| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Pierre Sané Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
| Photo by Jane Scherr |
Page 5 of 6
How do you identify a new twist on the agenda? For example, you are now launching a campaign on human rights in the United States. How did that decision come about and what are its implications for what you'll be doing in the near future?
As Secretary General I'm responsible for the strategy of the organization and for ensuring that the organization continues to be relevant, relevant to the victims but also relevant to the human rights movement. The human rights movement throughout the world is really looking at Amnesty to develop its own agenda; it's taking its lead from Amnesty, because Amnesty is one of the oldest and is the largest human rights organization.
It is the severity of the human rights violations in a country that trigger our reaction. But not just the severity. It is the severity but also what we analyze as the risk of further deterioration, because of complacency or because of lack of information, or because other actors on the international scene are not taking action in order to stop that. We also look at windows of opportunity. Is it the right time to do it, if we do it now before the electoral campaigns start? Or when is it the right time to do it in order to influence the agenda? We thought it was important to undertake this campaign, especially in the fiftieth year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to remind the United States government that it has obligations to the international community and that it has to abide by the rules that it has helped write within the context of the UN.
There are many, many people in this country who suffer from human right violations, be it victims of police brutality, be it the number of people in the prisons, be it the illegal immigrants who are victims of brutality or arbitrariness, be it those who are executed (the use of the death penalty continues to be a major concern for us). And on top of this, keep in mind that for many countries and a large number of people, the United States is a model. We want to make sure that when they look at this model they look at the other side of the coin as well. And if they are to replicate this model, they need to take measures to make sure that the human rights issues that are inherent to the way this model is developing are addressed as they are moving in the same direction.
Why do you think that several of the protocols have not been ratified by the United States -- the one on children, the one on discrimination against women? What accounts for those areas where the U.S. is so retrograde in human rights where, on the one hand it's done so much for universal human rights, and on the other hand it hasn't been realized very fully in our own country?
I have the feeling it is a case where the right hand is not talking to the left hand. Eleanor Roosevelt was the chair of the human rights commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and many elements of Franklin Roosevelt's speech on the Four Freedoms found their way into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was very much influenced by the ideals of Americans during the war [World War II], in the period up to the war, and in the desire to build a world after the war that would ensure that we don't see a repetition of the atrocities.
Since then, the United States, through the State Department, through its mission to the United Nations, etc., has been very active in the development of all these tenets. Once these treaties are agreed by the international community they are brought home for ratification. They go into the Congress or the Senate and people who are very disconnected from this process and who continue to be convinced the standards and the guarantees offered by the U.S. constitution are the best in the world. But the international standards of decency have evolved and today they offer, in many instances, more protection than those that are offered to people living in the United States.
The second reason, I guess, is that people in the position to ratify these conventions are not ready to accept that international law takes precedence over domestic law.
Next page: Public Education
© Copyright 1999, Regents of the University of California