1999 E-mail Exchange with Sir Brian Urquhart: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

E-mail Exchange with Sir Brian Urquhart and students from Marin Academy High School, UC Berkeley's Model UN Program, and Boalt School of Law: March 1999 with Harry Kreisler

UN Goals

Mr. Urquhart, you commented about this quotation from a speech by Dag Hammarskjöld in your speech at the New York Museum of Modern Art: "Modern art teaches us to see by forcing us to use our senses, our intellect, and our sensibility to follow it on its road of exploration. It makes us seers and explorers. These we must be if we are to prevail." I wonder whether you believe that the educational advances made by the United Nations have accomplished the ideals expressed in this quotation? Have these advances allowed people who would otherwise not have the opportunity to prevail to in fact prevail and become seers and explorers or have they just been given the rudimentary knowledge?

Naomi G., Marin Academy High School

I think we have to regard all human endeavor as an adventure and an experiment. It follows there are often as many failures as successes. Certainly the United Nations and its agencies have had some effect in spreading respect for human rights and democracy and have also done considerable work in improving access to education and other important social resources. Unfortunately, a large part of the world remains below the poverty line where its inhabitants still have little opportunity to exercise the kind of options that Dag Hammarskjöld was talking about.

You describe the solution to many of the world's human rights problems as possibly being solved by governments becoming more keyed on ethics and morals rather than their own interests. As most Americans have seen over these past months, no large group of people holds the same ethics and morals, therefore it would be impossible to govern a country when it bases its decisions on the moral standards of those in government; rather it is more efficient to govern on the interests of the people as a whole. Why do you feel that changing this would be a move forward for the world when it would more likely lead to deterioration of governments and the misrepresentation of the members of the given nation?

Matt W., Marin Academy High School

When I was at school in the 1930s, we all knew about Hitler's persecution of the Jews and other groups in Nazi Germany. The response of European governments to protests was invariably that this was an internal question for a supposedly friendly European power. Therefore, absolutely nothing was done except to receive refugees. The significance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is to set a general standard of behavior which will, we hope, eventually make such a travesty impossible. Of course, there are different views of human rights according to the history and state of development in different parts of the world and this takes a great deal of negotiating effort. But already in cases of gross violations of human rights -- the Kurds in northern Iraq, or much too late, the genocide in Rwanda -- it is generally agreed that the international community has a responsibility. This is a considerable advance on the situation in Europe in the 1930s.

To rephrase, I agree that we have moved forward in human rights, and this is very good. My question was more centered on the specific role of government in this process. How do you think that the structure of government, and the focus of government can be shifted, even a little, to run on ethics, instead of common good for the people of that nation? To change this would be to alter the role of democratic nations, to focus much more on the beliefs of the very few. Do you think that to change in this way is realistic, and if it is an important thing to do, why? Wouldn't it be like taking one step forward and two steps back?

Matt W., Marin Academy High School

There is a constant interplay in the life of democratic countries between ethics, democracy, and single-issue groups. Politics as we know it is not always guided by ethics, and ethics, if followed to a logical conclusion, can pose considerable problems for democratic politics. The aim has to be to strike a reasonable working balance.