Well, thank you very much, dear friends. I am really grateful to Professor McMillan,
to Martin Davidson and to my friend Les Bodell for the invitation to speak about the challenges facing human rights in the global year.
At the annual review of the Medal Lecture, Sergio's entire life was dedicated to the ideals of human rights and humanitarian work for him.
Freedom and human dignity were the foundations of peace and justice.
Sarah was courageous and compassionate, bold, but also pragmatic.
Often at the frontiers or the 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 walked.
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.
Part of my best book. This combination of vision, in fact, methods, flexibility,
the means and consistency only go from Cambodia to Bosnia, Rwanda to Kosovo, East Timor through Iraq.
Sarah came to meet with some of the most dreadful conflicts of the last decade.
By the way, I had been to Timor when Saddam was there, so I was the United Nations 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, but it's there.
In talking to everyone in Timor at that time, it was still very poor and it was unstable.
I was president, so it was impossible to receive me even more because without any hotel or the to to stay there.
So in order to offer me a lunch, we had to move to a board.
You see, it was there for a long time because of some sorts of means situation into war.
It is really something very impressive to see both generals moving ahead.
I went to see different place in Timor. I went to see schools in Timor,
to see priests in Timor and also over there for having made to try to convince the
people in beautiful because they were not able to speak Portuguese correctly.
They just have to adapt some sort of, you know, grammar in order to do easier.
The process of the process of educating Timor people, you do it to Portuguese.
And for me was wonderful because my wife was at the time very active in trying to, to, about to face the problem of illiteracy in Brazil.
And she creates an organisation named so that community solidarity and this organisation
was there Timor 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, to give you a lecture,
it's 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 because I sent from Cambodia to Bosnia, Rwanda, Kosovo, Kosovo,
East Timor said to give you some of the most dreadful conflict of the last decades.
Time and again, you was confronted with life in that question, for which there were no easy answers.
How to balance the obligation to protect the victims. We did the initiation 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 in 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, faced with massive human rights abuse and crimes against humanity.
It is legitimate to use force in the pursuit of peace.
Who felt that the way for walk or follow it to invent on this path the most appropriate set of ground rules.
Vision.
The international community technology that fragment in systematic violation of human rights are frequently the main cause of global insecurity.
It was also convincing that top down approach are bound to fail.
Outsiders can help. Many think moving expertise.
What is compelled pressure are important tools,
but no lasting outcome can be a thing without the empowerment of local leaders and the building of local capacities.
Human rights and democracy are human invention.
It is not a given, but because such rooted in the history and culture of each society, they are never defined all and for all other expression of.
Oman needs it as a result of human action.
Their frame is a work in progress, and Fincher brought new questions and demands a result of an ever evolving political and social landscape.
That is why I believe that addressing some of the key challenges from 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 multipolar and multicultural.
Hence the paradox. We are confronted.
We are confronted with how to ensure that respect for diversity does not lead to the uncritical sectors of religious fundamentalism.
How far the tolerance of intolerance can go without the beating itself?
What are the precious core values that must be safeguarded in any situation?
It is true that is those strict 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 public opinion debate plays a critical role in these debates.
It is no longer only to states and international organisations to set the standards.
The voice influencing the process of deliberation are the many and diverse.
This leads me to the second challenge facing human rights in the global bureau today,
both state and non-state actors are increasingly responsible for the violation 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 them.
This problem is compounded by the proliferation of failed states incapable or unwilling to control the actions not only of terrorist organisations,
but also to kerb the growing 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 institutions of democracy.
As I say to you, I belong to a group of people in Latin America, decided to organise a commission on former former presidents of Latin America.
And I thought a lot of it is social scientists and practitioners.
We decided to organise. And why?
Because of what I have just done wrong is undermining democracy is not just a problem of the drug 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 globally. Real people have a very similar situation.
If you go to Mexico, this maybe is worse is the kind of situation of despair when the government is to take the decision to fight further trafficking.
The government is losing the battle because the cartels are so well organised and so powerful and they have been destroyed so profoundly.
The government may. Communities and provinces that is extremely difficult to deal with with these kind of people.
