Topic: International Institutions and Human Rights

Morning Session, Oct. 16

Frederik Willem De Klerk
I would like to welcome you to the second day of the conference, especially our panelists, but also all the guests and observers. We hope that we will have a very fruitful day discussing a very important subject: International institutions and human rights.
Yesterday we thought deeply and debated on the fundamental issues with regard to human rights. Today we take it a step further, and we will be asking and debating, what can be done and should be done by whom, and by which institutions, in order to promote a culture of human rights, in order to strengthen the whole concept of human rights. And in particular, we will focus on how effective international institutions are, and hopefully our panelists will deal with questions such as what reforms are needed in order to make them more effective, and where should we go in a more focused way.
Having defined the problem, there is so much to be done in order to insure that a human rights’ culture is established all across the globe. Today, hopefully, we can focus more and become a little more solution-orientated as to steps which are necessary in that regard. Before I introduce our introductory speaker, let me just remind all of you that there is the Students’ Forum exhibition as you leave the middle door, there to the right. They would like to see as many of you, they would like to interact with as many of you as possible to tell you what they are doing and to draw you into their activities. So you are welcome, and you are heartily invited to visit them and to have some discussions with them. Our panel is fairly small this morning, as far as introductory speeches and opening comments are concerned, and hopefully that will give all the panelists around the table, but also towards the end of our discussion, some members of the audience, a chance to participate, to ask their questions, and it is my sincere hope that we will have lively interaction and a constructive debate. To kick off the discussion and to make the initial opening remarks, Ms. Anne Summers will perform that important task for us. She is the Chairman of the Board of Greenpeace International. She’s a prominent, and I’m quoting from the official CV here, Australian feminist, writer and journalist, she’s also described here as a long-time political activist, particularly in the field of women’s rights. She acted as Chief Advisor for women’s issues to former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, and she also comes from a country which is the arch-enemy of my country on the sports field, in rugby, in cricket and in any other field. But, nonetheless, we are good friends, and I ask to please proceed with her opening remarks.

Anne Summers
Thank you Mr. de Klerk and good morning everybody. A welcome also to my distinguished colleagues. It is a very, very great honor for me to be here this morning but, if I may say so, it is a particular honor for me to be sitting beside Mr. de Klerk. I have utmost admiration for what he did in South Africa. It is very rare to see a leader negotiate his own exit from office, but to do so in the course of such a great cause of justice was truly inspirational and those of us who watched this unfold from around the world can have nothing but admiration for this man. So I salute you Mr. De Klerk.
Let me tell you about Tuvalu. As some of you may know, Tuvalu is one of the tiniest nations on the planet Earth, a mere nine small coral atolls situated in the Pacific Ocean, mid-way between Australia and Hawaii. And when I say small, I mean really small. Tuvalu’s total land mass is just twenty-six square km, equal to less than one-tenth of one percent of the size of Washington, D.C. At last count, in July 2000, there were only ten thousand nine hundred and ninety-one Tuvaluans, but these mainly Polynesians are a very resourceful and enterprising people. Last year they leased their country Internet domain name, “TV” for a reputed fifty million dollars and they have done similar deals with the country’s telephone area code, leasing the “900” number to various phone companies. More recently, the Tuvaluans have had to show enterprise and resourcefulness in order to secure their very survival.
Yesterday President Bill Clinton told us that if global warming continues at its current pace, within fifty years the Everglades in Florida will disappear and Manhattan will lose fifty feet of its shoreline. Tuvalu, whose highest point is just five meters above sea level, does not have fifty years left. In 1997, three tropical cyclones left the nation almost under water and when–-not if, but when — it happens again, what is left of their fresh-water aquifers will be inundated with salt water. So the people of Tuvalu have decided that they must move. They want to relocate their entire population in order to save their lives. A few months ago, their government applied to the government of Australia, seeking permission to migrate. I am ashamed to have to tell you that my government turned them down flat. Despite the fact that Australia has one of the highest per-capita greenhouse emissions in the world and thus must bear some direct responsibility for what is happening to Tuvalu, the Australian government has given this tiny nation the cold shoulder.
