Pierre Sané Interview: Conversations with History; Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley

Photo by Jane Scherr

Page 6 of 6

Public Education

As I listen to you describe this work in the American case, I hear you saying that what you have as a resource is the consciousness of your members about an injustice, but often a lack of self-consciousness or maybe a blindness by the people who are violating human rights. So, since you don't have an army at your disposal, the link must be to public education, educating people, raising their consciousness. What's the key to doing that? Is it just the information?

It's information, education, action. The information is important because if we don't know what's going on it's very difficult to take action. And that is why our research work is so meticulous, to really unearth the information, come up with the cases, ensure that those cases are accurate, and disseminate that information as widely as possible.

Second is the education. That is, comparing those cases, the human rights situation, to what the international human rights standards say. And in the process of education also inform people that they have obligations. We all have obligations. It's not just governments, it's not just companies, but it is also individuals. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls on individuals and all organs of society to take action to improve this world. So for us, human rights education is not just about educating people about their rights but also telling them that the best way to have your rights protected is if you work towards the protection of the rights of others.

A third element is action, so people are informed or they know that they have obligations. We offer them opportunities of action, and the opportunities of action that we offer are not complicated. We are not asking them to join an army to go and free the prisoners. We are telling them, you can write a letter, a simple letter. Anybody can do that. Writing a simple letter can indeed open prison doors, because that letter will be one among thousands of other letters coming from all over the world that drop by drop will work at the conscience of those who are committing these abuses. So this is our whole approach to the work of our membership.

I'm curious about the future of your organization and its recruitment. Looking at students today, they're not going to have the experiences that you describe, the struggle for national independence in Africa, your work with your mother and your uncle in achieving rights in Senegal in 1969. What are your thoughts about how young people will acquire the consciousness that you're talking about? I am talking here about students in the developed world who are living in an affluent culture.

Obviously each national section of Amnesty will have to come up with the answers to those questions and an adequate strategy to reach out to the younger generation. In the U.S. we have a very strong student membership. We would like to see it grow, but I think that if you take the whole of the U.S., Amnesty is one of the organizations that will be present in each and every campus.

I think, in terms of our recruitment, we will probably have to adjust our message again so that it can be appealing for the younger members. My generation, who lived through '68, which is a very internationalist generation, was attracted primarily by this whole concept of international solidarity. Maybe for the younger generation it is not as compelling. Maybe the younger generation is more inward-looking into their own culture. They are so exposed with a uniform culture and a uniform product, that they tend to go back to their roots and to ethnic groups, ethnic identity, etc. So we can see how we can ride on that wave, not necessarily going against it, because it may be good for them if it allows them to reaffirm their identity and their personality.

What is it then that we can offer to them if that is the trend in the 1990s? We can certainly offer to them, for instance in a campus like this with a very large sector of the student body which is Chinese American, we can offer to them to work on China, on their countries of origin, and from here contribute to improving the human rights situation in those countries. Many students today are interested in how they will make a living after they finish university. Certainly we can offer them a perspective regarding the responsibility of companies when it comes to human rights protection. So that when they go into the companies, they will be vigilant in terms of their own rights as workers, and also in terms of the reputation of the firm when it comes to human rights and human wrongs.

What, looking back on your career in human rights, has been your greatest disappointment and what has been your greatest satisfaction?

Well, disappointment ... I would say whenever we do not succeed in sparing the life of somebody who has been sentenced to death. The example is the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian environmental activist and human rights campaigner who was sentenced to death by the military junta in Nigeria. We mobilized our whole membership in the whole world and I was convinced that they would not execute him because of this level of mobilization. But I think I underestimated the ruthlessness of General Sani Abacha. He did execute Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Achievement, I would say it is the repositioning of Amnesty as an integral part of the broad human right movement. I think a few years ago Amnesty was, in many countries, considered as being separate, isolated from the human rights movement. And that has changed enormously. Amnesty is really, both at the national level and at the international level, perceived as being a central element of the human rights movement. And we want to contribute to building that human rights movement. What we want, really, is to build a global movement that is the global third sector that brings citizens from all over the world together in taking charge of their lives and of the destiny of this planet.

Mr. Sané, thank you very much for joining us and for discussing with us your life and your work. And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation with History.

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