Topic: Universality or Plurality of Human Rights?

Afternoon Session, Oct.14

Martin Bútora
Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m happy to announce the beginning of our last session. This panel, as you all know, is Universality or Plurality of Human Rights? To be honest, I do not see many critics of this concept in this hall. Many are critical of the thesis that, at least at some very basic level, some human rights are really universal and, in order not to transform this last meeting into a gathering where the convinced are convincing those who are already convinced, let me mention, at the beginning, at least some contradictory concepts or approaches.
The first group of doubts on the universality of human rights is of a pragmatic character. These doubts have been expressed by politicians who mostly accept the principle of universality, but perceive it more as an ideal than as a reachable goal. Sometimes, because it has run against the national interests of their states, in other because they believe in the “international world order” – which shouldn’t be endangered by irritating their partners, the representatives of authoritarian governments. Some of them preach “gradualism”, that is to say that improvements in the field of human rights can be reached more easily by modernisation, trade and technology rather than my insisting on romantic ideals. Unfortunately, some of them even became the protagonists of appeasement.
The second group of doubts stems from the conviction that the promotion of human rights and democracy would, in fact, bring more losses than gains. They argue, for instance, that a country like China needs a strong central government; otherwise it is threatened by chaos and collapse. When we criticise the Tiananmen events, they say: “But, it was the only possible solution, and Western politicians and journalists are well aware of it. They are hyper-critical in public, not saying what they privately believe.”
The third group of doubts is presented by people who basically believe that Western models have failed, including the Western notion of human rights with its emphasis on the individual. According to the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, the expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of an orderly society. In the East, the main objective is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedom. In the West, there is an erosion of the moral underpinning of society and a devolution of personal responsibility. Asian societies are unlike Western ones; the fundamental difference between Western concepts of society and governments and East Asian concepts is that Eastern societies believe that the individual exists in the context of his family: the family as the extended family, and then friends, and then wider society.
Finally, the fourth group of doubts questions the liberal understanding of individual human rights and emphasises the priority of the nation. This topic has been broadly discussed during this conference, and I don’t think it is necessary to elaborate on it.
These were at least some of the opinions of those who are not properly represented in this hall. Now, I would like to invite our speakers.
At the end of his speech, Henry Kissinger said that we don’t have any problems accumulating knowledge, but that we have an enormous problem understanding its significance. We have the honour today to listen to a man who not only proved to be able to understand the significance of our knowledge of human rights, but was also able to translate this understanding into action – in other words, to match words with deeds. So, it is my pleasure to ask Robert Bernstein to deliver his speech. There have been many, many books reflecting the topics of our conference published by Random House during the time Dr Bernstein served as its president – including some written by authors in this hall – and many human lives were saved, and many inhuman conditions improved, thanks to the work of Human Rights Watch, whose founder and whose chair has been, for more than 20 years, Robert Bernstein.

Robert L. Bernstein
Thank you very much for those kind words. I hope I can live up to them.
I want to begin by thanking Forum 2000 for giving me this opportunity to put together my thoughts on the status of human rights today. As a human rights pragmatist trying to affect changes as quickly as possible, and working in a field that is woefully undermanned, I’ve rarely had time to look back over 25 years of the human rights movement, and what I clearly think has been progress in human rights.
I also want to say that I am awed, honoured, indeed overwhelmed, to be speaking in Prague because I have long admired Václav Havel. I remember when his manuscripts arrived at my publishing company in New York and we agreed within the space of one minute to publish them. I remember watching his wonderful one-act plays in New York at a time when I believe that he, himself, was in prison. The plays were about the struggle to maintain individual integrity under a communist state. I remember when he came to the offices of Human Rights Watch in New York shortly after his first inauguration, and asked us to keep watching the new Prague government to ensure the future safety of human rights there; and I remember how delighted I was to see him dancing with great enthusiasm a month ago at the White House, at 11:30 p.m., when I worried that President Clinton’s dinner in President Havel’s honour had kept him up too late.
Frankly, we would do better reading his thoughts than listening to mine. He is the one who said, in an essay many years ago, that “human rights are universal and indivisible”. Human freedom is also indivisible. If it is denied to anyone in the world it is, therefore, denied indirectly to all people. Respect for the universality of human rights – human and civil rights, their inalienability and indivisibility – is, of course, possible only when one understands, at least in the philosophical sense, that one is responsible for the whole world, and that one must behave the way that everyone ought to behave, even though not everyone does.
Just a few weeks ago, in an act rich with resonance and courage, a group of Chinese human rights activists released two ground-breaking documents: The Declaration on Civil Rights and Freedom and The Declaration on Civil Rights and Justice. Their statements, published on September 28, are modelled on the documents of Charter 77. Perhaps the only real difference between the two events is that the Chinese declarations were available instantly worldwide, in Chinese and English, via the Internet.
Before going forward, however, let me insert a few personal words, which I think will tell you where my views come from. I am not a diplomat and have dealt with government officials only a few times in my life. I’m not even a professional human rights activist, that is, I have never worked as a staff member of a human rights organisation. My first lessons about each person’s responsibility for the whole world came to me from my own grandfather. Knowing that Nazi clouds over Europe represented danger to many from his home town in Germany, he wrote to them urging them to come to America and implied that when they arrived all would be well. For each arrival, 80 in all, he would put on his overcoat and hat, go to the pier, indicate to the authorities that he would be responsible for the travellers and bring them home. When they were gathered around the dinner-table, he would explain that he was not wealthy and could not, in fact, support them; but he would also say they were in a country full of opportunity, and they were always welcome for dinner: as long as he could eat, they could eat. I’ve spent my life as a businessman, a book publisher, most of it as head of Random House, a publishing conglomerate that included Alfred A. Knopf, Pantheon, Vintage Books and I speak to you partly as a man engaged in a business, a profit-making institution, one which has prospered through the international exchange of ideas and culture, but I understood very well, and early in my career, that a publisher’s duty extends well beyond profit.
My first experience of dealing with the idea of human rights, as opposed to American civil liberties, occurred in 1970, when the Soviet government invited four American publishers to discuss their joining the international copyright convention. It was clear to me, from these conversations, that Moscow wanted to make money without having to censor the free flow of ideas. Not long after that I met Andrei Sakharov and became his publisher. Our editors signed up a host of Soviet authors, writers who were banned at home while being published abroad. In their own countries their works were laboriously copied, usually by hand, and circulated underground as samizdat.
The suppression of these courageous and gifted writers galvanised American publishers to try to help them, and proved to be a compelling and effective way to engage the public in the core issue of “free expression”. The persecution of Soviet and Eastern European writers, like Václav Havel, was the beginning of Western awareness on human rights. Some American publishers did not want to engage the Soviets on human rights issues as they thought it would interfere with business: mostly textbooks and scientific publications. Others felt differently. As a result, I 1975 a small group of us established the Fund for Free Expression, which worked to keep imprisoned writers in the public eye.
In the same year, the Helsinki Accords were signed in August – with historic human rights provisions that granted many of the same rights as those enunciated in the Universal Declaration. The Soviet government (and Mr Kovalyov will have to verify the facts here – I hope they’re accurate) printed the entire text on the front page of Pravda, and a Moscow group called the Helsinki Monitoring Group announced that they were engaged now (for the first time, in their courts) in securing the right of every citizen to hold his or her own government accountable for its human rights performance. Founded by the Sakharovs, Yuri Orlov, Serguey Kovalyov himself and many others, within months of their declaration the group was decimated, with most of them in prison or in exile. We, in the Fund for Free Expression, established Helsinki Watch, which was the first part of what is now Human Rights Watch, to try to support them. It was, in my opinion, the Helsinki Accords that brought the Universal Declaration to life.
In 1980, at the second Helsinki review conference in Madrid, there was a major breakthrough for the non-governmental human rights movement, which continues to resonate to this day. We opened the non-governmental Human Rights press office to penetrate the closed meetings of government officials, and offered the world press alternative information and interpretations of the Madrid meeting. The non-governmental voice, both through human rights organisations and through dissidents who had travelled to Spain, suddenly lent colour and life to a story that at first appeared tedious. After those early years, Helsinki Watch was joined by four other regional committees to become Human Rights Watch and now covers the whole world. In addition, we now do special work on women’s rights, children’s rights and arms transfers. When I am in the office in New York, I am amazed at the changes that have occurred in an organisation that really began with the intention of defending beleaguered writers. We now have more than 150 staff, we work in 70 countries and deal with a wide range of civil and political rights. At no time, in these years of work, has it ever occurred to me that human rights are anything else than universal. In fact, I’m always somewhat surprised at the question. What else could they be? The framers of the Universal Declaration were a diverse group, among them Marxists, capitalists, Chinese Confucian scholars, Muslims, trade unionists. Simply, by looking around the table, it was clear that these rights must apply to everyone, everywhere. The language of the preamble to the Universal Declaration asserts, without qualification, that the “recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world”.