If I am ashamed to say that I am Australian when it comes to the fate of Tuvaluans, I am proud to be able to say that I head an international organization that has decided that its number one priority is to fight climate change and thus do everything in its power to save nations threatened by global warming. And this brings me to the subject of this morning’s panel–international organizations and human rights. Perhaps when you think of international organizations, you think of the United Nations, the World Trade Organization or the International Monetary Fund. I hope that I can be forgiven for saying that when I think of international organizations, I think of international nongovernmental organizations — such as Greenpeace — that have played such a pivotal role in protecting the environment and, as I shall argue, the basic human rights of people around the world. Greenpeace has a thirty-year history of bearing witness to environmental scandals and atrocities and of taking non-violent direct action to try to prevent some of these environmental crimes. We also do important, effective, if often behind-the-scenes, political and convention work, which I will refer to later in my remarks. In all of these
thirty years we have taken no government money and no corporate money. Everything we do is financed by our 2.6 million supporters around the world. It is they who give Greenpeace its moral authority. It can never be said that we are agents for anyone but our members.
We were in fact due to celebrate our thirty years of bearing witness and non-violent direct action, on September 15, this year. We had planned an event in New York harbor where our flagship, the Rainbow Warrior, would be berthed for people to come on board. Within an hour of the attacks on the World Trade Center we had not only canceled this event, but as a mark of respect for the victims and their families we decided to abandon all of our planned world-wide activities that would have marked our birthday. Although we do not generally take sides in political matters, we too, are aghast at what happened in the U.S. on September 11th this year.
Today, I want to present three propositions. The first is that clean air, clean water, food and a healthy environment are fundamental human rights. In fact, failure to respect these rights is undermining other, better recognized, human rights. The second proposition is that business as usual is not working as far as ecological sustainability is concerned; neither is government as usual delivering the goods. Government as usual is broken and needs to be fixed, with respect for human rights being at the core of the reforms. The third proposition is that, in spite of all the bad news, the sustainable development and globalization debates are a rich source of ideas for how governance, both state and corporate, might be made to work for, and not against sustainability.
There can be no doubt of the scale of ecological disaster facing us. We are now past the stage where talk of melting ice caps, rising sea levels, changing rainfall patterns and the loss of the last ancient forests can be dismissed as irrational emotionalism on the part of environmentalists or as
interpretative error on the part of scientists. The evidence of a serious environmental decline is so overwhelming that it has been officially recognized by a series of recent head-of-state and ministerial-level meetings. These include the September 2000 UN Millennium Assembly, which spoke of the threat to our children and grandchildren of living on a planet irredeemably spoilt by human activities and whose resources would no longer be sufficient for their needs. The September 2001 UN regional and ministerial meeting for the World Summit on Sustainable Development representing ministers from Europe and North America noted the environment and natural resource base that support life on Earth continue to deteriorate at an alarming rate. Even the CIA, in its View of the World in 2015 paints a bleak picture of stresses on crop land, water, forests and widening gaps in technology and income, all exacerbating political instability and chronic poverty.
Greenpeace has been saying all of this for more than ten years, but now that governments and intelligence agencies are finally agreeing with us, it’s time to do something about it. As President Bill Clinton said yesterday, this is a serious business. I want to put to you today that it is time for the
world to get very serious about stopping the assault on our planet. Before addressing the human rights and governance issues in some detail, let me note the important role of activism in alerting the world to danger and injustice and note also that the right that free speech and assembly play in advancing human rights. Just as activists around the world were among the first to signal many of the current ecological problems, they have been among the first to point to some of the solutions. Their role in developing a
legal framework for environmental protection remains a key–- if little recognized–-contribution. History confirms when if governance systems–-even democratic ones–-fail to reflect popular concerns, activist groups play a crucial role in directing focus to these issues.
Often, many Greenpeace campaigns were initially portrayed by government and industry critics as emotional or unscientific and our direct actions as illegal. But it is in the nature of organizations such as Greenpeace to challenge existing laws if these are judged to be inadequate to their task. In Greenpeace’s experience, the record shows that while campaigns against ozone-depleting CFCs, greenhouse gas emissions, over-fishing, toxic discharges into rivers and oceans and nuclear power sometimes resulted in the breaking of usually national laws, our protests backed media and public
concern about policy failures. These have in turn been translated by the political process into changes to the relevant laws. In short, the lawbreakers become in effect lawmakers. Let me give you some very concrete examples. The protection of Antarctica from all but peaceful scientific research, the ban on commercial whaling, the UN Climate Change Convention and Kyoto Protocol commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the Cartagena Biosafety Protocol, the EU bans on drift-netting and establishment of fish-catch quotas, these are all examples of where Greenpeace was pivotal in pointing to problems and demanding protection of rights of humans and of the wider ecosystem and – in most cases – where we also sat at the table to assist in finding legal frameworks to provide these protections. Fundamental human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have direct and indirect implications for environmental rights. Degradation of the environment through climate change, forest loss, pollution of the air and water, to
take just a few examples, is already undermining rights to property, health, killing off coral reefs and related ecosystems.