On top of that, the crime has been also affected by the new wave of globalisation.
You know, this not just okay, it is organised through new instruments and use using the internet as more organisation.
It's going to speed them and regain their capacity to to survive again and again
and again because there are no more hierarchies as it has in the past as mafia.
You need that. Italy had a boss. No, no, it's different. There's no more national priority in that boss.
We can look at it. You know, criminal people can organise very, very easily by themselves, by using the same of that we are using now.
That is to say the way Internet and Google has here and there.
So it's still very difficult to talk to me without talking, not just in Latin America, across the world.
I think that because of that, the growing role of non-state actors is also an opportunity.
And so far 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, citizen groups and public opinion.
40 years ago,
reports denouncing torture against political prisoners in Brazil had been physically carried by members of the real Europe and the United States,
often at considerable risk. One of the most effective action promoted by Amnesty International was the saving by ordinary people freedom,
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 state to society and from vertical organisation to flexible networks.
Inform and empowering individuals also participate this free flowing conversation about what is admissible and what is not.
But the third challenge I must progress is the threat posed for the world's poor 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 of opportunities, transparency and security.
This vision contributed to the growing perception of acute poverty and expanding global asymmetries as a violation of basic human rights.
This question gained a new urgency in the 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,
Michelle Goldsberry and Robert Rubin warned against the threat of a response
to the crisis that does not become the needs of the world's poor or worse,
that results in more poverty, hunger, disease and illiteracy.
Indeed, what a tremendous setback for the cause of human rights is for people in both countries
work to pay the price for a crisis that they had no role to increase year again.
We are confronted with risk and opportunity.
Market fundamentalism has self-destructed in the same sudden and remarkable way that the Soviet Union melted in 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 then to create 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 because we are facing what was just beginning.
You have to see what will happen. I had the four day two days ago in New York.
The Election Day was there.
And I had the opportunity to have a conversation, 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 speaking of anyone. I don't want to believe anything.
It didn't help. Very important as a responsible people.
They just go and see the situation back home and the government.
We 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 then how the fundamental is, in able of remarks, 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 will have to do it to try several ways to solve the situation.
But at the end have two people because unemployment is coming,
because poverty certainly will increase across the board and those will have a lot to do with the financial crisis,
will pay a high price because of employment, because of the costs of a lot 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 markets.
You have to look at after societies, what they say, and you have to involve more people into the debate about what kind of future you went for.
That you use a strong word for mankind, not for each one of our countries, but 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 in social classes in mankind would be a kind of fake analysis of the real situation.
Now again, I think it's necessary to review that position for good because mankind exists that has been put together by buy,
by not just by market, but also by the communication process.
You have to have this at all levels of global interplay.
So we have to look after not just one nation, but have to all live 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 within society, not just have a sense of power to have more discussion board meetings, this is necessary.
It's not enough that the problem have to do two to do in an effort to create
new institutions or to invigorate the already existing these institutions,
but with a democratic spirit enlarging the possibility for different countries and people to have a say into the decision making process.
Because we cannot just accept what is now the case that only 1% of world power is taking decision.
That is to say, the government of United States.
If you look what happened in recent days, weeks and dates, the fact is the American treasury became a kind of central bank of central bankers.
What has been the Lord Keynes dream?
He was prevented to realise the dream because the American General Secretary at the time opposed to the King's ideas,
that is, you say the create a real central bank of central bank.
Suddenly you are seeing the Federal Reserve working as if the Fed of the would be the central bank of central banks.
I understand current days, but at long term this is not acceptable because it.
The of that is that from now on, my manager will have only one.
I will say this is not acceptable.
So that's what I'm trying to raise the bar, even if the financial side has to be face it from the perspective of mankind.
So for the protection of rights who have the power,
you have to do it to a large degree of the power of the process in order to avoid 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.
Otherwise, otherwise, otherwise. Those you are already commanding.
You can always seem to continue to commit. Anyhow, that's removed.
The other challenge I want to mention, and those are more specific.
What is linked to the questions of institutional justice affecting societies
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 that we knew.
