Navanethem Pillay. Official Portrait by UN.
By Steven Van Hoogstraten.
The former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African jurist Ms Navy Pillay, gave an impressive key note speech at the opening session of the conference of the International Law Association (ILA) in Johannesburg on 8 August 2016.
The ILA is the worldwide body of professional international lawyers, with membership in academia and the judiciary as well as among practising lawyers. The theme of this biennial conference was “Is there a North-South divide?”. In her speech, Ms Pillay, a former judge at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, reflected on her human rights work for the United Nations. She said that the essence of her work in Geneva had been “to give a voice to victims”.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights is the most translated document in the world, she said, a document which is the expression of all important universal values and norms. Pillay spoke out against cultural relativism or a departure from these values and norms. This is an approach advocated by some states. Human rights form a truly universal standard, she explained; a standard that defines the results to be achieved in no uncertain terms. Each state may take the necessary steps in accordance with its own legal practices, but the level of protection of human rights should be one and indivisible, she emphasized.
Ms Pillay observed that socio-economic rights such as the right to health, the right to food and the right to education are mistakenly seen by some states as mere “aspirations” and not as true “rights”. She argued strongly for their character as rights in the classical human rights sense (also called civil and political rights), and noted that progress in many countries in the field of protecting human rights was due to the political and practical significance of these economic and social rights.
She also applauded the important contributions to the attainment of human rights made by NGOs, journalists, opposition groups, academics and the judiciary. The universal methods of review by the Human Rights Council form the guarantee that each and every state is submitted to a critical appraisal, according to a rigorous but fair method. Ms Pillay added that no state ever has a perfect record; there is always room for improvement.
In her time as High Commissioner for Human Rights (2008-2014), Ms Pillay had decided to follow the practice of openly identifying and naming countries with a significantly below-par human rights record, even if the nations of the “North and West” had advised her not to do so. She started off with three negative cases and ended up after her six years in office with 58 named situations or countries with significant violations of human rights. She felt that this form of naming and shaming was an effective instrument for bringing about improvements, next to more formal procedures of review in human rights treaty bodies. Ms Pillay’s full speech is available upon request.
