| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Pierre Sané Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 4 of 6
How has the end of the Cold War affected human rights work? Has it made it easier or has it made it harder?
It depends on the region. I believe it has made it harder. At the end of the Cold War there was a sentiment that we would now be moving into a new era where governments were not encumbered anymore with the conflicts, the East - West conflict, they would be working together to promote the wellbeing of all inhabitants of this planet. Unfortunately, it has not been the case. Economic interests have taken precedence over the need to ensure that basic needs of all are satisfied. And that has led to situations in different parts of the world where pushing for rapid economic modernization, rapid economic openings, adoption of the markets as the response to the needs of everybody, has led to a lot of social dislocations, even to conflicts in many parts of the world. The feeling that people have their culture and their identity ground into uniformity because of CNN, MTV, MacDonalds, is also leading to further attachment to blood, to identity, and sometimes expressed in very violent, violent ways. So this is the context in which we are operating today, where even though people will not contest that human rights are universal, sometimes they fall for the manipulation of governments that present human right concerns expressed from outside as an intervention into domestic affairs and something that undermines the sovereignty of the country.
So to crystallize what you're saying, during the Cold War Amnesty International's agenda in Yugoslavia might have been dealing with the government; but now, in a situation of breakdown, how you ensure human rights is much more complicated. There may not be a government at the other end that one can address.
There are many new, what we call "non-state actors" that play a significant role on the human right agenda. It is not anymore just governments violating the rights of people and therefore our target is just governments. In situations of conflict, like in the former Yugoslavia, in many countries in Africa, where it is not very clear who is in possession of authority, we'll have different groups committing abuses, where people accept that because there is a war; then inevitably women will be raped, children will be killed, civilians will be targeted. And it is an uphill battle to insist that even wars have laws, and even in the context of wars you can hold people accountable, that you don't have the right in war to kill an unarmed combatant or to target civilian populations. So holding the various armed groups accountable to the atrocities that they are committing, holding whatever is left of the government also accountable, is a difficult exercise.
What is the effect on human rights workers and activists of problems that this new global environment has created, such as these atrocities? Here we're talking about, both in a European setting and in an African setting, a scale of atrocity that hearkens back to World War II. Does that make you want to do more, or is there a frustration that you and the people in your organization have to overcome?
Our members always want to do more, and it is very difficult, morally, to turn away a victim or a family of a victim, be it a family of somebody in prison or somebody who has died, or somebody who has been tortured. The limit really is the resources, the human resources, that we have. Of course when people are confronted with these atrocities on a daily basis, and when these atrocities are brought to you by the television in your own living room, very often the reaction is, well maybe there is nothing one can do. Maybe there is nothing one should do, these are bound to happen. And that is what we're trying to fight against, trying to convince people that we can change things, that we are responsible for our own history and our own future, and that there is nothing more powerful than the organized citizenry, especially when it cuts across national borders. That is why we continue to attach so much importance to the setting up of Amnesty structures and Amnesty groups throughout the world. We feel that only through action we'll be able to convince people that it is possible to bring changes. Otherwise we will end up all being victims.
As a leader of Amnesty, do you confront in today's world a danger of a lack of focus, that there's so many claimants for different kinds of rights, whereas in the earlier phase of your organization one could argue that things were more focused? Or is that not a problem?
It is a problem. It is a problem, obviously, whenever you enlarge the scope of your action that there will be a risk of dilution and there is risk, even, of confusion among people. But the fact is that the human rights movement has grown tremendously. More and more in the human rights movement, broadly defined (defined on the basis of the various rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which you find in every country), all the areas are covered. The dilemma for an organization like Amnesty -- which is the largest human rights organization, which is not just called upon to act by the victims and by their families, but which is also lobbied by other human rights groups, other interest groups, to take action -- is, what is it that we keep out? And what is it that it is legitimate to keep out? Now fortunately, with the number of members that we have and the number of countries where we are present, we're able to cover many issues by specializing groups. So a group can continue to be focused, while at the international level we can offer an array of issues that can be covered in a focused way by groups or even by national sections.
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