Text of Shirin Ebadi's speech - UNITAR

— check against delivery —
Speech by Ms. Shirin Ebadi on universality of human rights
on the occasion of the second edition of the Geneva Lecture Series
Ladies and gentlemen,
Geneva, 10 December 2008
On this sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I
congratulate you and all human rights defenders. I thank you for giving me the
opportunity to address you.
Sixty years ago, thinkers gathered in the hope of creating a better world, of
introducing an international standard for how to live together. States committed
themselves to guarantee the rights and freedoms contained therein for their
peoples. Although progress has been made in the field of human rights, we still
see many instances of human rights violations in most parts of the world.
I do not have time to enumerate all the reasons for lack of total or satisfactory
progress on human rights in the world but would note that the following are
among the most important.
Some people believe that human rights principles were established on the basis
of Western, and particularly European, standards and are not compatible with
their national or religious culture. Most non-democratic Islamic governments use
this reasoning. They declare that the government draws its legitimacy from
religion, not from public opinion, and so must defend the Islamic Shari’a rather
than the will of the people. In these States, Islam is simply what the
government declares to be its own ideology; the interpretation or appreciation of
the Islamic Shari’a by other Muslims is null and void. Accordingly, any criticism
of the government’s action in terms of human rights violations, including
religious or gender-based discrimination, or denial of freedom of expression, is
treated as criticism of Islam itself: human rights defenders are silenced by being
accused of heresy.
Muslim intellectuals, drawing on reasoning which emanates from religion itself,
have demonstrated that Islam is not incompatible with human rights. These
enlightened Muslims – whose voices are being heard more and more often in all
Muslim countries – have challenged the dictatorships which misuse the name of
religion to further their own agenda and oppress their people.
Here I should add that the 19 th meeting of Islamic Foreign Ministers, held in
Cairo in 1990, saw the adoption of the Islamic Declaration of Human Rights, to
which most Muslim countries have acceded. There is no problem if we see this
as a means for Muslim countries to implement the Universal Declaration, but if
they seek to set it against the Universal Declaration and say they are following
the Islamic Declaration rather than the Universal Declaration, they have chosen
the wrong path. If Muslims say they are entitled to draw up a separate
declaration on the basis of their religion, then they must accept that the
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followers of other religions are similarly entitled, for example, to draft a Jewish
Human Rights Declaration, a Buddhist Human Rights Declaration, and thousands
more. This is not the right way to go. The world cannot be run on the basis of
its myriad religions. We have to take the principles that all agree on as our
premise, not the principles in which only we believe.
The surprising point is that it is not only non-democratic Islamic States which
resort to such arguments. Governments which do not believe in God and whose
intellectual basis lies in Communism are often not prepared to accept and apply
the principles of human rights. These States assert that human rights are built
on a set of values established under a capitalist regime and are not
commensurate with socialist values. They therefore allow themselves to trample
on people’s rights and forcefully to stifle any voice of dissidence. Obviously, their
claims too are false. Socialism is not incompatible with freedom of expression.
Communism is not equivalent to despotism; it is dictatorships that interpret and
apply Communism in this way. In fact, both belief in God and atheism are used
as excuses for the oppression of people.
Another obstacle to progress in human rights over the past 60 years has been
the weak performance of the United Nations, and specifically its human rights
mechanism, now known as the Human Rights Council. At the time the United
Nations Charter was drafted, there was excessive optimism that – if not all –
most governments would be supported and elected by their peoples and would
thus, representing their peoples, investigate cases of human rights violations.
However, as we have seen, many governments are not really elected by their
peoples and do not take the decisions sought by the public. How can one expect
countries which continuously and repeatedly violate human rights to condemn
another country for precisely this reason? In this way, the scales of human
rights have lost their balance. The cooperation of NGOs is essential if we are to
overcome this problem, and by this I mean NGOs which are really created and
run by the people, not by governments. When considering complaints or the
case of a particular country, NGOs should be able to participate in meetings,
make recommendations and, where appropriate, also join in voting. It is time
for us to put our trust in the people and for the United Nations to bring in the
real representatives of the people in the form of civil society.
One other reason for lack of progress on human rights is the way they are used
as a tool. Some States have misused the cause of human rights and democracy
to advance their own political aims. This applies to events in the Middle East,
particularly since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the cold war.
Another point is that the United Nations and other international bodies have so
far been focussed more on the promotion of civil and political rights than on
economic rights. This negligence has been one of the reasons for the spread of
poverty throughout the world. In this connection, I propose that an
“International Convention to Combat Poverty” be drawn up and presented to the
United Nations General Assembly for adoption. The most important point to be
addressed in this Convention would be to encourage States to reduce their
military spending. Appropriate means must be devised to ensure that public
funds in every country are spent on welfare rather than the purchase and
stockpiling of weapons. The Convention could provide that any Contracting State
must not spend more on the military than on health and education; if a State’s
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military budget were to be higher than that for health and education, it would not
qualify for loans or other benefits; for example, the World Bank could not lend to
it. Under the Convention, where a country is unable to pay off its foreign debts,
if it were to dissolve its army and use only the police force for law and order,
most or all of its debts could be forgiven. In this way, small and poor countries
would be encouraged to buy fewer arms, and another effect would be to reduce
cases of internal warfare. I know that such ideas – at a time of universal
turbulence, with the arms race at dangerous levels – may sound like dreams; but
our challenge here today is to think in terms of dreams while acting realistically.
The fight against terrorism and the preservation of national security have also
been used as a pretext in recent years for systematic human rights violations.
Some States have used the excuse of national security to undermine individual
freedoms while augmenting their own power. We must consider how to devise a
mechanism which extends individual security rather than national security.
This dangerous weapon – the ability to use national security as an excuse to
stifle and repress the people - must be taken away from all governments,
particularly those which are not chosen by their country’s people. Let us recall
once again the message in the preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights: peace and security can be ensured only by the observance of human
rights.
I thank you for listening patiently to what I had to say.
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