Well, thank you very much, dear friends. I am really grateful to Professor McMillan,
to Martin Davidson and to my friend Martin Bithell for the invitation to speak about the
challenges facing human rights in the global year at the annual Sergio Vieira de Mello Lecture.
Sergio's entire life was dedicated to the ideals of human rights and humanitarian work for whom freedom and human dignity were.
The foundations of peace and justice served was courageous and compassionate, bold but also pragmatic.
Often at the frontiers or front lines.
But always taking the side of the weak. The vulnerable.
The powerless. Uncompromising in his principles, but with a gift for listening and learning from those you're working with.
And he had the capacity to combine a maximum flexibility in dealing with the
complexities of real life situations with a strong commitment to basic values.
This allowed him to stand on the side of the victims while taking to all the parties.
We. Perhaps this is a close.
So this is as close as one can get to being a practitioner of what I could call the art of politics as a part of my next book.
This combination of vision, in fact matters.
Flexibility, the means and consistency only goes from Cambodia to Bosnia, Rwanda to Kosovo, East Timor, Iraq.
I several came to meet with some of the most dreadful copies of the last decade.
By the way, I have been to Timor when I was there, so I was to see this representative.
It was really something very impressed to see this man.
Has it been said by men of cancer?
A beautiful man and totally devoted? It was focussed there and talking to everyone in Timor at that time.
It was still very cool and to do it was unstable.
I was yet president so it was impossible to receive me any more because without any hotel or the centre to stay there.
So in order to offer me loans, we had to move to a war.
It was there for a long time because of sorts of reasons, the situation into war.
It is really something very impressive to see home schedules moving ahead.
I went to a different place in Timor. I went to see schools in Timor,
to see priests in Timor and also there for having me to try to judge Portuguese
people in future more because they were not able to speak Portuguese correctly.
They just have to adapt from some, you know, grammar in order to preserve the process of the process of educating few more people into Portuguese.
And that for me was wonderful because my wife was at the time very active in trying to talk to and to face the problem of illiteracy in Brazil.
And she created an organisation named something like that, a community solidarity,
and this organisation was there to try trying to also to help what has been done in several old time there.
So to me is not just something that I'm saying because I have to give you a lecture,
but something that they feel profoundly because I thought the health service was
capable to motivate people and to take the leadership in very difficult situations.
So let me say to you that you are the central convoy.
The two boards are one, of course, Kosovo, East Timor, 17, to give you some of the most dreadful conflict of the last decades,
with time and again, you are confronted with life in that question for which there were no easy answers.
How to Balance the Obligation to Protect the victims. We did a session of human rights violations.
What kinds of compromise are or are not acceptable to minimise human suffering?
At what point pragmatism becomes complacency?
We the inseparable.
When is dialogue no longer an option and the aggressor has to be engaged despite the risk that in the short term the level of violence may increase.
How to define this moment in which face with the massive human rights abuse and crimes against humanity.
It is legitimate to use force in the pursuit of peace.
Several felt that the way for war was always to invent on the spot the most appropriate set of ground rules.
Georgia International Community Technology that fragment in systematic violation of human rights are frequently the main cause of global insecurity.
It was also convinced that top down approach are bound to fail.
Outsiders can help. Many think moving expertise, political pressure are important tools,
but no lasting outcome can be attained without the empowerment of local leaders and the building of local capacities.
Human rights and democracy are human inventions.
It is not a given, but the structure rooted in the history and culture of each society, they are never defined all and for all other expression of.
Human needs it as a result of human action.
Their frame is a work in progress, and Fincher brought in new questions and demands the result of an ever evolving political and social landscape.
That is why I believe that addressing some of the key challenges for human rights in today's
world is a fitting way to pay tribute to the ideals that inspired Sergio Vieira de Mello life.
I will focus on five critical challenges.
The first one, and perhaps the most complex of all, is the tension between universal human rights and respect for cultural and religious diversity.
Human rights are universal, interlinked and indivisible.
But the world is more than ever before and multicultural.
Hence the paradox we are confronted with.
We are confronted with how to ensure that respect for diversity does not lead to the uncritical scepticism of religious fundamentalism.
How far the tolerance of intolerance can go without revealing itself?
What are the precious core values that must be safeguarded in any situation?
It is true that is not a straight answer to these questions, but it is also true that the international community,
through dialogue and debate, has been for a minimum set of standards.
I think we can safely say at this point that this emerging consensus about what is clearly an acceptable encompasses for crimes against humanity,
like ethnic cleansing or the use of famine as a weapon of war.
Second, atrocities like the systematic use of torture against political opponents to the
indiscriminate violence against the civilian population in situations of armed conflicts.