As is the case of Tuvalu, some nation-states will be ultimately forced to abandon their homelands. In Central America, cyclones are now routinely killing tens of thousands and making many more homeless. It is clear that a progressively unsustainable planet offers ever-diminishing human rights. As the case of climate change illustrates, non-sustainable behavior, such as the continued use and promotion of fossil fuels and the failure to give priority attention to the full exploitation of energy efficiency and renewable energies technologies is and will continue to affect the rights of everyone on Earth.
This leads me to assert two principles based on sustainability and human rights. The first is that ecological sustainability must be recognized as a basis of existing and evolving human rights. In an integrated borderless ecosystem there is no “half-sustainability” where one country is sustainable
and its neighbor is not. There is no point in traveling first class if you are on the Titanic. Without an enforceable right to a clean and healthy and sustainable environment all our other rights are at risk. Second: ecological responsibility means that no country or company should be allowed to release polluting chemicals in one part of the world that can harm people in another part of the world. And if they do, they should be held accountable. I could also suggest a third right–-that every human being has an equal share in and responsibility to preserve the global commons. On this principle, countries such as the U.S. and Australia would be required to dramatically decrease the use of fossil fuels, while at the same time helping countries like China and India in developing their own renewable energy sources rather than having them go the dirty way of the West. The existing “polluter pays” and precautionary principles, to the extent that they are observed, reflect the recognition that pollution and degradation of the environment must be constrained. If sustainability is recognized as a human right, it becomes easier to develop principles and policies, which fully integrate environmental externalities into our social and political system.
Which brings me finally to the issue of global governance and the question of whether national governance can ever hope to govern the global commons in an effective manner. In spite of the many new environmental laws and policies over the last decades, the state of the planet clearly continues to deteriorate, often at a faster rate than ever. Government as usual and business as usual are inadequate to meeting the challenge. Indeed, they may be the problem. Nor are our current international institutions
necessarily up to the challenges. Let me give you some examples. We can point to a democracy gap, whereby international bodies such as the World Bank and the WTO are responsible to representatives of states, who are pursuing national interests. In the absence of a global body with responsibility for safeguarding the global commons and interests, the global, regional and even local risk being traded off against the national. While the national representatives at the UN Millennium Assembly in September 2000 agreed that globalization offers great opportunities and should become a positive force for all the world’s peoples, no electorate has been directly invited to vote on what form of globalization it wants. We are being given globalization without representation. I should also take this opportunity to state that it would not be plausible for Greenpeace as a global organization to be “anti-globalization” and we are not. We are not part of the violent protests that prior to September 11th had become a routine accompaniment of meetings of global organizations. This does not mean, however, that we are not critical of the shortcomings of some of the international bodies meant to protect people’s interests against governments and corporations. For instance, we can point to an institutional gap whereby at the global level for global issues no one is in charge. The fact that the UN General Assembly, the WTO and the World Bank are not institutionally linked by a common governing body, exacerbates right-hand, left-hand tensions and inconsistencies.
All too frequently governments pledge to protect the environment at one forum only to trade it away in another. Such inconsistencies as this, enable the WTO’s three-man dispute settlement panel to overrule national legislation, but no such similar authority exists for example for the UN environmental program. There is also an implementation gap, the long-listed incompletely implemented laws, such as Kyoto, these only fuel suspicions about a democratic breakdown and/or excessive corporate influences over government. Can we point to a financial failure? Can it really be the case that it cost too much to save the planet? This is the impression we get from the clients in net overseas development aid and
reductions of budgets for key UN agencies. For example, the UN environment program receives less in core funding from governments than Greenpeace receives from its supporters. Nations or companies cannot expect to continue privatizing the benefits and profits that result from increasing access to resources and markets such as lower transaction costs while passing on the costs in the form of increased pollution, reduced local powers, restricted human rights to the public. So far, nation-states have shown limited inclination to engage in much more than the vocabulary of consultation and reform.
As yet, there is no formal process to reform the architecture of the UN, the Bretton Woods agreement and the WTO, much less to convene an open debate about how these institutions might evolve to address the challenges of sustainability and human rights in the twenty-first century. There is no nationally led debate about a global parliament or integrated discussion on how the global commons might be protected. Yet these issues must form part of a holistic approach to tackling the sustainability and human rights issues effectively. We must also include poverty alleviation and other development issues in the sustainability debate. Greenpeace is actively engaged in this debate at present, spurred by our decision to open offices in India, Southeast Asia and China. This will change us, not in who in essence we are, but in how we do some of the things we do. But just as we are calling on governments and corporations to adapt and change, we recognize that we to must be able to respond to the demands of the planet and its people. We cannot remain a Eurocentric organization and we will not.