During my years as a human rights activist, we’ve advocated on behalf of imprisoned writers, stood in defence of peasants attacked by their own brutal military regimes, given voice to women whose rights as human beings are ignored in the name of “cultural norms”, campaigned to end the use of land-mines and child soldiers, called for the end of police abuse (including in the United States) and insisted, always, on accountability for abusive leaders and establishment of the rule of law. We do not press for these rights only some times and in some places, we try to do it everywhere, all the time, even at home and, to me, that is the true meaning of “universality”.
The world has changed, almost beyond our grasp in the past decade. With the end of the cold war and its fearsome implications for the safety of all of us, something has to replace the ideologies that previously governed behaviour. I believe that human rights principles are the ideas that can, and should, prevail in the future, as both governments and citizens try to articulate a course of action. As I look at the future, I see three major changes underway that will assure the role of human rights as a core principle in dealings between and within nations.
The first of these changes is global economy and the role that big business now plays on the foreign policy stage. In many countries, especially in the developing world, multinational corporations play a role almost as significant as that of a foreign government. The human rights community and the business community today are in the early stages of an uneasy dance. While I think it is fair to say that businesses, in general, do not welcome with open arms discussions with rights organisations, in the past few years they have begun to recognise a degree of corporate responsibility for human rights. The idea is beginning to take hold that when they create partnerships with gross abusers of human rights they can become complicit in the abuses that are committed in the pursuit of profit. They also understand that if they ignore labour rights by paying impossibly low wages, or discriminating in their workforce on the basis of race and gender, they will be held accountable in the court of public opinion and by their stockholders. Major international corporations like Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum, or Total, Nike, Disney, Heineken and Carlsberg have all learned this lesson the hard way, by being publicly embarrassed. Heineken and Carlsberg have dropped their plans to participate in a brewery in Burma because of the bad publicity. Liz Claiborne clothing company moved out of Burma for the same reason. The Economist magazine, a must read for the business community, has pointed out two things to its subscribers: 1) that companies are increasingly concerned about protests against their activities, and 2) that when governments fail to uphold international human rights the responsibility falls to corporations.
The second very great change for the future will only further contribute towards universality, and it is the communications explosion. It is a well-tested principle among tyrants that information is power, and for hundreds of years the capacity to withhold information from citizens kept the dictators on top. I can remember almost two decades ago when the first fax machines appeared, and we were able to smuggle a few into the Soviet Union and the Bloc countries, in very modest quantities. None of us really understood the full meaning of these little machines. We did not realise the sense of power it would give the tiny dissident community to understand that there were others, like them, not just in their own countries but throughout the region, working underground, defending the principles of free expression and association that eventually prevailed. Today, Internet access means that the days of total control are over, even in countries where repression is the hallmark of government. For example, Human Rights Watch recently put out a ten-page advisory report on events in Malaysia, as long-time strongman Mahathir jailed his own Deputy Prime Minister and suppressed any press coverage of events. More than 17,000 hits appeared on our web-site from Malaysia, seeking information on what was happening in their own capital. Whatever information is gleaned by those with computer access will now travel throughout the world, mostly by word-of-mouth. Mahathir can no longer control what his people know, therefore he can no longer control what they think as a result of what they know. Information travels from New York to the other side of the globe in the blink of an eye. No tyrant in history ever thought he would have to confront such an adversary.
The third great change for the future is also proof that universality is now virtually taken for granted by untold citizens and dozens of governments throughout the world. In less than two years, there have been three major global campaigns for change fuelled by non-governmental organisations in concert with small and medium-sized governments. In December 1997, two years of intensive activity to ban the use and sale of land-mines culminated in an historic treaty signed in Ottawa by 122 governments. Frustrated by the stately pace of the UN-sponsored conventional weapons process, a core group of nations, most notably Austria, Belgium, Canada, Mexico, Norway and South Africa, decided to draft a treaty and negotiated outside the cumbersome UN framework. That treaty has just been brought into force by the necessary ratification in more than 40 countries. It means that no more mines will join the 20 million already in the ground; it means that the 25,000 annual civilian victims of mines will begin to diminish in numbers; it means that de-mining will slowly reclaim the land for farming and not fighting.
In Rome, in June 1998, the vote to create a permanent independent criminal court may prove to be the most important breakthrough for human rights since the Universal Declaration 50 years ago. 120 countries voted in favour of a strong court, and again alliances were formed among the fragile new systems just recovering from years of violent or abusive regimes: Argentina, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, South Africa among them. They know, best of all, the price paid by citizens when the justice system is too weak to hold the powerful accountable for their actions. They know well what happens when the rule of law does not prevail, and they joined together to call for a court to take precedence over the power of the few to offer justice to many. The third on-going event is the campaign to ban the use of child-soldiers, again enthusiastically supported in those countries where children as young as ten years old are pressed into service that scars them for life and destroys any chance they may have for the future: Uganda, Cambodia, Liberia, etc. There are some 250,000 children bearing arms today in the ugly conflicts that dominate the world landscape. The Czech government, in fact, has been the leader in the core group that met in Geneva to create a strategy to end the use of child-soldiers around the globe.
There are two striking things that these three issues share. One is that their occurrence is the fruit of a new partnership between small and medium-sized governments and non-governmental organisations interested in a broad range of issues. The second is that my government, the United States, played a distressingly poor role in all three events. The United States refused to sign the ban on land-mines because we insisted on being able to use them on the border of North Korea. The United States refused to sign up to the International Criminal Court because of the extremely remote possibility that an American serviceman might someday end up on trial; and the United States is actively campaigning against the effort to raise the age of military service to 18 because the Pentagon recruits one-half of one percent of its force from graduating high school students, aged 17.
All of which leads me to say that I believe the discussion of universality is actually an old-fashioned concept. I think the activity of the past decade, when hundreds of thousands of human rights organisations have sprung up around the world, with a new capacity to communicate with each other and a clear sense that they have power in their numbers, proves that citizens the world over believe themselves entitled to the full rights set forth in the Universal Declaration and the constitutions of their own countries. They also believe they have the right to raise their voices on their own behalf. But the other thing that is clearly true is that much remains to be done. In my own country alone, we have to work hard to persuade Washington to change its position on land-mines, child-soldiers, and the International Criminal Court. We also have to persuade Washington that it has a responsibility to raise human rights concerns with every government, with every leader it encounters, in every public forum. We have to persuade Washington that no government, no matter how powerful, is exempt from this pressure.
Which brings us to the question of China and to Wei Jingsheng, who is with us today. He will not tell us, so I will, what he went through for his beliefs. It is less than a year since he came out of 19 years in prison, most of them spent in solitary confinement. He was frequently beaten, often he was denied even paper and pencil to occupy his time, his last cell had glass walls, as though he was an animal in a zoo. His light was left on 24 hours a day, and prisoners were let in occasionally to beat him. Through it all he insisted on writing, clearly and courageously. He refused to leave prison until everything he had written was returned to him. He endured, and now he is out, but it is not a triumph for his friends to have secured his release. The triumph will be when he is back in China, free to speak, free to write, free to participate in the affairs of his country as an outspoken, even contrary citizen, and there are thousands of “Weis” who remain in prison following the peaceful expression of their beliefs.
These prisoners in China, and in every country where they sit in dark cells, remain the responsibility of all of us. None of us can look away, none of us has the right to be too busy, none of us can say that their right to speak freely, to walk outside, to assemble with their friends, to worship as they choose, to live among their loved ones, is not universal. That idea was proven long ago and, if you need any proof, just notice that Václav Havel is in the Hrad, and Nelson Mandela is in Qunu House. Thank you.

