gender, just assuming that these others could just abandon centuries of cultural practices just because it's the right thing to do. So I think all these tensions in the system are very present.
Speaker 1:The big one that people talk about now, the tension or the threat is China, making the points that you make, which are very valid ones, about the difference between the political and civil versus the economic, social, and pointing out how well they have done in lifting people out of poverty. But human rights groups will say this is a red herring for the fact that they are repressing the other side, which should all be together the political and civil rights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, obviously, I don't disagree at all with that, but I think maybe the structure. Let me just come back to some features of the Human Rights Council. One of the features that came in with the creation of the Council to replace the Commission was the universal periodic review. Now, I don't want to glorify any particular procedure or institution, but what was at the root of that initiative Was the idea when members states were talking about creating the Council to replace the Commission some, the US in particular, and John Bolton at that time was the ambassador to the UN they were promoting a human rights council that would look like the Security Council, as I used to call it, a self-appointed club of the virtuous that would hold the world to account to their failings, while, of course, assuming that they didn't have any. And the pushback against that which I championed was that human rights has no future unless it's anchored in the idea of universal. It's called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It has to be workable in a multiplicity of economic, cultural, social environments that have a lot of diversity.
Speaker 1:I have one last question. How would you like to see this 75th anniversary celebrated?
Speaker 2:I think we need to find the universal thread and let go of the features that should be adaptable to different cultural environments. So it's not because you dominate the world that your point of view is the universal one. And that's where the universal periodic review was created, Also to counterbalance the proliferation of country mandates where the so-called road states were put under scrutiny, not realizing how bullying that seemed by those who could always shelter themselves from scrutiny. And after 9-11, that certainly put the US at the forefront of those who should be called to account when others who didn't have that kind of strength were put into kind of moral receivership. So this idea of universality during my mandate it was a very constant theme the claim by developing countries of double standards and the question of cultural accommodation, the big tensions then between freedom of expression and freedom of religion. So where this is all going to take us, you know.
Speaker 2:As I said, I think the blueprint is still more than worth defending, implementing, but the methodology, I think, is proving deficient. She came from another planet and just looked at the human rights framework, the universal declaration of human rights, all the treaties, the conventions, the work of the treaty bodies. You think you've arrived in heaven. Why is it not the case?
Speaker 1:And that brings us to the end of this edition of Inside Geneva. It was a real pleasure talking to Louise Arbor again, so thanks to her for such an insightful conversation. Before we go, here's a taste of what we've got in the next podcast, where we'll be marking International Day of the Disappeared by hearing how the ICRC connects prisoners of war with their families.
Speaker 2:I look at my kids, I look at my family and I say, imagine, now there is a frontline between us and my son, my brother, my mother, my father, I'll capture and I can't see them for a year, two, three, four.
Speaker 1:And how, in the heart of Geneva, a tracing centre searches for those missing in conflict. So when I'm telling them that, well, I'm calling from the ICRC, I'm calling from Geneva and this is a central tracing agency as of last week he was a POW, he was safe and well.
Speaker 2:It's always, always, always. People were so, so grateful and mothers, you know, especially mothers.
Speaker 1:That's available on August 22nd on all your favourite podcast platforms. Do take a listen, and between now and then you can catch up on earlier episodes of Inside Geneva, from a discussion about decolonising humanitarian aid, to the potential benefits and risks of artificial intelligence, to a look at how the Convention Against Landmines came about, or what the term genocide really means under law and why some human rights groups are reluctant to use it. Please do review us if you like what you're hearing and drop us a line on Inside Geneva at SwissInfoch. I'm Imogen Folks. Thanks again for listening.