PARIS: As the new Secretary General of Amnesty International, Pierre Sane should in theory feel hopeful about an upcoming World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, seeing it as an opportunity to promote just the kind of causes that his organization has long defended.
But less than two months before delegations from 180 countries gather for the first such conference in 25 years, Mr, Sane is pessimistic. “There’s a real danger of a retreat in the defense of human nights,” he said. “If we manage to preserve the status quo, we will have achieved a lot.”
The aims of the conference are to ASSESS progress since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human state warning them that universal human rights could be under mined in Vienna.
“It’s not surprising that governments are not overenthusiastic,” said the 45yearold Senegalese, who assumed his post last October. “After all, they are the ones violating human rights.”
The Vienna forum is crucial, he said because it will be the first global human rights conference since the end of the cold war. “Ten years ago, the world was simple we had good guys and bad guys,” he said in an interview. “Now the East West confrontation has been replaced by a multiplication of local conflicts.”
Even more disturbing, he said, many Asian and African governments are trying to redefine human rights away from political and civil rights and toward economic and social rights, contending in effect that development is a greater priority than Western style liberties are for poor counties,
Sane rejects that argument, and he does so with the authority of a man who knows both worlds. Ayheads of political scientist educated “in Rights Center only half that of
France, Britain and Canada, he worked in Nairobi, Kenya, before becoming the first citizen of a third world nation to serve as head of the London based group.
“The issue is not whether torture is more important than starvation,” he said. “You cannot choose. You can’t reduce the debate to torture versus starvation, Human rights are universal and indivisible.”
At a preparatory meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, this month, 50 Asian nations warned the West not to use human rights as an “instrument of political pressure.” At a similar meeting last November, African countries stressed that the right to development is inalienable,” Sane said that many Asian countries with rapidly growing economies suspect the West of trying to hold back their development.
Africa’s response is more direct, he said, He said those countries generally reply, “We’ll do what you want, but you have to give us the money.”
With the $8 million annual bud get of the United Nations Human
Amnesty itself, Sane said more money is needed to defend human rights. “The problem is that, while the West wants to stop all these unpleasant sights on television, it is not prepared to pay,” he added.
During the run up to Vienna, then, Sane plans to use his position as head of the world’s largest human rights organization, with 1.1 million members in about 150 countries, to stir Western interest in the conference, After a meeting here last week with President Francois Mitterrand, he will visit Washington this week for meetings in Congress.
“The lack of interest is disappointing,” he said. “Two months before the environmental conference in Rio de Janeiro last year, there was all sorts of mobilization, Now there’s silence.”
Hoping the conference will not be wasted, Amnesty has made its own proposals, including the appointment of a United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, to enable the United Nations 10 respond quickly and independently when rights are massively violated.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 30, 1993