Martin Bútora
Thank you, Robert Bernstein, for that eloquent description of the past and future challenges; thank you also for bringing some practical recommendations of what could, and should, be done in the human rights field; and, finally, thank you for introducing our next speaker who was able to overcome his troubles (he even published a volume of his prison letters), who had the courage to stand alone and who was repeatedly proposed, by Václav Havel, as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize. A courageous critic of not only uncompromising Chinese communists, but also of the compromises of the democratic world. A leading voice for freedom and human rights in China, Wei Jingsheng.

Wei Jingsheng
I would like to thank President Havel, I would like to thank all the organisers of this gathering and, especially, I would like to thank all the friends present here for whom the observation of human rights has become a matter of great concern. Next month it will be a whole year since I was released from prison. During that year I have been hounded by one thing that I do not understand and which continues to amaze me. Human rights are a matter of least concern to those people who should be personally most interested in their observation; moreover, the same people are actually trying to convince others not to take human rights into account. When a citizen of a democratic state remains at home, within the circle of his family, he may not perceive the issue of human rights somewhere far away in the world as a matter of key importance because it does not personally affect him. For whom, then, is the observation of human rights a matter of principal importance? Human rights becomes an everyday issue and matter of principal importance to those who travel on business and to work far from home, who want to make deals and establish factories in faraway countries. The reason is simple. At home, one is familiar with the various customs, knows the laws, and is able to behave in a way that does not expose oneself to disaster. However, people who do business abroad cannot know in detail the customs and laws of different states. It is for this reason that they need universal principles providing the same guarantees anywhere in the world and drawing on universal human rights. Such principles could therefore apply all over the world identically. They involve fundamental human rights, which are a guarantee of freedom and dignified existence for every human being.
A look at history shows that the first to be interested in human rights and to demand their observation were merchants. They travelled to faraway lands for trade and came into contact with diverse – in their eyes often peculiar – customs; they arrived in countries ruled by all kinds of rulers and had to adapt to different regimes. It would be only natural if, as a consequence of all this, they reached the conviction that it was necessary to seek common principles, principles observed identically by all people, principles guaranteeing security for all. A lot is being said at this forum about globalisation, and it is evident from the words of the participants that the commercialisation and globalisation of the world has reached an unprecedented level and is becoming a cause of much concern. For me, this means that in a rapidly globalising world the principles of universal human rights are becoming more important than ever in the past. And, of course, the first to become aware of the increasing importance of human rights as a universal value recognised by all people, all civilisations and all states in the world, ought to be the businessmen. Surprisingly, that has not been the case. It is the people from the world of business who are today trying to convince the whole world that there is no need to take into account something so marginal and so insignificant – from the business point of view – as the observation of human rights somewhere in a remote corner of the earth. They are exerting pressure on politicians not to become involved in human rights issues of other countries as this might jeopardise their business interests and, consequently, the interests of the people of their own countries. They are forgetting that by closing their eyes to the human rights situation in the country where they want to do business they are sawing through the bough on which they are sitting, and that their immediate gain may have, in the long run, immense consequences for their own people.
I think that this peculiar phenomenon has several causes, of which one particular deserves our attention. Many people are convinced that everyone should mind their own business and strive for individual success – many of us consider this to be our main goal. We are inclined to think that the problems of others are of no concern to us and that there is no sense in worrying about them. Every now and then voices are heard that say: “The issue of observation of human rights in China is one the Chinese themselves must solve. We, Americans, enjoy freedom of speech; we, the French, enjoy freedom of expression – and that is all we need.” Allow me to use a small concrete example to demonstrate how mistaken these people are, and that the state of affairs in China could be projected directly into the state of affairs in the West. Recently, during numerous discussions with American, French and British reporters, we have reached a different conclusion. If there is no freedom of speech in China, the freedom of speech and right to information in democratic countries remains defective, too. What about the number of journalists who have been banished from China and who will never again be granted Chinese visas because their reports about that country were truthful and contradicted official propaganda? Many Americans complain: “How is it possible that we know nothing about the true situation in China?” The answer is simple – true reports will not reach the public because China does not observe elementary human rights, because there is no freedom of speech in China. This implies that as long as there is no freedom of speech in China, there will be no freedom of speech anywhere in the world.
Another idea I would like to underline here concerns the universal aspect of human rights. Numerous specific situations in the lives and destinies of specific ordinary people in China are proof of the fact that the Chinese have no less a desire for freedom and a dignified life than people in the West. Some proponents of the idea of non-intervention into the issue of human rights observation in China actually use the argument that official Chinese authorities are very sensitive, that they need to “keep face”, therefore it is necessary to treat them in a very civil manner, without offending their pride by pointing to the fact that something unbecoming might be happening in China. To these considerate people, I would like to pose the following question: if the representatives of the communist regime in China are so sensitive and caring about their dignity, how is it that millions of anonymous, ordinary Chinese, who are allegedly not so demanding as people in the West when it comes to the observation of human rights, have no dignity? Are not the official representatives of China also Chinese like those ordinary people whose dignity is trampled underfoot over and over again due to the non-observation of fundamental human rights? Everywhere in the world people have the same need to live in freedom and dignity. In the West, people are born into a free world and therefore may not be fully aware of the fundamental importance of freedom. Perhaps it is from the moment when somebody starts taking his or her freedom for granted that a person starts thinking that money and material gain are more important than freedom. However, people who lose their freedom recognise immediately that freedom is the most valuable thing man can enjoy. In prison, I met different kinds of prisoners (and also different kinds of prison guards). What they all had in common was the knowledge that man in prison cherishes freedom more than anything else. He is willing to pay any price for a small piece of freedom. I have learned from this experience that we who have gained freedom must not forget those who do not have it – or who may even think that they do not need it. Freedom is denied to prisoners in jail, freedom is denied to millions of people living in countries with totalitarian and tyrannical regimes. There are a great number of people living almost as unfreely as if they were in prison. They lack personal freedom, they are unfree, they need our help, and therefore allow me to beg you – help them and do not tire in your efforts. Thank you.

Martin Bútora
Dear friends, I think we are all moved by this voice coming from China, and let me now make an unplanned step. You might already know that one of our guests at this conference, also invited by President Havel, was to be Elizardo Sánchez from Cuba. Regretfully, the government in Havana didn’t allow Mr Sánchez to participate in Forum 2000. I would like to use this opportunity to ask Mr Frank Calzón, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, to tell us about the situation of Elizardo Sánchez and human rights in Cuba.

Frank Calzón
Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. Mr President, it is a great honour for me to be here, and to listen to you, and to Wei Jingsheng and later to Serguey Kovalyov, who are heroes for many people around the world, particularly those suffering unspeakable abuse in places like China, Burma, East Timor, Tibet and Cuba. I would like to take this opportunity to make a couple of very brief remarks about the situation in Cuba today.
There was a lot of expectation when the Holy Father, the Pope, went to Cuba, and the Pope said: “The world should open to Cuba, and Cuba should open to the world.” The world continues to open itself to Cuba. You hear a lot of discussions about investment in Cuba; well, unfortunately, Cuba has yet to open itself to the world, or to open Cuba to the Cubans.
Castro has yet to allow civil society into Cuba, he has yet to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter Cuban prisons, and they’ve been trying to get in for many years. Amnesty International, a year-and-a-half ago, reported that the Cuban government denies medicine and food as a form of punishment to political prisoners. Castro imported into Cuba the methods of repression from the Soviet Union, including the misuse of psychiatry. Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, when the Soviet psychiatrists were about to be expelled from the Royal Psychiatric Association, they withdrew. The Cuban psychiatrists withdrew also. The Cuban psychiatrists said that the whole thing was a CIA conspiracy. Since then the Soviet psychiatrists, now the Russian psychiatrists, acknowledged that there was a problem and they allow international inspections of Russian hospitals. Cuba has yet to return to the World Psychiatric Association, or to allow similar inspections.
For the last couple of days, I have been distributing information on four prominent human rights activists in Cuba. One is Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello. She’s an economist, and she is suffering from cancer and, according to the New York Times, she is not receiving adequate medical attention. Another one, Rene Gomez Manzano, is a lawyer who can no longer practise law because he was active in defending political cases. A third one is Felix Antonio Bonne Carcasses, a teacher who lost his job because he asked for academic freedom. Finally, there is Vladimiro Roca Antunez, a social democrat and the son of one of the leading figures of Cuban communism. They wrote a document entitled The Homeland Belongs to Us All, in which they called for national reconciliation and a national dialogue. In fact, they called for exactly what we’re doing here today: for the ability to meet, to discuss things peacefully, and for a chance for all Cubans to contribute to the search for solutions to the crisis that Cuba suffers today. The government’s response was swift: they went into prison 13 months ago. Until a couple of weeks ago they had yet to be charged, now they are charged with treason and they could be sentenced to 15 years in prison. I urge all of you, including President Havel, to do what you can to publicise their plight.
These are not the only cases, I would like to mention just one other. Dr Desi Mendoza is a physician and, according to Amnesty International, he is serving a seven-year sentence for having discussed an outbreak of ganges fever, an epidemic, with foreign journalists. For that crime, he is in prison in Cuba today. I think they need our help.
Finally, I heard Mr Bernstein speaking about some of those companies that are beginning to pay attention to issues of human rights, and that’s a welcome development. There is, of course, the discussion here, and in America, about the merits of sanctions, or rapprochement or the merits of engagement. Beyond the slogans, I would like to leave you with two facts.
I wonder if you know that the foreign companies who go to Cuba cannot hire Cubans directly, that the government provides the workers. There is the case of the Canadian mining company which pays the Cuban government $9,500 a year per worker, of which the government pays $10 per month to the worker. This is not the kind of investment we would like to see in any country in the world.
Furthermore, there is an argument, and I’ll leave you with this, that says that investors will go to Cuba and they will lobby the Cuban government. Somehow, they will bring human rights into Cuba by being a force for progress. I’m Cuban, and I know a little bit about Latin America, and that hasn’t been the case this century. What happens is that the investors go to those countries and then they lobby their own governments to ignore human rights violations, wherever they are, including Cuba. If investors go to Cuba to provide help for the people there that’s fine, but what we have in Cuba is a system of apartheid, where Cubans are not allowed into hostels, clinics, hotels and beaches that have been set aside for the foreigners.
Again, I would like to urge all of you to speak out on behalf of the prisoners of conscience in Cuba, as well as the prisoners of conscience in China and everywhere else.

Martin Bútora
Thank you very much, especially for naming and blaming those companies that deserve to be named and blamed for their activities. It’s a very important moment, and we all share your hopes for Cuba to open to the world and to change the conditions for human rights.
I’m sure it is not necessary to introduce our next speaker to this audience, not only because he was here with some of us during last year’s Forum but, first of all, because it is not possible to imagine the Russian human rights movement without him. He is chairman of the Committee for Human Rights, a man who spent 10 years in jail or exile, a man whose deepest creed has always been to speak the truth, regardless of the fact that the targets of his criticism are newly born democrats in Russia or European politicians making compromises with the evil. An opponent of Russia’s war with Chechnya, he is a member of the Russian Duma. Serguey Kovalyov.

