Lake Geneva

Music

00:00

Davis:  This is the place where the world descends to debate human rights violations in its far-flung corners. As removed from the victims of abuse as it's possible to be - supremely affluent, picturesque and European headquarters of that great contradiction in terms -- the United Nations --the organisation everyone knows is anything but.

00:10

Music

Areal shot of Palais Nations

Davis:  The Palais Nations they call it --Palace of Nations -- the sprawling United Nations complex by the shores of Lake Geneva. It's the gathering place of the UN Human Rights Commission - an even bigger oxymoron, it seems, than the UN itself, for its critics say it stands for no such thing.

00:42

United Nations chambers

Davis:  Into this chamber for just a few weeks each year, the 53 Commission members gather to consider human rights violations. Yet as we'll see tonight, it's been infiltrated by many of the abusers themselves, who in turn abuse the system and mock their many victims.

01:09

Robinson in chambers

Robinson:  I have at times been an awkward voice, even on occasion for my colleagues within the United Nations, as well as for some governments.

01:26

Davis:   The one saving grace has been a person of great integrity in the job of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the former Irish President Mary Robinson. But as this year's gathering got under way,  Mrs Robinson dropped a bombshell - she was quitting.

01:36

Robinson:  This has not been an easy decision to make and I know that it's one that may surprise and perhaps disappoint many. I know some will feel that I should have sought to continue working from within the United Nations and I ask them to respect my decision. I believe that I can, at this stage, achieve more outside the constraints that a multilateral organisation inevitably imposes.

01:52

Davis:  It was diplo-speak for I've had enough and I'm out of here, the UN's chief human rights advocate making it plain the job was as hollow as the organisation itself.

02:14

Applause

Davis:  You were respected, even revered on the world stage, why would you take a job like this?

02:28

Robinson

Robinson:   I think I've always had a sense that human rights was at the centre of what I wanted to do.

Davis:  In this program, Mary Robinson speaks out about her decision to quit.

Robinson:  I do feel anger and frustration quite often and it's anger that we're not doing more.

02:46

Davis:  How she was talked out of it for the moment by Kofi Annan - the UN Secretary General.

Robinson:  He persuaded me to stay.

02:58

Davis:  But that she's leaving anyway to continue the struggle elsewhere.

Robinson:  I've committed for a further year from September, and I think then that I would like to change to the other side and still work for human rights as somebody who's had the experience and honour of being on the inside.

03:09

Davis:  So you will leave?

Robinson:  ...but who can choose issues and I -- that's my current intention, yes.

03:22

Music

Palais Nations

Davis:  The answer to why the world community is losing such a distinguished advocate lies here, inside the labyrinthine corridors of the Palais Nations and the nearby Palais Wilson, named after the American President who founded the League of Nations and where Mary Robinson has her office.

Music

Palais Wilson

Davis:   They're the European arm of the main UN headquarters across the Atlantic in New York - bastions all of the UN bureaucracy - arguably the most entrenched and pampered workforce ever assembled.

03:55

Robinson

Davis:  How frustrating do you find the bureaucracy and the double speak that exists in this organization?

04:13

Super:

Mary Robinson

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner

Robinson:   Pretty frustrating I have to say. Pretty frustrating and unnecessarily cumbersome and it's something that has to be addressed.

Robinson in chambers

Davis:  This is invariably a world of waffle, where plain speaking is frowned on, language is only prized when obtuse, and where due process triumphs over decisive action.

04:35

Yet while the UN bureaucracy has succeeded in defeating many a recruit, the real problem lies with the member states who permit its excesses and use the UN and its various components for their own ends.

Robertson

Super:

Geoffrey Robertson

Human Rights Lawyer

Robertson:  The Human Rights Commission comprises 50 states who don't appoint independent experts. They appoint their own diplomats who aren't experts at all except in keeping states protected from human rights allegations. So you have a body that is rife with politicking, a body that has been a disastrous failure over the years because the worst human rights violators, or some of them, have got the numbers.

05:06

Weschler

Super:

Joanna Weschler

Human Rights Watch

Weschler: In the year 2000 we had a particularly preposterous set of members that came in.

05:36

Davis:  Like who?

Weschler:  They included Algeria, Syria, Vietnam, Democratic Republic of Congo, some of the leading violators suddenly became members of that body.

05:44

Kirkpatrick

Super:

Jeanne Kirkpatrick

Former U.S. Ambassador. U.N.

Kirkpatrick:  Libya and Iran and Iraq and Sudan, you know, become the arbiters of human rights. That's Orwellian, that's doing the opposite for which the institution, the commission was established.