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.
It is said, we live in fearful times and fear is the best 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 discussion in countries with legal traditions of the United States in that kingdom
about the effectiveness 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 constituent values.
This question is a powerful reminder of how fragile the conquests in the field of human
rights and how exposed is any country in 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 venom Internet torture as it is a crime against humanity,
because indulgence was a new start for it has been said.
See the United States in recent recent years did not is an acceptable.
The fact that they are discussing about the legitimacy of parties, he said, is unacceptable.
If this had been done in one minister of justice, they wrote a paper defending the circumstances.
It's possible it was in Stockholm and this factored in the approval 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 he has a signal that this one here I knew here is beginning.
I think that some symbolic, you know, 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 in transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule in recent 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 cases, however, the transition to democracy was a long process driven by manufacturers combining pressure
from civil society and the international community with power fatigue and economic hardship.
In both situations, the question of how to deal with basic processes has been the only issue for numerous solid democracies.
Different countries have chosen a different path, so we have opted for the points of retribution where unwilling immigrate,
forced to make concessions to safeguard the force there, their fragile democracy.
All those that tried to negate the wounds of the past were capable to heal their 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 being former head of state.
It's not easy. It's extremely difficult because the head of state,
even when the decision to do something that would have been through action or thought of being involved in.
In the past week, we've learned both of you are right and very often you negate the existence of
documents to before anything like this if you allow me in my my own experience once.
If some of you remember I was an MBA in Providence, the local federal police had been offered some flowers,
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.
I suppose responsible not for direct,
but the union and institutional benefits like all businesses in which you had to respond to be what you love today and sincerely.
One of them is so probably you are talking about people have access to the documents, but they are no more within our archives.
But probably from time to time some doctors up here,
but they are in the hands of those who have been involved with the practice of the war in official archives.
So the human rights movement is asking for let's open the archives.
All the archives are open but empty.
There's no documents, nothing. The same applies to the victims of our guerrilla war.
What are the borders, Robert, that keep people so people knows.
But the state as such has little register of all.
So it's a very embarrassing situation because even when the political decision has been made,
we don't have the instruments, you know, to still see the whole situation, so on and so forth.
Anyhow, something has to be done in our case was in time at the site of the war was for both of us in the society myself put the
desire by the Minister and have been put in prison by the media to look at that said I was performing not in my name.
The name of it was in the state and I tried to to make a kind of reconciliation.
So I said, I will do well.
Proposals from the operation for victims.
And I as well, the wife of one of these guys had been killed.
My lady 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 because they speak and reproduce the photographs with general and so on and so forth,
and you start the process of preparation and was going on and off.
It still continues. But anyhow, this is maybe not enough because those who have who family victims want more and they want to to
know why the body that was are it this you know it was simply difficult even when the the political
power is president so means are willing to to to give a more correct answer in other case to see
how attentive it is to more dramatic because the number of victims is discounted by a thousand.
But by then, as in Brazil or in Chile, and it doesn't kill the process too much or more difficult for the reconciliation.
Extremely difficult. Another situation like like in South Africa, the enormous it of symbolic action by Mandela and Tutu.
Bishop Tutu to create the instrument for reconciliation have worked to some extent any help.
I think it's important and necessary a great instrument to allow for a kind of reconciliation in order to,
as I said, to prevent a repetition of the atrocities. And in any case, you cannot deny that that atrocities existed.
And they are some responsible, even though they are not not in jail.
If when we have, as we have observed, an amnesty law, you cannot deny the fact that they were there and they were responsible for it.
Is the process of reconciliation is further enhanced 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 for 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 a final argument and debate are the means to build a consensus should be what is new and promising that says again.
Is enlargement of the act of participating in the process of deliberation.
The best for God for human rights is essentially of a global culture of participation and responsibility.
This belief was the foundation of Sergio Vieira de Mello life, and he was 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. They speak by themselves. The question is,
are we capable of losing this group that was inspired by Sergio's ultimate sacrifice and
that of the brave men and woman fighting in the attack against United Nations compound?
Thank you very much.