Serguey Kovalyov
Thank you very much, Mr Chairman. I am afraid the essential objective of our gathering – a discussion – would not materialise if I were to deliver my paper as such. That is why I will try to concentrate on several theses. Globalisation is the key word of our meeting this year, and I am all for that. I am all for that – since I am convinced that mankind is long past any striving for unity. Mankind has been unified for some time. For a long time now, we have been living in an interdependent and intertwined world where no substantial problem has a local solution. As soon as any issue becomes serious enough, it becomes global. In such an instance, globalisation is not just a sum of cultural, religious or diplomatic contacts, nor is it a mere invitation to religious tolerance. Globalisation is in such an instance an entry into some sort of community of people, collectives and states which comprises the entire planet. From this, it ensues that we simply have to learn uniform rules of the game. As long as we strive for co-operation, we have to play by the same rules. Two teams, where one recognises the concept of offside and the other does not, simply cannot play each other. This makes it obvious how important it is to have uniform rules that apply for the entire, newly nascent global community. Their importance has been emphasised quite often, especially by the UN. But this esteemed and absolutely indispensable international organisation has one crucial flaw. The United Nations consist of 150 representatives of its member-states. It is only natural that the representatives of these individual countries defend the interests of their respective countries at the UN, as it is in their job description and also since they are so commanded by their consciences. Yet none of them defends the interests of law. So there you have it: it is a conglomerate of representatives attempting to balance out narrowly defined, self-centred national interests. But law is no handmaiden to politics. Law stands aside from, and above, politics. And it is on the basis of law that these common rules of the game, as well as the borders within which the development of political activity is possible, are being created. All political activity outside this framework has to be outlawed.
Another thesis: human rights are the core of contemporary law. The concept of human rights, which have been shaped for several thousand years and acquired their final form in the course of the past few centuries, has expressed the philosophy of law in general. This concept is the only guarantor of security for the world. As long as such a negligible unit, which is the human being, is protected by law, by legal standards, then even larger units, including states, are also under the protection of law. If the individual is not protected, there can be no talk about the protection of collective interests. This is my response to the question posed by our esteemed chairman, whether personal or collective rights take precedence. It follows from the very essence of law that individual rights have inalienable and absolute priority.
Finally, there is the question whether human rights are universal, polyvalent as the programme of our session has it, or whether, to the contrary, they have to reflect national specifics. I am deeply convinced that human rights are of universal nature. But I cannot concur with our esteemed chairman who insists this proposition is self-evident, that nobody is even attempting to repudiate this concept of human rights. I assure you, Mr Chairman, that is it quite easy to come up with proponents of just the opposite opinion. As long as we talk about international conferences, I would like to remind you that at each session of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva dozens of speakers from Asia, Africa or elsewhere are heard admonishing us because we allegedly assert a European concept of human rights. After all, an African concept, too, is entitled to exist. I am ready to prove that similar utterances are not only wrong, but are not in any way guided by good intentions: they are always driven by efforts to evade international control. It is not an accident that a huge number of countries attempt to champion the opinion that there purportedly exist more important and less important human rights. They maintain that the most important right is the right of development. If you are interested to know what it means, the explanation is simple enough.
The right of development means the following in its proponents’ minds: the industrial countries exploited their colonies in the past for such a long time; now they ought to provide money for economic advancement in their former colonies. Keep on giving us money until we catch up with you, they say. When we have reached the same economic status as you enjoy, then perhaps – and I emphasise the word perhaps – we will allow you to show an interest in whether or not we use torture in our prisons, whether or not people vanish only to show up as cadavers tied up with barbed wire, whether people are executed without having been sentenced by a court of law, and so on. Until then, though, please do not meddle in our internal affairs.
This is why I argue that no earnestly meant globalisation, no efforts to create a secure and contemporary world community are possible without drafting universal rules of the game that apply to everyone. Law becomes real law only when all entities – be it man or society – enjoy an equal standing under the law.
Finally I am going to posit another thesis in order to encourage discussion, and I will support it with a single example. This thesis states that although the western Christian culture has created a single, uniform and universal concept of human rights it does not abide by it. Unfortunately, we are witnessing hypocrisy in the use of different yardsticks. Unfortunately, we are witnessing how political expediency vanquishes the principles of law. But the law is law only when it does not kow-tow to politics but rather holds politics within certain limits. Now, here is the example. I stated in my paper last year that two leading politicians could have stopped the protracted bloodshed in the northern Caucasus, in Chechnya: Chancellor Kohl and President Clinton. I don’t wish to argue that point any further, but let me just use another example, which also relates to Chechnya. In December 1995, elections were held all over Russia. In contravention of the law, the federal government announced elections also for that part of Russia, which is known as Chechnya – I say in contravention of the law since Russian laws categorically prohibit holding elections under the conditions that prevailed in Chechnya in December 1995. No elections must be held in wartime, it is not democratic. But call the elections in Chechnya they did, yet the elections did not take place. What did take place, though, was a gross, shameless falsification of the most obscene sort you can imagine. This falsification was ordered by the federal central bodies and conducted by federal executive bodies, primarily by the Central Electoral Commission, with the blessing of the supreme judiciary body, the Supreme Court. There exist highly esteemed European organisations such as the OSCE, the bearer of Helsinki principles, and the Council of Europe. How did these highly esteemed, public European structures respond? Allow me, dear colleagues, to remind you that both of these organisations affirm that their number one priority was supervision of the elections’ democratic course. At that time, the permanent mission of the OSCE used to be posted in Grozny, the metropolis of Chechnya, but shortly before the elections they all left. They said they were leaving because their safety was not guaranteed. It’s a lie. They departed from Grozny in order not to have to assess things of which they would otherwise have been direct eyewitnesses. If they said it was not elections but a sham, they would find themselves in a quarrel with Moscow. To have insisted that the elections were conducted in a democratic way, as mandated by law, would have been much too outrageous.
This shows that these people still have some remnants of decency left in their souls. The Council of Europe could not care less about this falsification. So what else is new, right? The only activity of the Council of Europe Working Group for Chechnya Affairs consisted of its meetings with the weird figurehead the sham elections had legalised, a certain Mr Doku Zavgayev. When I tried to take it up with the chairman of this Council of Europe commission, Mr Ernst Muehlemann, he terminated our talk with a question: “So what is your point? Don’t you want Mr Yeltsin to get elected for his second term?” This is the attitude towards the law of a representative of an important, all-Europe organisation. I think this hypocrisy and this attitude to the law of it being a flunky kissing up to transitory and narrowly conceived political interests is our Europe-wide, indeed worldwide malady. I put it to you that unless we overcome our own cowardice and indecisiveness, unless we uncover in ourselves enough courage to say aloud what we so far only enwrap in roundabout diplomatic clichés, we have no right to wield big words like globalisation and human rights. Human rights are indivisible. It may be a platitude but still I would like to remind you of what a great English poet, John Donne, once wrote: “Don’t ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for you.” Now the bell tolls for us all. Thank you for your attention.

Martin Bútora
Thank you very much, Serguey Kovalyov. You have confirmed your reputation as a man before whom no government, and no diplomat, can feel safe unless they behave properly in the field of human rights. I hope you will find some responses in our discussion.
I believe that Adam Michnik, Ivan Gabal, or perhaps Miklós Sükösd would confirm that for us, for our generation, there was a common intellectual and moral authority who somehow helped us to survive in the hard times, whose texts we all read with enthusiasm. Professor Leszek Kolakowski, the floor is yours.

Leszek Kolakowski
I might be slightly out of keeping with the general mood of our meeting if, rather than raising the idea of human rights, I would point out some ambiguities in this concept.
What do we mean, really, when we say we believe in human rights or when we say that human rights are valid? Obviously, human rights are not something that belongs to the natural order of things. It is a product of culture. It might be justified on some religious premise or through a belief in natural law; or it might be justified in some particular philosophical foundation, for instance Kantian or phenomenon logic; but, from an empiricist point of view, the idea of human rights is an arbitrary norm. It has nothing to do with truth. To recognise it is a matter of personal commitment – which is permissible, to be sure – but it has nothing to do with truth.
Now, does it make a difference whether we believe in human rights as a matter of sheer commitment or as a matter of truth? I think it does make a difference. I would like to point out the difference between the American spirit and the German spirit, and take the paradigmatic example of human rights, that is to say, slavery.
The American spirit says: “Well, nobody defends slavery.” It would be extraordinary to find someone who would say: “There is nothing wrong with slavery; slavery is just fine, it’s a pity that it has been abolished.” It would be extraordinary. Therefore, we may assume that there is a consensus about the evil of slavery, and that’s all we need. But the German spirit is not satisfied with this meagre result. The German spirit wants, rather, to say: “No, it’s not enough. We want to know if slavery is intrinsically wrong and intrinsically evil.” If it is a matter of consensus only, then we must say: “Now there’s a consensus about slavery being evil, but there was a period when it was considered a normal thing, and then it was not evil.” But the German spirit says we have to have a basis on which we may say: “No, it has always been evil, it is inherently evil, and it has never been right.” But how to prove it? That’s another thing; that’s a philosophical problem.
Obviously, historically, the idea of human rights is relatively new. It has been natural for people to build protection against killing, or injuring their fellow men – but within their own tribe. Solidarity was in a tribe, whereas the idea of the “entirety of humanity” as being a “community of equals” took many centuries to mature.
Perhaps Buddhist metaphysics was the earliest known form of this idea. We all know the decrees of King Ashoka, which laid the foundation for the principle of religious peace and religious tolerance. Then, there was a cosmopolitan philosophy of Greek stoics. Then, there was Christianity. The Jewish religion was ethnic but we see how, step by step, it grew – with the late prophets – to make its message universal rather than ethnic. But the spirit of “cosmopolitanism” ultimately won in a small Jewish sect, which later on was to be called Christianity.
Christianity is cosmopolitan, and the cosmopolitan principle is a necessary condition and, in some interpretations, implicitly even includes the idea of human rights. I say “in some interpretations” because conceptually it is possible to accept the “cosmopolitan principle” and deny the ‘human rights idea”. An example is Marxist doctrine. But, anyway, if it was implicitly included in the principle of cosmopolitanism, the way from the implicit to the explicit was very long and painful.
Until recently, the idea of “human rights” had a bad reputation in the Roman Church because of its clear and strong association with the French revolution. It was endorsed, it was embraced eventually, as a result of the Second Vatican Council, and our present Pope has adopted it in its full force. But there are more ambiguities.
There is a tendency in political phraseology to transform this “human rights” idea into a kind of political ideology, which it is not. This idea provides us with no prescription for a political order except, of course, for an obvious conclusion that we ought, rather, to favour an order in which human rights are better protected. But it is conceptually, and even empirically, possible for human rights to be protected within an order which is not, properly speaking, democratic. What is, however, conceptually necessary for human rights to be protected is the Rechtsstaat, the rule of law. That’s what Serguey Kovalyov pointed out in a negative example of contemporary Russia – contemporary, not Soviet Russia.
Moreover, there is a tendency to overload the idea of human rights to such an extent that we might put into it all the justifiable claims and grievances that exist in the world. In fact, the human rights idea is such that human rights are vested only in individuals – all of them, but only in individuals. No collective grievances, however justifiable, should be put into it. Not all human miseries and suffering can be included in the idea of human rights. On the contrary, it would water it down to such an extent that we would never know what remains.
Obviously, there are limitations. If we say “thou shall not kill”, or if we say “there is such a thing among ‘human rights’ as the right to life”, it does not mean that we must not kill in self-defence.
It would be silly to expect that any country can deduce its foreign policy from the human rights idea. We all know that there are various and many conflicting priorities in any political dealings, whether you like it or not; and I have doubts about the inclusion of the idea of human rights of the so-called social right. Why do I think so? Because it is necessary for the idea of human rights to be properly believed and operated. We consider it valid when we are able to identify the agency or people who violate it.
When someone is arrested without any legal basis, when someone is tortured, when someone is killed without trial, we know, or at least know in principle, who did it, what agency and what people are responsible. But what if I am unemployed? Who is responsible? When I say it is the state that is responsible, I imply that it is a duty of the state to give employment to everybody. But this is possible only in a totalitarian order, in a totalitarian state, not in a market economy. To include the right to work into the list of “human rights” is very dangerous for this very reason: that we are threatened with the demand of a totalitarian order.
Of course, nobody would deny that unemployment is a terrible plague of modern societies and that it is a duty of government to do everything possible to alleviate it, to make unemployment less burdensome and to limit it. We don’t really need to list the reasons why it is so; it is so obvious. But the total abolition of unemployment cannot be imposed in the same way as, for instance, the total interdiction of torture, which is included in the idea of human rights. It is, moreover, dangerous because it is an implicit demand of a totalitarian order. So, there are a number of limitations.
Of course, the right to free movement could be included into the list of human rights, but it would be silly to demand that everybody has the right to settle permanently in any country in the world. That’s impossible and impractical.
The idea of human rights is hardly verbally contested nowadays. In fact, Mao Zedong was a noteworthy, and perhaps praiseworthy, exception when he clearly and unequivocally condemned the idea of “human rights” as a bourgeois concoction. But he was an exception. Today, the idea of human rights seems to be verbally accepted even by barbaric, tyrannical regimes that trample upon human rights and destroy them on every occasion. Now, does it matter that barbaric and anti-human regimes accept it verbally? Well, I think it does matter. It proves that the remaining barbarians are already ashamed of their barbarity. We might say that is, at least, a step in the right direction, even though making these steps real, transforming them into a real observance of human rights, might take a very, very long time. Thank you.