A major part of the anti-globalization protest is directly about corporate power and what is perceived as its undue influence on government and its lack of responsibility and accountability. Everywhere we look, human rights seem to come second to corporate rights. Corporations enjoy tax and subsidy privileges not open to individuals. Shareholder’s rights are placed above the rights of local citizens and stakeholders in countries where corporations operate. These are among the many reasons why NGOs are now calling for a new international convention on corporate control.
This leads me to conclude with the proposition that human rights must never be inferior to corporate rights. Corporations, like humans, have a responsibility to respect ecological sustainability, alongside other human rights, and should be held fully accountable if they do not. It might be too late for us to save Tuvalu but it is not too late to avert the catastrophe that awaits the world if we fail to address the climate change crisis. Yesterday in his speech, President Clinton twice identified the environmental crisis as needing our urgent attention. Interestingly, for those of us who have been frustrated by the refusal of the United States to sign and ratify the Kyoto protocol, Mr. Clinton said, “America has to do its part.” Just two weeks ago, in a remarkable speech delivered to the Labour Party conference in Brighton, Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, in the middle of the speech about how we ought to respond to the terrorist attacks of September 11th said, “We could defeat climate change if we chose to.” He went on to say, “Kyoto is right. We will implement it and upon all other nations to do so.” The world can only hope that with pressure of this kind, the Bush administration will abandon its solo course on energy policy and join with the rest of the world in seeking to reduce greenhouse emissions and so begin to address the climate crisis that is upon us. Ratifying Kyoto would not completely solve the problem, but it would be a start. It would be, if I may paraphrase from another context, a great leap for mankind. Thank you.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much, Ms. Summers. You have given us lots of food for thought, and surely when we have our open discussion there will be lively debate about some of the points that you made. Our next participant, from the head of the table, will be Ms. Vandana Shiva. She’s a writer, internationally known environmentalist and feminist. Director of Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resource Policy in Delhi. Her current work focuses on biodiversity and sustainable agriculture. She’s a board member of the International Forum on Globalization and the Third World Network. We look forward to hearing from you.

Vandana Shiva
Thank you Mr. De Klerk. I am sure every global 2000 event has been important, but this particular one is both timely and urgent, and provides some kind of alternative to the insane shrinking of the human mind and the human responses to the September 11th tragedy. Of course, it was not the first tragedy of its kind; in our part of the world we have repeatedly experienced similar happenings. In 1984, when the Golden Temple became the home of militants in Punjab, Indira Gandhi, our Prime Minister had a military action against them, was assassinated soon after, and a spiral of violence grew, leading to the deaths of thousands of Sikhs in Delhi and other parts.
And the questions that Elie Wiesel raised yesterday about September 11, “What happened? Why did it happen? Could it be avoided?” were precisely the questions that kept nagging me in that year. Why did the most prosperous state of India, highest per-capita incomes, why did a model of agriculture that was meant to be an alternative to the violence of the red revolution and therefore this was called the “green revolution”, why did the promise of peace not deliver? Why did the land of the prosperity of the green
revolution become the land of civil war leading to the deaths of thousands and why did the responses of the people that were very clearly responses around models of development, prices of agricultural commodities, control over waters and rivers, why was it shaded as if it was a religious conflict when it was not? That’s when I worked non-stop and wrote the book called “The Violence of the Green Revolution“, because I came to understand that cultures of violence breed violence, that systems of economic development based and preconditioned on the disempowerment of people, the creation of dependency and debt and the exclusion in decision-making are the fertile ground where terrorism and extremism grow.
And from the violence of the green revolution I also learned a lot about agriculture. I’m actually trained as a physicist, so these are very interesting lessons I have learned in my old age. I also learned that the violence that we do to nature is mirrored in the violence we do to society. And it’s out of that social violence, that matrix of social violence in which day-to-day activities take place, that creates the violent responses that are becoming the only response that especially young men–-angry young men–-are making. Sometimes this anger is directed inwards, as is the case now in India, where our studies show that more than twenty thousand peasants have committed suicide in three years as a result of globalization increasing the cost of production and decreasing the prices of their farm produce. This is a worldwide phenomenon, not just in India — I won’t even start reading the names for you. But it is a phenomenon we saw in the Midwest–-the grain belt of America. The ’80s were a period of farm suicides, as farmers were indebted, driven off their land and reduced to such an insignificant number that American farmers don’t even count in the census anymore. They tried lobbying, but oil companies have the ear of the government in Washington, dispossessed farmers do not. Now there is enough evidence and there is even a book on this called the Harvest of Rage that shows very clearly that the Oklahoma bombing–-another terrorism–-was linked intimately both to the farm crisis and to the refusal of the government to take note of it. The anger at that point started to get diverted outwards.