The point I would like to stress is that the global political debate plays a critical role in these debates.
It is no longer a only two states, an international organisation to set the standards.
The voice influencing the process of the elimination are the many and diverse.
This leads me to the second challenge facing human rights in the global future.
Today, both state and non-state actors are increasingly responsible for the violations and the promotion of human rights.
These are challenges and an opportunity for the cause of human rights.
A challenge because it is much more difficult for the international community to
protect the victims of atrocities perpetrated by loosely organised network such as.
Okay.
This problem is compounded by the proliferation of failed states incapable or unwilling to control the actions not only of terrorist organisations,
but also the kerb going power of global organised crime.
In today's Latin America, for example, drug related crime is no longer a problem for police and courts.
It is a direct challenge to governments and societies.
The rising power of the drug mafias and cartels is destroying not only the lives of our young people.
They also tearing apart the social fabric and undermining to violence and corruption the most basic principles of democracy.
As I said to you, I belong to a group of people in Latin America who decided to organise a commission on the three former presidents of Latin America.
And a lot of it is social scientists, practitioners.
We decide to organise a commission.
And why? Because of what I have said. Just nothing wrong is undermining democracy is not just a problem of blood by itself and police.
It's also a political problem. If you look across the region, it's not just Colombia.
Colombia's families, but not just below any real people, have a very similar situation.
If you go to Mexico, it's maybe worse in a kind of situation of despair.
When the government take the decision to fight of trafficking,
the government is losing the battle because the cartels are so well organised and so
powerful and they have been so profoundly involving the been made in local communities,
in provinces. That is extremely difficult to deal with with this kind of people.
On top of that, the crime has been also affected by the new wave of globalisation.
You know, this not just of either is organised to get the new instruments and use using internet as more organisation.
It's going to speed them in regaining their capacity to to to survive again and
again and again because they are no more hierarchy as it has in the past as mafia.
You need that. He had a boss. No, no, it's different. There's no more priority in a boss.
We can, you know, criminal people can organise very, very easily by themselves, by using the same tools that we are using.
How that is to say. The Wet Internet and you could organise it here and there.
So it's very difficult to talk to me without putting not just in Latin America, across the world.
Anyhow, I think that because of that,
the growing role of non-state actors is also an opportunity so far as so many more voices are being heard in the defence of human rights.
They range from organisations with great legitimacy such as Amnesty, Amnesty International, to a rising role played by a wide variety of new actors.
Spirit and civic and civic leaders sits in groups in public.
40 years ago,
reports denouncing torture against political prisoners in Brazil had been physically carried by members of the real war Europe and the United States,
often at considerable risk. One of the most effective action promoted by Amnesty International, or the saving by ordinary people freedom.
The Letters for torture, responsible for the mistreatment of political prisoners.
Information today is a common public good.
Click in the Internet data to flow all over the web.
Power is shifting from states to society and from vertical organisation to flexible networks,
enforcement and empowering individuals also participate in this great, free, free flowing conversation about what is admissible and what is not.
The fifth. The third challenge is progress. Is it correct or is it?
We was fooled by the global economic crisis that is upon us with this concept of development as an expansion of freedom.
Amartya Sen called attention to the interconnection between political freedom, economic empowerment, full of opportunities, transparency and security.
This vision contributed to the growing perception of extreme poverty and expanding global activities as a violation of basic human rights.
This question gained a new urgency in face of the growing impact of the current financial meltdown.
It is essential to prevent the corrosion of the great progress achieved in the last decade in terms of getting millions out of poverty.
In an article published two weeks ago, two weeks ago in the Financial Times, Kofi Annan,
Michele Clichy and Robert Rubin warned against the threat of a response to the crisis.
That does not the goal the needs of the world's fault or worse, that results in more poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy.
Indeed, what a tremendous setback for the cause of human right is for people in poor
countries to pay the price for a crisis that they have no role to increase.
Here again, we are confronted with risk and opportunity.
Market fundamentalism has self-destructed in the same sudden and irrevocable way that the Soviet Union melted through the air.
The reckless pursuit of profit at any cost has brought to that end.
It is time to ask ourselves, what are the real foundations of social science?
What is quality of life? And what are the needs and values that should Oriental collective behaviour?
Unusual circumstances tend to create the rare opportunities.
Conditions are ripe for the emergence of a new global contract, driven by a different mindset with freedom, dignity and human rights at its core.
Everyone knows what's going to happen. We do it as a consequence of the financial crisis.
But we are facing what was just beginning. You have to see what will happen.
I have been to Dayton two days ago in New York and Election Day was there.
And I had the opportunity to have a conversation or a dialogue with several people involved with the financial area in the United States.
They don't know what to do. They don't know what will happen.