Martin Bútora
Ambiguities, doubts and challenges. We are honoured to have with us, here at this debate, the veterans of human rights. We were happy to see some new faces emerging from the darkness of jail. We will have Silje Vallestad and Jacques Rupnik as the first speakers after the break.

Coffee break

Martin Bútora
Until now we have heard four discussants, and I would now like to ask Silje Vallestad to share with us her ideas on the universality of human rights.

Silje Marie Berntsen Vallestad
Thank you... I’m very honoured to be here today representing the Student’s Forum 2000, which took place in June of this year. I’m also very thankful that we’ve been given this chance to represent the young generation and our views, our fears, visions, hopes and dreams for the future. I hope you, dear distinguished delegates, learn as much from this as we do, and I sincerely hope that you will keep the young generation, and our thoughts, in mind in your future work. Now, as I’ve said this, I think my nerves are a bit calmer. It is not the most fortunate position, to speak in the last panel after so many interesting speeches, but – to get to the point, the very complex topic of Universality or Plurality of Human Rights – I would like to open with a few words by Mr Abdullah, which really made me think: “In a world, which works for so few, how shall we create a world which works for all.”
I think this brings us to the very heart of our topic. This is why we have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Whether these rights really are universal or not, is something I will return to. Anyway, we can’t just discuss individual problems and adjustments, we can’t just be our own self-made men, as I see sadly enough is the basic tendency in the globalised world or, as Divvya said yesterday, a morally bankrupt world. But, this is the basis for which we have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and why we should also have a Universal Declaration of Human Responsibilities. That is another point which I will not be discussing, but which I hope that you, Mr Bernstein, might comment on.
Yesterday, Serguey Kovalyov stated, on a TV debate programme he participated in, that if we are going to have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the world needs to function as one country. To me, this seems to imply total globalisation, one law-making body, one educational system, and, basically, total equality between all people. This issue is exactly what we have been discussing during the past three days. We all seem to, more or less, agree that globalisation results in difficulties in keeping our own identities. How would it not, in a world where we have a global market-place where we can shop for religions, cultures, thoughts and ideas as we want to. We would need a world without differences, a homogeneous society. But, how is it possible to keep local identities and yet function in the global world? How is it possible to keep local identities, yet at the same time have a total respect for, and openness to, people of other identities? How is it possible to have a Universal Declaration of Human Rights that will represent and also respect all cultures? Is any of this possible at all? I don’t know. But I hope you have some ideas about this.
What I do know is that I have experienced a place where all this works, a little utopian microcosm of its own. I spent the two last years of high-school at the United World College of the Atlantic. The United World College movement is based on the question, posed by Kurt Hahn, the founder of the movement: how can there be peace if people don’t understand each other, and how can they understand each other if they don’t know each other? The United World College brings together young people from over 80 different nations to live and work together for two years. They encourage communication, respect and understanding beyond borders. They encourage us to see each others’ similarities instead of differences but, at the same time, appreciate and respect each others’ differences. At this place, it all worked: globalisation and cultural identity side by side. Why did it work there, and why doesn’t it work in the world as a whole? Was it just because we were young and naive at this place? Was it because we needed our global world only for a limited time? I believe, and hope that, for the future this will be a global reality. I don’t know how, but as Yael stated, I think education is very much a key word.
I would now like to move on to the “universality” of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. For me, it is quite clear that the concept of this Declaration is a Western concept. I must say that here I disagree with Mr Bernstein. I, too, believe that there are universal moral and ethical standards. The world has universality of human dignity and, in this way, a universality of human rights. But I still think that the UN Declaration of Human Rights is a Western concept. A Universal Declaration of Human Rights assumes a common cultural language, and the culture giving birth to the concept needs to be universal culture. This is something we don’t have and which we will only gain in the global world.
Today, it is very easy to culturally interpret the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Take for example, the equality of men and women. Does this necessarily mean the same in, for example, a feminist movement and a Muslim city? Do men and women have to be the same, and identical, for there to be equality? I think building a Human Rights Declaration based on cultural languages is a necessary first step to take towards globalisation.
I would now like to shift my statement to young people in the globalised world, and our role in creating a better future. In today’s globalised world, full of technology, we have a constant flow of information. My generation is the first generation to experience this but, as Mrs Clinton said in her speech, we are facing a media full of pessimism and destruction. We are facing a media that tries to sensationalise every single topic, a media with enormous power, the power to dictate what we should think, what we should know and what we should care about. For six-months, the personal life of President Bill Clinton has been the main interest of the global media, all other issues being forgotten. How could a blue dress take away attention from world catastrophes?
In Norway, for example, the Red Cross actually had to beg the media to pay some attention to the terrible starvation in Sudan. But, in all this, let us not forget our role as consumers. We are actually the people who read these stories, who allow this to continue.
My generation has often been referred to as “Generation X,” or now as “Generation Y”: the generation that does not perform, the inactive and silent generation. The issue, in relation to the media, is that the young generation is totally bombarded with information about who needs us. So what do we choose and how do we choose what to be involved in? We can’t fight everything at the same time, and the media concentrates on one issue only for a short period of time before some other sensational story takes the spotlight. My generation is also the first generation to grow up with violence everywhere around us: in films and news, video games and toys. You might ask yourselves: how can one really care when one is used to seeing the game and fun of violence? But I think we do care. We, young people, at least the vast majority of us, really do care. We might not all be very active, and I believe this relates closely to the constant, intense flow of information. In one way the media pacifies many of us, because we feel the need to close out the pessimism of the world, but we do care. As long as you let us care and allow us to play our part in creating a better world, as long as you listen to us and keep our views in mind when you take important decisions, only then can we help to improve our world.
I’d like to close with something a Burmese student, living in Norway, said to me: “If spiders unite, they can tie down the lion.” That is why we gather here today. So, if any of you would like to answer any of these questions, I would feel that we are getting closer to our goal of communication between the generations, organisations and nations. Thank you.

Martin Bútora
I think that we are all glad to hear that you are concerned and, in spite of the fact of being exposed to the media, that you are able to think, to articulate and to join, because I think that knowledge can also be provided through action. Jacques Rupnik...

