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Mary Robinson Speaks to Fulbrighters |
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| I am very honored to be the recipient of the 1999 Fulbright Prize for
International Understanding. I am grateful to the Fulbright Association and the
members of the international committee for having selected me. In its short
life, the roster of recipients of the prize is a distinguished one. Indeed, it
is somewhat daunting to find myself in the company of such recipients as Nelson
Mandela, Jimmy Carter, and Václav Havel. |
| The Coca-Cola Foundation deserves credit for its sponsorship of the prize. This
is a welcome example of how the corporate world can contribute to raising
awareness of humanitarian issues. |
| The Fulbright Experience |
| This is not my first contact with the Fulbright Association. The Fulbright
Program of international educational and cultural exchange is, of course, very
well known and admired. Many young Irish women and men have benefited from the
scholarships awarded under the program, as have young people from all over the
world. Several years ago I spoke in New York at the 75th anniversary
celebrations of the Institute of International Education and I reflected on the
incalculable benefits which educational exchange programs confer on those who
experience them. Let me repeat something I said then: |
| The profound changes which are wrought in a young person’s intelligence when
they combine a change of environment with a learning process, are almost
impossible to measure. The Institute of International Education has continued
its marvelous program over 75 years using one flawless and changeless asset:
the openness and generosity and creative interest of young minds. New
friendships. New hopes. New perceptions of the world. These are the
products of those minds. |
| The Fulbright Scholarship Program and the award I am receiving today are named
after a man who belonged to a generation of exceptionally far-sighted
visionaries. The Fulbright Program began in the immediate aftermath of the
Second World War. Its genesis is to be found in the determination of idealistic
individuals to respond to the carnage of war, not with recriminations,
triumphalism, or revenge, but with altruistic programs designed to reduce the
likelihood of such conflicts repeating themselves. The late Senator Fulbright’s
initiative takes its place alongside that extraordinarily magnanimous action of
the United States — the Marshall Plan — and alongside another great visionary
achievement of that era — the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. |
| Eleanor Roosevelt |
| Here my thoughts inevitably turn to Eleanor Roosevelt. That remarkable woman
may not have been the “only begetter” of the Universal Declaration but she was
certainly its driving force. She matched her idealism with a practical approach
and unswerving determination. Her description of where human rights begin is
well known but is worth repeating as it tells us so much about what human rights
are and how they must be achieved: |
| Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to
home — so close and so small they cannot be seen on any maps of the world.
Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in,
the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works.
Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice,
equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights
have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerted
citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for
progress in the larger world. |
| Repeating them today, her words sound slightly dated with the references only to
“he,” but they are otherwise impeccable. |
| Through her work for the United Nations, Eleanor Roosevelt brought great credit
to her native country. To people around the globe she symbolized the
humanitarianism which was regarded as among the finest qualities of the United
States. It was recognized that she could not have succeeded if she had not
reflected the will of the American people to play a constructive role in
post-war Europe and in the world. There are lessons for us today from that era
when the United States played such an effective role in establishing a world
order under the auspices of the United Nations. |
| The Right to Education |
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| Those of you present who are students and alumni of the Fulbright Program are
fortunate. You have earned your places on the strength of your ability and hard
work but you are also privileged because education is so valuable and you have
had or are having access to the best education which can be found anywhere. As
you know, the word “education” comes from the Latin educere, meaning to draw
out, since the ancients believed that education had the power to draw out the
best that was in us. But education can draw out in other ways too; education
can draw people out from ignorance and poverty to a better life. It can draw
young people away from lives of violence, crime, and drug-taking, whether they
live in rich or poor countries. |
| Millions of people are not so fortunate as you. Millions are denied access to
education of any kind. There are 800 million functionally illiterate people in
the world. One hundred thirty million children have no access even to primary
education. A further 100 million children enroll in schools but drop out
without completing the four years considered the necessary minimum to ensure
permanent literacy. Children without education are usually found among the
poorest of the poor; they often face a future without even basic economic
security. |
| As in so many other ways, the system works particularly against girls: two
thirds of the children without access to any schooling are girls and a similar
proportion of adult illiterates are women. |
| The value of education for girls and women was well summed up by the executive
director of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Carol Bellamy: |
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| "Only education can equip girls with the confidence to make the most of their
abilities; provide a forum for changing attitudes about violence while
promoting equality; and help put young women on the path to economic
empowerment." |
| The right to education is one of the basic rights proclaimed in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and translated into binding international
obligations in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural
Rights and in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. It is one of the set
of rights we know as economic, social and cultural though it could be said to be
also, in many ways, a civil and political right since it is central to the
realization of all human rights. |
| Human Rights Education |
| I am happy to tell you that the award which has been given to me today will be
spent on a very worthwhile cause, the United Nations Decade for Human Rights
Education. The aim of the Decade is simple: it is to realize a universal
culture of human rights through human rights education, training, and public
information. Human rights education is a lifelong process by which people at
all levels of development and in all strata of society learn to respect and
defend the dignity of others. Human rights education means not only teaching
and learning about human rights but also for human rights, that is, empowering
individuals to fight for their own rights and the rights of others. |
| My office is carrying out a series of initiatives as part of the UN Decade for
Human Rights Education to increase awareness of the empowering effect of human
rights. One activity we are supporting is the translation of the Universal
Declaration into all the languages of the world — so far we have translated it
into 270 languages. Just as important are small-scale, local activities. I
will give you two examples of micro-projects under an initiative we are
developing with the United Nations Development Programme called “Assisting
Communities Together.” |
| In a remote district of Nepal, a region with neither roads nor electricity, Mr.