I'm not speak of anyone. A lot of people, depending upon how very important, is very responsible people.
There's just no one thing. The situation is bad and the government will need governmental support.
So it's one thing to see how these people have been so enthusiastic with free markets.
I'm not against, but they know the fundamentals in favour of free markets produce this kind of, you know, situation of despair.
They don't know what to do. And I doubt if anyone is going to be capable now to say what to do.
Probably they will have to do it to try several ways to solve it situation.
But at the end have to people because unemployment is coming because poverty seven
will increase across the board and those who have not to do with the financial
crisis will pay a high price goes up unemployment because of the cost of commodities
because of the lack of of different opportunities to solve the situation.
And this is also a problem that cannot be solved just by looking after the market.
You have to look at our society, what I said, and involve more people into the debate about what kind of future we went for,
that there was a strong war for mankind, not for each one of our countries, for mankind, because because of globalisation.
Now again, suppose we speak about mankind in a different way.
When I remember what has been said by Marx that you cannot use the concept of mankind,
because what is true is social process in mankind would be a kind of fake analysis of the real situation.
Now again, I think it's necessary to review for that position for good, because mankind exists.
That has been put together by, by, but not just by market, but also by the communication process that you have in all of global interplay.
So we have to look after not just one nation, but have to all get together.
This will require an enormous effort to some extent to rebuild the world order.
Probably will have to start by trying to have a new sense of power,
but then with interest and not just have a sense of power to have more discussion, more meetings.
This is necessary, but it's not enough.
What we have to do to to do in an effort to create new institutions or to invigorate the already existing these institutions with a democratic spirit,
enlarging the possibilities for different countries and people to have a say in the decision making process,
because we cannot just accept what is involved.
You need only one sense of what power is taking decision.
That is to say the government of United States.
If you look what happened in recent days, weeks and days.
The fact is the American treasury became a kind of central bank of central banks.
What has been the Lord Keynes dream?
And he was prevented to realise the dream because the American Treasury Secretary at the time opposed to the King's ideas,
that is to say, to create a real central bank of central bank.
Suddenly you are seeing the Federal Reserve working as if there will be the central bank of central banks.
I understand it. In current days I thought long term this is not acceptable because.
The means of that is that from now on, the men's will have only one girl at all and say, this is not acceptable.
So that's what I'm trying to raise, the fact that even the financial strength has to be face it from the perspective of mankind.
So for the Prefect of rights who have the power,
you have to do it to a large degree of the empowerment process in order to avoid the additional asymmetries as a consequence of financial crisis.
I know that's very difficult, but we all like to think straight.
I think someone has to try and hope nowadays imagine a better world.
And this is not just about one person. This is also a collective, you know, we have otherwise wrong.
Otherwise, those who are already commanding you can always seem to continue to commit anyhow that you move like the other little gems.
I want to mention it and those are more specific.
What is linked to the questions of the transitional justice affecting society
where the rule of law was restored after long periods of authoritarianism?
The other has to do with the threats to civil liberties raised by the war on terror.
Let me you first with the question that has deeply affected some of the most advanced democracies since the events of 911.
Reflecting on the growing restrictions imposed on the rule of law in the name of civil needs, Sergio Vieira de Mello sounded the alarm.
This said, We live in fearful times and fear is a bad advice.
Who would have imagined eight, ten years ago that the world was about to witness a resurgence in the use of torture as a state voice?
In the end, the steady erosion of basic civil rights in the name of the war on terror is one of the saddest developments in the field of human rights.
In the discussion discussing the country's legal tradition,
the United States left info about the executive branch of torture is a telling example of how fast human progress can be stopped.
In my view, democracy will not lose war against global terrorism unless it is sacrificed in the process its most precious and constitutional values.
This question is a powerful reminder of how fragile are the conquests in the field of
human rights and how exposed is any country in a time of crisis to authoritarian relapses?
But hopefully one of the first acts of Barack Obama as president of the United
States will be to close down the bone in torture as it is a crime against humanity.
Because intelligence is a historical fact has been said.
See, the United States in recent years did not is unacceptable.
This is not the fact that we are discussing about the legitimacy of partners.
It's is that the virus is unacceptable. And this had been done in one hand.
The Minister of Justice wrote the paper defending the circumstances.
It is possible to use torture and this has to be approved by the government.
So this is unacceptable. We'll have to go back in the hole.
I sincerely hope that Obama will have the energy and the capacity,
the energy to be able to take a courageous act and to close the bunker because it has a signal that this one here I knew here is beginning.
I think that some symbolic moments have to be taken very that if you want to rebuild the basis for a better society.
My last point has to do with the conflicting demands between peace and justice,
truth and reconciliation into decisions for an authoritarian to democratic rule.