Jacques Rupnik
I would like to return to the debate we started on Monday and, basically, connect the debate about the universality of human rights with the debate about realism in foreign policy because of the argument between universalists and cultural relativists. Well, I think this is a well-rehearsed argument and we can have it here, but I think most of us know the arguments in advance and would agree that the arguments we’ve heard from the realists are still powerful arguments. When Henry Kissinger said: “You want to intervene in Kosovo on humanitarian grounds because it is unacceptable that human rights are being violated.” This might be fine; this might be principled; this might be necessary; but is it feasible if you do not have a political answer, if you do not have a political solution you want to bring to Kosovo? If Bosnia has taught us anything, it is that humanitarianism, however well meant, is certainly no substitute for policy. I think we have to try to look at some of the concrete cases where the “realists” and the “idealists” cross.
First of all, let us remember that this is not a new situation at all. This debate has been going on, let’s say, for a couple of centuries. At the end of the 18th century, the intellectuals of the Enlightenment rejected slavery in the name of the principles, in the name of the ideas, of the European Enlightenment. After the Second World War, many Western European intellectuals rejected the very idea of “Europe” because of what had been committed in its name, and in the name of colonialism, for instance. Many of them turned to socialism, looking for an alternative, for a different idea of human rights, the one Leszek Kolakowski mentioned – social rights as the supreme stage of the struggle of mankind for human rights.
Well, we know what happened to that as well. First, they started criticising the realities of so-called real socialism in the name of the principles of socialism; and, later they rejected the ideals of socialism because of the horrors committed in the name of socialism. So, this dialectic between ideals and realities, ideas and principles, has been around for a couple of centuries, and the whole history of the European intellectual is, in fact, that history, or revolves around that history. Rather than return to that history, I want to go back to two concrete cases where the realists and the idealists were supposed to meet.
One of them is well-known, because of the number of participants in that history who are here today. That was the history of détente and human rights, and the story that has prevailed, since 1989, is somewhat of a fairy tale: détente was established; Helsinki was signed; human rights were introduced into international diplomacy; and, eventually all this was brought a happy end. Adam Michnik said this morning: “It sounds very much like a B-movie made in Hollywood.”
No, the reality was somewhat more complex: we had basically two views of détente. One view said that after the Soviet invasion of 1968 change was not possible in this part of the world. You had to accept the status quo, you had to accept the reality as it was and not start with human rights, with freedom, and things like that. Accept the status quo and then work through mutual trade and eventually that will bring such a degree of interaction and inter-penetration that evolution might become possible again. That was the argument very familiar to the main architects of détente. I will give no names, you know them very well. There was an eloquent book written about that at the time, Samuel Pisar’s Les armes de la paix (The Arms of Peace), and the title speaks for itself. If you want peace, the real “arms” are: do business, don’t start talking about human rights, you’ll only create problems.
But then there was the second version of détente, the second idea of détente, if you like “détente from below”: the idea of introducing into this status quo concept of détente an element that was not initially planned; and, that eventually brought in a de-stabilising element, which disrupted Détente Mark 1 and produced Détente Mark 2. That is, the idea that you cannot have peace between states if you have a state of war, to speak like General Jaruzelski, inside. That was the other view of détente and we know how that story ended after 1989.
So, again, once the so-called dissidents, and human rights campaigners etc., found themselves in the governments, in the castles etc., suddenly everybody said: “Oh, this is the happy-ending triumph of that idea of détente.” Well, those of us who were close to that story know better than that. Anyway, the lesson of that story is that the real “realists” were those who were betting on those who seemed to have no chance at all, who seemed to represent a marginal symbolic gesture of human rights versus all the power of the state.
The second concrete example I would like to mention is the one I have been involved in as the executive director of the International Commission of the Balkans, and it’s the whole idea of creating an international legal institution that would not just proclaim human rights, like the United Nations, but that would actually sanction the violation of human rights. That is the International Penal Tribunal, for instance, on the crimes in Bosnia. I remember when we travelled there and the discussions we had in the Balkans Commission – with Bronislaw Geremek, with Lloyd Cutler from the United States – the arguments we heard when we went to the area, where they were very doubtful about the idea of an International Tribunal: “You are trying to introduce an idea of justice, an idea of human rights, in a process where what matters is power”; “The nationalists have been defeated by military force, now we have to impose a certain framework and that would eventually produce something else”; “To introduce human rights discourse, to introduce even sanctions against the violation of human rights or war crimes, is introducing de-stabilisation into this situation”; “By going after war criminals you will render reconciliation impossible.” Those were the arguments we heard repeatedly.
Now, there were at least three concrete, practical or, if you want, “realistic” arguments in favour of the tribunal. One was deterrence. If you allow what has happened in Bosnia, there is a good chance that you might see things like that repeated in Kosovo. The armies and the police that are operating in Kosovo know, today, that they are under international watch, under international scrutiny, and that crimes that are committed will, one day, be judged and possibly punished. I don’t think this is sufficient but the argument of deterrence is not unimportant.
The second argument concerns reconciliation. Not to do anything about punishing human rights violations, or war crimes, is to accept the argument of collective guilt. Who committed the crimes, who has violated human rights? The Serbs or the Croats? You use the collective terms to introduce the argument of the International Penal Court: Serbs have violated human rights, Croats have violated human rights. You make that distinction and you will break the vicious circle of collective responsibility and collective guilt that is the cycle on which the war has thrived for so long. So, if you want reconciliation you must break this argument of collective guilt, and one way of doing it is precisely introducing an element of personal responsibility.
The third and final, very practical, argument is that the war criminals in Bosnia happen, also, to be the peace criminals. They are the ones who are preventing the post-war reconciliation, the post-war building of democratic institutions, etc. They are still obstructing it, that was their strategy. Therefore, if you want to promote the post-war rebuilding of Bosnia, the rebuilding of common institutions, you have to deal not just with war criminals, but also with peace criminals. They happen to be the same.
These were just two examples to introduce into the old debate between the idealists and the realists, that sometimes the real “realism” is not where you think it is.

Martin Bútora
Thank you, Jacques Rupnik. This panel has an advantage to have the most diverse people sitting and debating here, and thank you for this perspective from someone who participated in Bosnia.
Before I come to our next speaker, in a couple of seconds, I would like to ask you if you could help to solve a small violation of human rights of the participants of our panel. Ashis Nandy has lost his remarks on his paper, so maybe someone has it in their bag or in their pocket. Please, be so kind if you find it and deliver it to Ashis Nandy. Now the floor is open to Professor Amitai Etzioni.

Amitai Etzioni
Thank you very much. I believe that dichotomies or oppositions are a curse of intellectual life. When we tend to think about day and nights, or black and white, it hides from us the gradations and the opportunities for combinations. The reason I emphasise this is that the notion that there is a Western notion of rights and an Asian notion of social order or harmony, and that those are necessarily in opposition, greatly harms some very important human considerations.
In 1990, I was paying for my sins by teaching at Harvard Business School. I will not go into any details, but I came across a study that showed that young Americans feel very strongly that if they are charged with a crime they have a right – which indeed they do, a very important right – to ask to appear before a jury of their peers rather than before a judge. But when the same Americans were asked to serve on a jury, they practically all said: “I am too busy. Find somebody else.” That became like the apple that hit Newton’s forehead. It opened my eyes to the fact that you cannot have rights, it’s illogical to assume any right, if you are not going to assume the corollary responsibilities. You cannot have a jury of your peers if the peers will not serve. More profoundly, it’s indecent, it’s immoral, to keep asking to be given, to keep asking to take, and not to be willing to give anything back. Once we started talking about rights and responsibilities in the early 1990s, we got a tremendous response. This has not just become somewhat of a fashion at schools and on campuses. We have a Quarterly of Rights and Responsibilities. We have books talking about the New Golden Rule, trying to combine rights and responsibilities, and major public figures have made that part of their agenda.
For instance, Prime Minister Tony Blair has openly acknowledged this theme, if you look at the way he’s changed the Labour Party’s platform. Everybody knows that he took out the old Clause Four, which talks about the nationalisation of industries; but very few people know what he put in instead. Instead, he put in the concept of community in which we have rights and responsibilities to one another. Kurt Biedenkopf, who was here from the CDU, Rudolf Scharping from the Social Democrats, and Joschka Fischer, have also come out talking about this – I don’t want to go on but just wanted to mention some of these public figures to emphasise that I am not going to talk about some abstract philosophy, but a subject that has considerable public and political legs.
Before I talk about the combination, I cannot continue without slightly differing with my distinguished colleague from Oxford, who suggested that human rights are a cultural construct based on consensus and historically limited. Universal human rights are a moral claim dressed up in legal language. When we come to the Cubans and Chinese and say: “We don’t like you torturing your people, we think it’s wrong for you to jail them, etc., etc.,” what we are basically doing is that we are laying a moral claim on them. To say that this is a construction, a Western idea or any of these statements, is inadvertently – I have to emphasise inadvertently – to undermine the moral claim we lay on this kind of behaviour. The fact is that American notions, and others, of human rights are not based on consensus. Consensus is an untenable position. We have communities that would agree 100 per cent, in a minute, to lynch people and to burn books. Consensus is not a basis for an ethical position. The American notion of human rights is based on self-evident truths – unalienable rights – and a notion, for those of you who want follow a technical, a philosophical position here, that there are certain moral truths that speak to us in a compelling manner.
The claim is that anybody – a Chinese, a Hottentot, whoever – if they look into their heart of hearts, they will see that they’d rather be free than in jail. They’d rather have the right to speak than to be shut up. They’d rather have a right to meet with their friends than to be denied the right of assembly. We then do examine these profound moral senses, but the sequence is the other way round. We first recognise the compelling moral power and then we subject them to philosophical examination.
Now you ask why, in earlier centuries, people did not see these self-evident truths and, indeed, for many years we did not have the opportunity to communicate and have a dialogue with each other, to allow these insights to bubble up, but it is precisely as we’ve just heard: with the age of communication, as we became able to reach people, these claims had a tremendous power and, indeed, they brought down tyrannies. What more can you say about a moral claim than to say it was a major force in destroying tyrannies.
I would like, first of all, to rest on the claim that rights are something that speak to all of us in an unmistakable voice. The fact that they are not absolute does not mean they are not there. Every right has some limits. First of all, it has to be squared with other rights. There are exceptional circumstances, so the fact that you may kill somebody in self-defence does not mean there is no respect for human life. Every right can be driven to an absolute, but that does not undermine the right; it just shows that they all have some limitations.
Now to my main point, that rights and responsibilities often, not always, go hand in hand. My young colleague asked: “How can you reconcile rights with differences, with cultural identities?” Well, one of our most important rights is the right to pray to anybody we want; it is the freedom of religion. What does it do, basically? It recognises differences. It suggests that you can pray to anybody you want or not pray at all, and that is one of your rights based on recognition of differences. The whole idea of racial and ethnic objection to discrimination is based on the fact that we want people to have the right to be different without this being used to discriminate against them.
Now, the connection between responsibilities and rights. I told you earlier the story about the jury, that there is a logical connection. But let me take the next step. All of us recognise, in the same profound manner, that we recognise rights, that we want a modicum of social order. None of us wants to live in a world in which people can be raped and killed by criminals. That means that we want police, we want law, we want courts, we want jails. None of us wants to rely on only the goodness of other people. All of us have environmental concerns, we do not want people to dump things in the environment. Even the call for civility, which is so elementary, basically means that we might say to some people: “I don’t like the way you talk. I think you should talk in civil manner.” There would be no need to ask people to talk in a civil manner if they would do so automatically. So we do both things. We respect the right of people to speak and we lay a responsibility on them to speak in ways that make the conversation constructive and civil. I could go on and on by showing these examples, but let me make the next point.
Rights do not exist in a social vacuum. They exist in a place that has some modicum of order. In Moscow, at the moment, you don’t have many rights and you don’t have much order. The notion that if you had a little more order in Moscow you would lose your rights is a great mistake. Up to a point they go hand in hand. Let me just give you an extremely simplistic example. I live in Washington D.C. We had, like every good country, an elected government. For years, the elected government did not discharge its most elementary responsibilities. There was no genocide or concentration camps, but we had massive crime, unemployment, drug abuse – a fairly wild city. Two years ago, Congress came and said: “You have an elected government. Goodbye. We just appointed a new government.” You know, what is an interesting part of the story is that there were no protests. Human Rights Watch – we didn’t hear from them. There were no demonstrations in the streets, there were no delegations, just three protesters. Therein lies the point that an environment where vital rights are respected is also an environment in which the need for basic order meets a response in the quickest way.
If you look back to the social situations in which totalitarian governments came to power it has, again, been when elementary responsibilities were not discharged. That doesn’t justify it, but it alerts us to the historical need to be sure that you respect both rights and responsibilities. Professor Küng has left, but he is a part of a movement in which I also participate, that is trying to suggest that we must respect the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but that we must put alongside it a “Declaration of Responsibilities”. That is where our Asian colleagues and our Western colleagues (and by the way Islam and Judaism are basically religions of responsibility, not of rights) can all come together, recognising both the compelling, unquestioned power of individual rights and our notion that we have to discharge our responsibility to each other as parents, as children, as brothers and sisters, as neighbours, as friends, as members of the community. Thank you.

