31.7.2008
The
newly appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights says she comes to her work with a personal understanding
of human rights violations, based on her experience of
living in South Africa during the apartheid regime when
non-whites such as herself suffered from institutionalized
discrimination. Navanethem Pillay said that leadership
in her home country had been critical in bringing about
dramatic change for the better.
"I
think I come with a real understanding of what it’s
like to have your human rights violated and to have it
violated for a very long time without any justice in sight,
and the apartheid struggle taught that," Navanethem
Pillay said today in an interview with UN Radio.
Ms.
Pillay, who is due to take up her post in Geneva on 1
September, said that leadership in her home country had
been critical in bringing about dramatic change for the
better.
She
went on to cite the establishment of the Human Rights
Council, where she said Member States now subscribe to
the notion of accountability, monitoring and peer reviews,
as an example of dramatic change that had taken place
globally in the human rights field. Noting that her predecessor
Louise Arbor had established human rights offices in 50
countries, Ms. Pillay said she wanted to take that work
forward.
"I
see these as progressive trends which would advance the
work of the High Commissioner in protecting human rights
everywhere."
She
said that nations now took human rights with the seriousness
that they deserved, drawing on her experience of serving
as a Judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC) since
2003, and before that as both Judge and President on the
UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR),
which she joined in 1995.
"My
experience as an international judge is where political
leadership has been brought to account for complicity
in some very grave international crimes such as genocide,
crimes against humanity and war crimes. I was on the panel
of judges that sentenced the Prime Minister of Rwanda
to life imprisonment for the offense of genocide,"
she noted.
"I
subscribe to this new system of international criminal
justice system which we have only very recently, for the
past fifteen years, as a strong signal that impunity will
be ended and that anyone, whether a head of state or a
militia leader, will be held accountable and punished."
The
High Commissioner acknowledged that she would have to
operate in a different manner in her new post from her
previous work for criminal tribunals, even though she
said there were close links between the two activities.
"The
criminal trials have the power to punish, the High Commissioner
has to find various approaches of persuasion, of strong
talk, or to develop civil society organizations to meet
this source of the violations," she said.
Courtesy - Asian
Tribune