You recently saw history.
We have some examples of the use and sudden collapse of authoritarian regimes, usually in the aftermath of failed military adventures.
This has been the case of Portugal, Greece and Argentina.
In most case, however, the transition to democracy was a long process,
driven by manufacturers buying pressure from civil society and the international community with power fatigue and economic hardship.
Oh, in both situations, the question of how to deal with basic this.
Has been the attorney issue for newly restored democracies.
Different countries have chosen a different path. So we had opted for the points of retribution.
I mean, we may be forced to make concessions to safeguard the force there for fragile democracy.
All of us have tried to negate the wounds of the past, were incapable to heal societies gradually.
The notion of truth as a precondition for peace and reconciliation has emerged as an alternative
to either outright impunity or the punishment of the many guilty of human rights abuse.
Some measures of reparation for the victims is an indispensable component of the healing process.
This requires, at the very least,
that the State take the lead in conducting a full investigation and sheds light on violations committed by its agents.
This is also the best way to prevent the repetition of these atrocities.
I'm also avoiding the former head of state.
It's. It's extremely difficult because the head of state, even when the decision to do something or have immediate reaction,
although I've been involved in it in the past with violations of human rights and
very often you negate the existence of documents or before anything like this,
if you allow me in my my own experience once some of you remember was an entire province of the local federal police had been
in office and thought there's some documents about how one former regional leader was killed and with four photographs,
one for one and so forth. And this man's wife, too.
So I call it no, I suppose responsible not for that, but the human situational benefit.
No. Michael Vincent, in which you had to respond to me.
What? Lots of them and sincerely one of them is so that probably you are talking about people who have access to documents,
but they are no more within our archives. But probably from time to time some doctors do appear,
but they are in the hands of those who have been involved with the effects of the war in official archives.
So the human rights movement is asking for let's open the archives and all the archives are open but empty.
No documents, nothing. The same applies to the victims of our guerrilla war.
What are the borders, Robert, that keep people so people knows that the state as such has little registers at all.
So it's a very embarrassing situation. But even when a political decision has been made, we don't have the instruments,
you know, to to us to see the whole situation, so on and so forth, anyhow.
Something has to be done. In our case, it was in time at the site of the war was for the residents or so I think myself
put the desire above immediate and have been put in prison by the Minister.
That said, I was performing not in my name.
The name of it was in the state and I tried to make a kind of reconciliation.
So I said, I will do well.
Proposals from the operation for victims.
And I ask, what do.
The wife of one of the guys had been killed by me, was a friend of mine and she was also my friend.
They came to my office, she came to my office and the military chief of staff of general was there.
And as I say, we both have been very emotional with the situation, but they speak and reproduce the photographic general and so on and so forth,
and we start the process of reparation and this was going on and off.
It still continues. But anyhow,
this is maybe not enough because those who have family victims want more and they want to know why the body that was these are this you know,
it was so difficult even when the the political power this president so means are willing to do to give
more answer in other cases to see how attentive it is to more dramatic because the number of victims is.
Contact by thousand 500, as in Brazil or in Chile, and genetically process too much or more difficult for the reconciliation is very difficult.
In other situations, like in South Africa, the enormous set of symbolic action by Mandela and Tutu.
Bishop Tutu, to create the instrument for reconciliation have worked to some extent any hope?
I think it's important and necessary to create instruments to allow for a kind of reconciliation in order to,
as I said, to prevent the repetition of the atrocities.
And in any case, you cannot deny that the atrocities existed in the eyes of some responsible, even if they are not in jail.
If when we have, as we have observed, an evidence at all.
You cannot deny the fact that they were there and they were responsible for this.
The process of reconciliation is further intensive.
When perpetrators or members of warring factions acknowledge in their deeds and ask for some kind of forgiveness from their victims,
does the power of the fold difficult? Say truth.
So set you free was put to the test and probably more accurate than ever.
I think it's time to go. The common thread running through this inventory of challenges is that for each and every issue,
there is not an easy, simple or definitive answer to be found.
Argument and debate are the means to build a consensus about what is new and promising.
It says again, is enlargement of the act, of participating in the process of deliberation.
The best of God for human rights is the strengthening of a global culture of participation and responsibility.
This belief was the foundation of Sergio Vieira de Mello life, an individual once asked whether,
as a survivor of Auschwitz, he spoke for those who had died in the concentration camps.
His answer was Nobody who speaks for the dead.
They speak, but they speak by themselves. The question is,
are we capable of losing this spirit that was inspired by Sergio's ultimate sacrifice and that of
the brave men and woman fighting in the attack against the United Nations compound in Pakistan.
Thank you very much.