05:54

Davis:  Yeah, putting Dracula in charge of the blood bank.

Kirkpatrick:  Right exactly, exactly. This is exactly right.

06:14

Archival Footage:

Chinese Military in Tibet

Music

06:16

Davis:   Consider for instance, the brutal suppression by the Chinese of the people of Tibet.

Music

Davis:   China claims, against all the evidence, that it doesn't have a human rights problem. But avert your eyes now if you don't want to see what's coming up next -- equally rare and graphic footage of a mass execution.

06:40

Just how many people die in this way is a state secret. Couple this with allegations of torture, plus repression across a broad front, and it's clear China's violations are serious. Yet as we'll see, it cynically manipulates the Human Rights Commission to avoid criticism by bullying and buying off much of the rest of the world.

Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick:  I feel badly about China you know. I mean like almost everyone else, I find much to admire and like in the Chinese, and I think they have a really disappointingly bad government which is not getting better. Maybe even getting worse.

07:20

Davis:  Jeanne Kirkpatrick, former US ambassador to the UN.

Davis:   You're talking here about the Tibetans.

Kirkpatrick:  Precisely which is appalling and is not ameliorated at all. I've had just recently a most dreadful report out of Tibet and, you know, I really grieve for the Tibetans because of their extreme repression.

07:42

Davis:   For all that, this is the reward China gets -- keeper of the Olympic flame.

Samaranch announcing Host City

Olympic announcement: The Games of the 29^th Olympiad in 2008 are awarded to the city of Beijing.

08:11

Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick:  It's tempting to take the view the best approach to China is maximum openness, but unfortunately I think we have to face the fact that it has not so far produced any kind of repressive liberalisation. There's less liberalisation. You have less liberal policies in China I think that the days Deng Xiaoping was dying, for example. Things are getting worse I think, not better.

Areal shot of Palais Nations

Music

08:47

Every year for the past decade, China has faced a U.S.  sponsored resolution at the Human Rights Commission censuring it for its behaviour. Every year the Chinese turn it into a motion of no action and win. What you're about to see - from this year's session - is stark proof of the commission's impotence.

Ching

Super:

Melinda Ching

Amnesty International

Ching:  At this year's Commission, the resolution against China could have gone the other way if certain countries did not abstain.  Many countries from the Latin American states, and also some African countries, and I think that is because China very effectively lobbies these governments using its political, economic, military and strategic clout.

09:16

U.N Chambers

Davis:   Now the vote -- and remember the Chinese have turned the US-sponsored censure motion into a motion of no action against them, the yes votes overtly backing the Chinese, the no the US resolution, the abstentions, fence sitters playing into Beijing's hands.

09:46

Announcer:  Argentina abstention, Belgium no, Brazil abstention, China yes. Colombia abstention...

Ching

Ching:  The actual plenary room is full, in fact there'll be diplomats standing around the walls because there are no seats and those seats are taken by Chinese representatives who are there almost as if they are at a football match.

10:22

Announcer : Liberia yes...

Davis:    On rolls the score, yes pro-China, no anti.

Announcer: Russian Federation yes, Saudi Arabia yes, Uruguay abstention, United Stated of America  no...

10:55

Davis:   By now the Chinese ambassador knows he has the numbers.

11:05

Announcer

Announcer: For the motion of ‘no action'  23 votes in favour, 17 against, 12 abstentions. Therefore the motion of ‘no action' has been approved.

11:10

Davis:   The Chinese are elated, and for good reason -- a loss this time could have crippled their Olympic bid. Everything is going exactly to plan.

Davis:  Favours given, favours to be returned, the ultimate in horse trading that rides roughshod over the rights of the victims.

11:44

And never mind the pay-off that comes with backing the Chinese or abstaining, take them on and Beijing hits back.

11:55

Sundberg

Super:

Ulrika Sundberg

Swedish Delegate

Sundberg:  What happened to Denmark when they put forward on a national basis the resolution against China is pretty telling.

12:05

Davis:   What happened?

Sundberg:   Oh, basically economic sanctions against the country for many years.

12:13

Archival footage.

Super:

Beijing June 1989

Gunfire/Music

12:17

Davis:  :  Even when the whole world witnessed China's vicious response to dissent in Tiananmen Square, the Commission looked the other way.

12:26

Ching

Ching:  There was not even a resolution against China after Tiananmen Square, the closest we got to it was a resolution by the sub-commission, but China has effectively evaded international scrutiny.

12:39

Tiananmen Square

Davis:   Okay, so, if you can get away with something like that, when we all saw it on television, you can get away with anything, can't you?

12:55

Ching:  Yes.

Davis: You'd agree with that.