Martin Bútora
Accountable governments search for all their rights and responsibilities. That is a very firm and strong bridge, not only for communitarian movements, as Professor Etzioni has shown, but also for us here and I hope for many others. Weiming Tu...

Weiming Tu
Thank you. I would also like to take, as my point of departure, Silje Vallestad’s question – the possible negotiation between universality and different cultural expressions of human rights.
I am a futurologist. What I am particularly concerned about is the continuous well-being of the human rights discourse, especially in non-Western societies. I consider the human rights discourse to be, since the UN Declaration of 1948, an evolving discourse. In fact, the three generations – the first generation of civil and political rights, the second generation of economic and cultural rights, and now we’ve moved into the third generation of even group rights – are all included, including women’s rights and the rights of children, in the original Declaration, which is one of the most comprehensive and persuasive documents.
Over the past few years, Professor Theodore de Bary of Columbia and I have been involved in a joint venture to study the possibility of ethical and spiritual resources in the Confucian tradition for human rights, with particular emphasis on the situation in China. When we began that enterprise, it was extremely difficult for us to get any scholars from China to participate. That was about five or six years ago. But three years ago we managed to invite scholars, as individuals, to come to Honolulu for the discussion. We have a book published by Columbia University, Confucianism and Human Rights and, this June, three days before Clinton’s visit, we had a meeting on Confucianism and Human Rights in Beijing. The conversation has now begun, and there is the possibility of a continuing discussion.
In connection with this, I believe that the persuasive power of human rights, as a moral and legal claim and as an instrument of the UN or other international organisations, can be greatly enriched in the next phase of engaging in inter-religious or intercultural studies, which rather than undermine that persuasive power, can enrich that discourse in different cultural contexts. This is not to say that some of the politicians who advocated Asian values in bad faith for the sake of covering up some kind of authoritarian mechanisms of control are right. They are not right at all. They are wrong. But to demonstrate their inability to undermine the universality of human rights, notwithstanding efforts to ensure that the human rights discourse becomes culturally rich and varied with different expressions, we need to continue the conversation.
I think Professor Charles Taylor, and a number of other people, have noted that one of the most important challenges for the 21st century is human rights as a moral claim. Of course, it originated in the West – there is no question about that – but do not allow genetic reasons to undermine the structural reasons for promoting human rights in many different cultural contexts. And that idea is particularly significant. I simply want to note that many of us argue against the Chinese government’s position by saying that a modern, civilised government ought to do the following, as dictated by the human rights discourse. Any inability to perform those duties, under the disguise of a specific cultural condition or a specific social, political condition, can be interpreted as done in bad faith, so that the government can be criticised. However, as an intellectual and moral discourse, as well as a legal instrument, “human rights” as a form of “human flourishing” needs to be enriched by many different cultural traditions. Otherwise, they will always be considered as simply a local knowledge that becomes globally significant. Thank you.

Martin Bútora
Thank you very much. I have Hazel Henderson on the list, but there are some of the panellists who would like to react, I understand. I would now like to pass the floor to Mr Bernstein.

Robert L. Bernstein
First, I just want to say that I think, when you talk about realists and idealists, that one of the things that have happened is that human rights advocates have become realists. I think Mr Rupnik was commenting on that, that sometimes the idealism turns out to be more realistic. I think that it’s very important to note that very specific steps are being taken, such as the International Criminal Court, and the ones that I mentioned before on land-mines and on child-soldiers – and there is a group behind that, and they are becoming very, very realistic and very pragmatic.
As far as Asian values, I have spoken to most of the members of the human rights movement in China, which are many of the same Chinese who have been exiled and who are operating a Human Rights Organisation in New York. I have never heard them talk about human values. I remember reading a book many years ago by Simon Leys who was talking about Asian values and saying: I really don’t think there is any such thing.
Just as the Constitution of the United States is always being interpreted and re-interpreted, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is going to be fleshed out in many, many ways. But we are well beyond the idea that one side is idealistic and the other is realistic, and that’s why, when Henry Kissinger says that you shouldn’t interfere if you don’t have a programme, the answer should be: “Of course you should interfere if you can stop human killing.” I mean, that’s a good enough reason to interfere, even if you don’t know what you are going to do next.
It reminds me of the time when our business was bought by a large company and they asked me for a five-year plan – and I remember giving a very unsatisfactory answer, saying: “No five-year plan ever beat straight muddling through.” That’s what you have to do sometimes, and that’s what I think they’re doing, and I think that’s the right way to go, even though the exact steps are not human rights problems.

Martin Bútora
Thank you. Serguey Kovalyov.

Serguey Kovalyov
Thank you, Mr Chairman. I apologise as I will have to leave our gathering shortly. But before I do, I would like to reply to a thing or two. I was encouraged to do so by our young colleague who is enrolled at such a great university. Yes, it is indeed so that the current concept of human rights is a European concept. It is a product of western culture and not solely European. The United States has contributed considerably to the shaping of it. I would like to ask you, dear colleagues, whether you are aware that Sir Isaac Newton formulated his law of gravity in England. Does it mean that in China another law of gravity applies? Of course not, the concept is universal regardless of the country it was discovered in. If we talk about the distinctiveness of national cultures, let’s be absolutely specific. Tell me, I ask you, what in this European concept so much encumbers the desired distinctiveness? What is it? Is it the right to use a language of one’s choice? Or the right to provide such education to one’s own children that corresponds to one’s ideas? Or is it the right to worship any religion of one’s choice or none at all? Is this the obstacle to national distinctiveness? Well, let’s be specific and let’s finally find out what in this European – yes, originally European – concept of human rights damages national distinctiveness so much. This concept does not prevent anyone from wearing a veil over one’s face. But, contrary to certain Asian ideas of human rights, it does not make it compulsory for everyone to wear this veil. It is precisely this that differentiates the European idea from the non-European idea of human rights.
The second remark is intended for Mr Kolakowski who was the esteemed speaker before me. He is right that so-called social rights are talked about a lot. I venture to say that this is something completely different from human rights. And not only that, they even contradict the correctly construed concept of human rights. Let’s have a closer look at the right to work Mr Kolakowski talked about. Imagine if we introduced this norm: the right to work. What would happen? I don’t think you would want to repeal the law concerning the inadmissibility of discrimination in the sphere of employment and work. And now imagine for a moment that I would like to realise my right to work, let’s say, as conductor of a symphonic orchestra. I assure you my concerts would “please” you a great deal. You may counter that you would not choose to attend my concerts. Yes, you may do that. But it does not resolve the problem as it is not possible to have as many orchestras as would accommodate all those who wish to work as conductors. Right? Another argument may be used here: it is impossible to defend such a right as the right to work. The appropriate tools are lacking. The most perfect tool for enforcing law is the courts. How are you going to phrase your indictment? Are you going to sue because they are not willing to appoint you to conduct a symphonic orchestra?
Prohibition of discrimination in work and employment – that’s a different story. This provision is already included in human rights laws. There is another question: the necessity of establishing and paying unemployment benefits. Yet this norm is also included in the majority of the legal systems in force. In other words, it is an obligation of the state to provide socially for its citizens. But under no circumstances does this give citizens the right to claim one thing or another. Citizens have the right to demand not to be discriminated against, and this right may be enforced through courts – just because it is a right.
So these were the two most important points I just had to make.
I am sorry but I have to go now as I have to catch my plane.