Rohit Kumar Gurung has been going around, mainly on foot, to visit 15 high
schools where he gives classes for senior students and teachers on aspects of
human rights with particular focus on the rights of women, children, and
oppressed social groups. At the district level he organized a workshop to
stimulate local officials and raise awareness amongst NGOs and the public.
In Burundi, copies of the Universal Declaration translated into the Kirundi
language have been distributed among women living in camps for displaced
persons. Audio cassettes of the Declaration were also produced and distributed
and a series of discussions were organized in the camps attracting around 200
women. |
| These are just two simple examples of grassroots activities which bear out the
truth of Eleanor Roosevelt’s saying that “human rights begin in small places,
close to home.” |
| Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights |
| In the two years since I was appointed United Nations high commissioner for
human rights, I have sought to emphasize the importance of economic, social and
cultural rights and the right to development. Although these are less well
known than civil and political rights, they are every bit as important in the
struggle to realize universal human rights. |
| Why? Because the human rights so many of us take for granted — freedom of
speech and religion, the right to a fair trial — cannot flourish where people
are deprived of access to food, to health care, to education. And that is the
lot of millions of people in the world. The problems of marginalization, of
extreme poverty, of economic and social imbalances both within and between
countries, are for the most part getting worse, not better. Over a billion
people, the majority of them women and children, live in extreme poverty. The
economic crises in Asia and Russia showed how precarious some economic advances
are. In sub-Saharan Africa incomes are actually lower than they were 30 years
ago. |
| One of the remarkable achievements of the United Nations human rights program in
recent years has been the emphasis given to the integration of human rights in
the development process and in the sharpening of practical approaches to the
realization of basic rights such as the right to food, health, education and
shelter. Cooperation between my office, the United Nations Development
Programme, the World Bank and specialized agencies has increased markedly.
The Commission on Human Rights in Geneva has mandated special rapporteurs to
look at economic and social fields such as education and foreign debt;
independent experts have been appointed to report on such issues as extreme
poverty and structural adjustment policies. All of these are indications that
the historic imbalance between the two sets of rights is being corrected and
that it is understood that all human rights must be equally championed and
defended. |
| Treaty Ratification |
| An immediate challenge is to secure universal ratification of all the principal
human rights treaties. The United States is one of only two countries not to
have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child; neither has it ratified
the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights nor the
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women.
I think that there are many misconceptions about perceived threats to national
sovereignty and the financial and legal implications of these instruments.
To take the Convention on the Rights of the Child as an example: the United
States has some of the best programs and laws in the world to protect its
children, but as UNICEF has pointed out, the U.S. also has one of the highest
rates amongst industrialized countries for poverty and hunger among children and
also for child mortality. |
| The Convention can assist countries by providing a comprehensive set of goals
and a framework for developing policy on children. The reporting requirement of
the Convention prompts governments to assess and report regularly on the
condition of the nation’s children and on plans for needed improvements. I
would urge the people of the United States to consider the many advantages which
would come from ratification, both nationally, by improving the recognition and
protection of children’s rights, and internationally, by enabling the United
States to continue to play its traditional, central role in the championing of
human rights. Similar arguments can be made in favor of the other treaties I
mentioned. |
| What more can be done? |
| Each of us, as individuals, shares the responsibility of promoting human rights.
Young people in particular, with their energy and enthusiasm, can contribute so
much: by organizing public events to raise awareness of human rights and
violations thereof; by making institutions aware of the importance of human
rights protection and promotion; by working in local community programs directed
to the protection of human rights; by participating in activities of human
rights organizations; by promoting the organization of formal and non-formal
education programs. |
| On the last point, I feel that there is a special responsibility on those who
receive the gift of education to share it with others. I mentioned earlier the
technology gap that has opened up. It is increasingly evident that, in the
future, new technologies, and information technologies in particular, will be
the keys to success. |
| I would like to offer a challenge to some of our young graduates — to use their
creativity and knowledge to devise ways of ensuring that these technologies are
accessible to everyone, rather than have people in some parts of the world left
without the access to communication and information which others take for
granted. |
| What more practical way could there be to promote universal human rights and
further honor the man whose legacy brings us here today than to remember his
commitment to increasing international understanding? |
| Thank you. |
| Presented Oct. 8, 1999 at a ceremony at the U.S. Department of State. |
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