Ching:   I would agree .

Super:

Rwanda 1994

Music

13:10

Davis:    In fact, with the UN, you can get away with genocide. The story of how the Hutus massacred nearly a million Tutsis in Rwanda as a deliberate act of state policy is incredible enough. What's unforgivable is that the UN knew what was going on all along and did nothing whatsoever to stop it.

Robertson

Davis:  The Rwandans managed to get themselves not only on the Human Rights Commission but on the Security Council, a couple of weeks later the massacres begin, what does that tells us about the way in which these organizations do their jobs?

13:35

Robertson:  The Rwandan episode is really the most appalling indictment of the United Nations Security Council. The real blame lies with Britain and America, with Bill Clinton and John Major whose governments tried to pretend and did pretend that genocide wasn't happening.

U.N. Chambers

??:  I now give the floor to the representative of Rwanda.

Robertson:   Tens of thousands of people were being killed and in secret session -- and why should the security council sessions be secret -- in secret session for which we now have the records, the diplomats from America and Britain, against the decent members who were basically Czechoslovakia and New Zealand, insisted that what was happening was just, you know, black on black violence, because once it was labelled genocide that meant the international community had to come to Rwanda's aid. As a result 900,000 people died and had America and Britain lived up to their international treaty obligations under the genocide convention hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved.

Lake Geneva

Davis:  A full eight months before, a Human Rights Commission special investigator, or rapporteur, had returned to Geneva from Rwanda with evidence of what was starting to happen.

15:00

Robinson

Robinson:  The special rapporteur on judicial killings at the time Bachra Indyi warned specifically in August of '93, and if his warnings had been heard the international community could have done more. I think there is general recognition of this.

15:13

Davis:   Well who was culpable under those circumstances?

Robinson:   I think that there is every reason for, particularly, the more influential countries on the security council to look into their hearts, as they have done and the countries with the closest involvement, countries like Belgium and France, which also they have done to a significant degree.

15:29

Davis:   But not enough to save all those people who died.

Robinson:   No.

Davis:   Whose lives could have been saved.

Robinson:   Yes, and whose lives could have been saved.

15:50

Lake Geneva

Music

Geneva at night

Davis:   But while governments turned their backs on genocide, the UN bureaucracy aided and abetted the process, oblivious in their plush surroundings to the distant cries of the victims.

Music

Robertson

Robertson:  Geneva is the most expensive city in the world. They sit there in the luxury hotels in Switzerland, which isn't even a member of the United Nations and which of course had its bank vaults stuffed with Nazi gold, doesn't that tell you something about the Human Rights Commission?

16:16

Sundberg

Sundberg:   What we saw was the fact that people were not reading the documents that was coming out from the special rapporteur.

16:35

Davis:    Right, so the evidence was here.

Sundberg:  The evidence existed. You could read though that there was no one who really took action on it. You have to realise that this commission is probably the least orderly working body of the UN, in the sense that a couple of weeks before the session starts we get five thousand pages to read and I think it's an inhumane task to request all the experts to actually have read all these five thousand pages, among those a report on the situation in Rwanda.

Geneva Restaurant

Davis:   The killers were in their midst, their crimes documented, while the supposed custodians of human rights were - in every sense - out to lunch.

17:20

Sundberg

Sundberg:   Your criticism is absolutely warranted and correct. Unless someone really gets down and reads these documents,  this is going to sound like an extremely unprofessional system in a sense, which it is.

17:30

Davis:   You can say that again.

Sundberg:  Yeah, no, no, but you can -- in that sense it is.

Kirkpatrick

Davis:   The Mums and Dads at home watching this kind of thing will be amazed as I have been as journalist reporting on this Commission, at the cynicism that attends it. Would you agree with that?

17:46

Kirkpatrick:  That's, it's incredible, it's incredible and it's almost unbearable frankly.

Davis:   Into this Orwellian world four years ago came someone different, a human rights commissioner worthy of the position.  But now she's decided to leave -- it's clearly been too much for her to bear.

18:06

Davis:   Trawling through your library I saw a remarkable picture of you holding a woman's hand in Chechnya, an old woman, do you remember that? Her hand was shaking.

18:22

Robinson

Robinson:  Yeah.

Davis:   And you were looking into her eyes. What were you feeling then?

Robinson:   Well, I remember it very well because I think I retain a great deal of the personal contacts that I have, and I have a sense of how much it mattered to her that she herself mattered, and that for that moment I was listening to her, not talking in general terms and I think that's very important.

18:36

I do feel at times really very deep angry deep inside me, but I don't think it's useful to, you know, only express that anger. I'm a very tactical person. I want to know how we can influence that, so I try and channel my anger into even more commitment of my colleagues to getting practical things done.