Martin Bútora
Thank you. We will have two concluding remarks, one by Professor Kolakowski and the remaining one by Hazel Henderson.

Leszek Kolakowski
I don’t think there is any disagreement between myself and Serguey Kovalyov, because that’s precisely what I said, that so-called social rights, like the right to work, are not to be included and should not be included into the list of human rights, and I tried to explain why I think so. So, there is no disagreement on this point.
One very brief remark about what Mr Etzioni just said. Well, I agree with him on the point that consensus is an extremely fragile and uncertain basis for human rights or any other social arrangement, that it is changeable and can be changed overnight. I agree with you to this extent.
However, what I tried to say was that the American spirit seems to be reconciled with the idea of consensus as the best solution for such matters, whereas Mr Etzioni says no: it is rather a self-evident truth. Well, self-evident truth – a famous expression of Jefferson’s – is there, to be sure. But I would ask you: how many American academics – sociologists, political scientists, philosophers – would subscribe to Jefferson’s formula? Yes, it is the case that our Creator endowed us with such inalienable rights, that’s a self-evident truth, like the pursuit of happiness and so on. How many of them would be ready to say that in their own names? I am afraid, very few. And I am afraid that, philosophically, the American spirit is still dominated by pragmatic thinking which, of course, at least in the post-Nietzschean world, in place of the unverifiable doctrine of self-evident truths, gives us a verifiable and clearly definable consensus.

Martin Bútora
Thank you, Professor Kolakowski. Hazel Henderson.

Hazel Henderson
Thank you, Mr Chairman. I just want to mention three practical efforts. The first is to remind us of our friend, Dr Oscar Aries who, in Costa Rica in 1982, called a meeting to draft a “UN Charter of Human Responsibilities” and that effort is still going forward. Since the 1970s my dear friend, the late Jacques Cousteau, and a group of us have worked on a “UN Charter of the Rights of Future Generations”, and this is becoming more urgent all the time. The third practical effort concerns an organisation that has now created a very good sanction against corporations who don’t respect human rights – and this is a new kind of label and a form of social auditing, called Social Accountability 8000. Two large accounting firms, KPMG and Deloitte & Touche, now confer this label, and corporations (if they want to certify themselves as having a clean record of human rights, of not doing business within repressive regimes, of respecting the rights of their employees) are now paying these two auditing firms to accredit them with the SA 8000 label. Thank you.

Martin Bútora
Thank you very much. Before I pass the floor to the Chairman of the Organising Committee, Professor Jiří Musil, I would like to use my last minute for a couple of words.
Today we sit in this splendid Spanish Hall, drinking coffee, talking to friends, enjoying intellectual discourse, looking at Prague, the city of dreams. We sit here at the end of the century as participants of the Forum 2000. Earlier, in these past few days, the words of politicians, professors, and priests have been spoken. During this panel, that group of people was joined also by activists working in the field of human rights. Their presence here at the Conference cannot be overestimated.
However, let us not forget that less than sixty years ago, there were other people in this castle. Believe it, or not, it was Adolf Hitler looking, literally, out of these windows. With arrogance and satisfaction, he watched the humiliated city and its desperate inhabitants. He could do this because of the Munich Agreement, because of the appeasement of Western indifference. For me, this meeting, this gathering, this last panel on human rights, as well as the whole conference, was first and foremost about the overcoming of human indifference.
Thank you for your presence here.

Jiří Musil
Mr President, dear colleagues, distinguished guests,
I was asked to say some words at the end of our conference. I have listened to you and, at the same time, tried to write something down, so please understand that it is the perspective of one person who is trying to reflect on what happened here.
After this conference, I think that we do understand a bit better, in a deeper way, the meaning of the term “globalisation”. We understand, first of all, that it is many-sided, that it has many faces. We better understand the interactions between the different paths of this process, and I should like to stress that we also better understand one important thing – the tensions between the different processes we summarised under the term “globalisation”. I mean, mainly, that we better understand the tensions between the economic, political, cultural and ethical aspects of globalisation. They, indeed, do not proceed hand-in-hand. There are many conflicts, and we have heard about them, and I think it is a very important step forward if we define the tensions and the conflicts we face.
The world is not, and will not be, in the future, the best of the possible worlds in Leibniz’s terms. We have to live with these pluralities and with these tensions in pluralities, mainly in cultures; less probably with not so many pluralities in economies. These differences are based on traditions, on centuries of thinking, of searching for the truth, and centuries of building a picture of our world, and should not be considered as barriers to harmonious and fruitful living together.
Reflecting on what has happened here, I think that we should try to build up – systematically and with vigour – rules for living together with this plurality and these differences. I do not hesitate to call them “universal rules”. The rules, the frameworks, can be considered almost as universal rights, the rules under which we can exist with deep, inner pluralities, rules that are a result of our efforts to understand the world and, at the same time of course, a result of our daily lives, of our experiences, of our geography, of all the factors that form our lives.
Therefore, in my understanding (in a modest effort to understand what is going on), “universalism” is legitimate in terms of rules regulating our interactions, our living together, but not in terms of content, of our convictions. In fact, as a sociologist and somebody who is interested in cultural anthropology, I would say we are moving more and more towards new pluralities. In fact Ernest Gellner, my old friend who has now died unfortunately, used the term “cantonisation” for this process, the notion that we are moving on the one side to universal structures but, at the same time, groups are forming newer and newer niches in their daily lives. It is an enrichment – and an enrichment which should be accepted.
There has been a second lesson for me: we learned that globalisation is not a new process. To stress what many speakers have said, it is definitely a process that has already lasted centuries, and a process that started in the pre-European civilisation. In the specific context of our time, which was also expressed here, globalisation has been marked by the quick transfer of information and the growing number of states with open borders. Undoubtedly, we live in a world of more and more interdependent parts or regions.
Globalisation, according to our discussion, is definitely not only a harmonious and an integrating process; but it also leads to conflicts, it leads to polarisation. Globalisation means a different thing for the rich and the poor parts of the world. As was expressed by one of our distinguished speakers, it’s an elitist process. I am afraid that for most people outside the Western world, the word “globalisation” means something quite different; but, at the same time, we know that the growing interdependencies between different parts of the world, in material terms – in trade, in an exchange of knowledge – this growing interdependence can make people more affluent.
Globalisation, under certain conditions – and I stress this – can be a strong device for decreasing poverty, or at least hunger, disease and natural disasters. We witness – and this is another observation from this gathering – swift progress in the functional and transactional aspects of globalisation, simply expressed in material terms, in economy, in technological instruments, and in the globally growing exchange of goods.
Of course, we have many new global actors, but we lack rules for their actions. There are inconsistencies between the level of economic and legal globalisation – I stress legal globalisation, which we haven’t talked about. Even greater inconsistencies exist between the level of interdependence in economy and technology, on the one hand the political, legal and, of course, cultural institutions, or social institutions. These differences, the tensions, the inconsistencies are deep, and in a shrinking world they can be very dangerous.
I’m slowly moving to my last words. I think that the Forum 2000 indicated a profound need to be creative in this respect, and to think through the new rules, I stress it again and again. We have a car that moves in a world without rules to govern, at least to some extent, the movements of the new huge car.
What can intellectuals, scientists, people working in the humanities, religious leaders of the world, do in this situation? Something was said about this, not too much by the way, but this was not the aim of this conference; it’s stimulus for a future one. There is something going on, and we are witnessing a slow formation of a “global public”, the term used by Habermas. In addition, there was something that we began to call, here in this room, the beginnings of a “Global Civil Society” that would in a creative, unrestrained discussion – which I think happened here, it was a very free discussion, critical but polite, an unrestrained discussion – help to form a safer and kinder world; and I think, along with other people, that Prague is the proper place for this purpose, and here I would like to thank Adam Michnik for the term he coined – let us start to use the term “Prague Globalisation” as a special type of this kind understanding, but at the same time functional, work.
If you allow me, Mr Chairman, I have a few words about practicalities, the direction of future work. We think that we shall think through the triangle, which was discussed here by Mrs Clinton when she said: “We move in a triangle defined by global economy, rudiments of global policy, but we miss completely the role of civil society functioning in the world.” What I missed here, from my perspective, and what can be an agenda for future meetings like this, I missed here a discussion on the role of art and science in globalisation processes. Scientists were among the first people who, deep in the past, formed global discussions.
I missed, very much, a discussion on popular culture. This is very important and, excuse me – as a sociologist I must stress it – there is an enormous process of the formation of new types of popular cultures. And we haven’t discussed such issues as the social psychology of multi-dependence – how people can live together, under what conditions.
We have not discussed – and I think this is a future agenda as well, and I don’t want to end with it but it is on the end of the list – one of the most difficult aspects of globalisation and that is the “globalisation of crime”.
I should like to stress the fact that the future work of the Forum will be supported by what I hope is an emerging infrastructure of activities that will manage to stimulate the interest of a lot of young people, not only in this city, of course, but inside Europe and outside Europe, as well. We would like to enable them to think about global problems here in Prague, to get reliable information, to co-operate, to discuss and to change the Forums in such way as to accomplish an apex of work that will continue between the individual assemblies, like this one.
Thank you very much, and excuse me for, perhaps, offering a rather long summary of what happened here. It was an extremely rich meeting, I felt it was extremely difficult to try to summarise and, of course, my summary is very subjective.