18:57

Davis:   You're unashamedly political I'm told behind the scenes, is that true?

 Robinson:  I think I am yes, because  --  political in the sense of trying to strategise to be effective, and therefore you have to be aware of what the political issues are.

19:22

Chechnyan protestors

Davis:   On Chechnya, her change of tactics helped produce what some call a miracle, the first resolution ever passed by the Human Rights Commission against a permanent member of the security council.

19:40

Weschler

Super:

Joanna Weschler

Human Rights Watch

Weschler: The decision to have a vote came essentially 15 minutes before the vote actually happened, to the point where some governments didn't even have the time to get instructions from their capitals.

19:55

Davis:   And was it a case of the Russians not having their eye on the ball as much as the Chinese do?

Weschler:  To some extent it's possible, also I think Russia is not as powerful in trade as the Chinese are.

Robinson with protestors

Davis:   Not surprisingly, great powers don't like being put in the spotlight-- the pressure on Mary Robinson has been intense.

20:23

Robinson

Davis:   Is it fair to say then, that essentially what went on in your mind was I want to be free of this bureaucracy. I want to be free of being diplomatic?

Robinson:   Absolutely. To do it differently, to actually take the experience I've had from inside and to be able to highlight, maybe even speak more freely than I can, though I don't feel inhibited because um you know I have my mandate as High Commissioner and I'm true to my mandate.

20:43

Davis:   I know, but it's diplomatic speak, isn't it?

Robinson:   Yes, and so I wanted to change the position from which I could work for human rights, and that is still the future that I hope to have.

Davis:   Call a spade a spade -- is that what we're talking about?

Robinson:  Yes. I mean to a very real extent I hope I can call a spade a spade in this job as well but there, I think it's being able to identify and pursue more freely certain important agendas without the drain of the management of the role which this job necessarily calls for.

21:06

Davis:    It was wearing you down?

Robinson:  It is very tiring. There's no doubt about it.

21:26

Davis:    If Mary Robinson had had her way, she'd be gone after the Durban Racism conference which opens on Friday.

21:31

Robinson:  It's incredibly important work, but I felt that I had put the office in good working shape and I could move to a different perspective. The message I got back is no, you can't move yet anyway. It's not as strong as you thought. It's more fragile. Please stay. You're needed, and indeed it wasn't the diplomats in Geneva or government representatives who persuaded me it was the voices of human rights defenders and victims from the ground signalling so strongly.

21:39

Davis:   But in a year's time Mary Robinson will be gone, declining a full second term.

22:15

In the most telling condemnation of all, she's switching from UN High Commissioner to the non-government sector for the victims' sake.

Robinson:  You can also -- which I would like to do -- reflect more and identify certain issues. I'd like to be a more effective voice for victims in certain areas than I can be sometimes because of the pressures of this work.

22:27

Areal shot of Palais Nations

Music

22:40

Davis:   The trouble with Mary is that of all well-meaning people who confront the UN system -- it's only as good as the member states allow and far too often the bad guys and their appeasers win, to the extent that this year, America lost its seat on the Commission for the very first time.

Music

Sundberg

Sundberg:  It is a source of concern for western countries that the US is not a member of the Commission. We've been used to it. I mean ever since its inception and what does it mean in practical terms, for example what, who is going to put forward a resolution on China if needs be?

23:13

Applause

Robertson

Robertson:   I think there comes a stage where you take a long deep breath and you say, well is the UN human rights role one that is helpfully played by the United Nations. or do we need another body? Whenever the UN tries to intervene or thinks about intervening in a country that's breaching human rights China always uses its security council black ball to say no interference with sovereignty. So very often does Russia. I think the time may come when we say look let's get beyond an organisation that is so riven by power blocks -- Africa's turn, Asia's turn, all this nonsense -- and set up a body with real power comprising with membership dependent upon democracy and making democracy a fundamental feature of membership.

23:36

Davis:   Right, a pre-condition for membership.

Robertson:  Yeah.

Lake Geneva

Davis:   Already Geoffrey Robertson's proposal has legs.

24:37

Kirkpatrick

Kirkpatrick:  I  have no doubt that the democracies together would produce a very different human rights commission. It's whole focus of attention would be on the victims. I don't doubt that.

24:41

Davis:   And if the whole notion takes hold, Mary Robinson's departure may be just the start.

Credits: 

UN Human Rights

Reporter:                                            Graham Davis

Camera:                                                Greg Heap

Sound:                                                 Kate Graham

Editor:                                                 Garth Thomas

Producer:                                            Vivien Altman

25:10