These are angers that are rooted in the creation of increasingly centralized systems, resource-greedy systems that require the colonization of every river, of every forest, every mineral deposit. That hunger of an inefficient economy. It is inefficient because if you are using three hundred units to produce the same amount of food, you could have done it with five units of natural resources, we aren’t really becoming efficient. And yet the entire globalization of inefficiency is justified in the language of competition and efficiency, when we should be really looking at the globalization of inefficiency. And I think it also has to do with the fact that this mythical search for efficiency is based totally on the creation of monocultures. The more we adapt ourselves to creating monocultures in nature, the more we adapt ourselves to only tolerating monocultures in society.
Finally, when these non-sustainable undemocratic systems are questioned, when there is dissent, and the democratic option of change is closed, as it was when Carlo Giuliani was shot during the Genoa protests in G8, or when the Punjab farmers were not listened to in the ’70s and ’80s or the Midwest farmers were not listened to or other communities were not listened to, when democratic voices are shut out, terrorism becomes the way for people to get heard when they’re not getting heard. I sometimes think that globalization, economic globalization based on unjust non-sustainable economic models is actually leading to the Talibanization of the world. And when I say Talibanization, I mean a phenomenon of the rise of fundamentalism, a phenomenon of new violence against women, defined as if it is informed by faith when it is not. An image that comes to my mind is the imposition of burqa around all the world although the Bengali women wore saris like me and the Kashmiri women wore the most beautiful furans and today acid is thrown in their face if they don’t dress in burqa. I think that this is very much a response to the imposition of another false category on us–-namely the Barbie doll. We want neither Barbie nor the burqa. We want our many diversities.
There is the issue that was raised by Anne, about the right to food, to water, to clean air being a fundamental right. And this fundamental right has been systematically violated in this decade of economic corporate globalization. In India, fifty million people are starving right now, thousands have died of starvation while the logic of economic efficiency keeps sixty million tons of grain rotting in our go-downs. All this was done so that the two hundred and eighty million rupees being spent on food subsidy would be reduced. Instead, we are spending 1.6 billion rupees storing rotting grain and starving our people. The prices of food have increased four-fold, the prices of farm commodities have collapsed to a third.
In the newspapers every day for the last three days are about bioterror, about the scare of bacterial agents. President Havel said on the first day that bin Laden did not invent bacterial agents. I think that it is time to turn back to that very neglected area, both of biohazards from biological warfare and creation of agents for biological warfare and, but another warfare that we are committing daily through deploying untested and hazardous genetically engineered materials on our farms and in our food. It is important to remember that the fertilizer bomb that blew up the Oklahoma building, and it was a government building, was made of fertilizers. Farmers committing suicide in India are drinking the pesticides that got them into debt. These were chemicals meant for war, they moved into farming and now they are moving back to war. For ten years now, we have had a subversion of the international treaties that are parallel to the Kyoto Protocol, of the Bio-Safety Protocol. We have had a blocking of the convention on biological weapons. It is time for the international community to put serious attention to the safety of life–-and not just to the safety of human life, but the safety of all life. Every time I think of the BT genetically engineered plants with toxin in them killing butterflies and bees I can’t help but think that this too is terrorism, except that this terrorism is aimed against other species. I think the time has come for us to find alternatives beyond the free market fundamentalism that is feeding vicious cycles of religious fundamentalism, ethnic cleansing, ethnic intolerance. I believe that both these are terribly male phenomena. You never find a feminine voice articulating this competition for violence. It breaks my heart that right now my region of the world is on the brink of war, pushed even further to that precipice because of the global coalition against terror. A global coalition against terror that spreads terror will not contain terror.
I hope that this forum will launch a global coalition for peace. I hope that this forum and the tremendous minds and leaders who have taken initiative to think of it will let it continue its work so that we can build alternative futures on the foundations of peace, democracy and the celebration and defense of diversity. We need to move away from the worship of all false gods. The false god of the dollar on the altar of the free market globalization. We need to move to the sanctity of all life and I draw my inspiration from dreaming of us working towards an earth democracy where all life is sacred, human and non-human. All species and all people have a right to life and all of us have a duty to maintain that life. I do not believe that we can ever have human rights without human duties and without recognizing that there are human wrongs that must be stopped. And I want to end now with a greeting that is a daily part of our lives and this little thread I have is from a peace yogi we had in our home after September 11. It is, the yogi is a shanti yogi and it basically says, “May the peace of the Earth, may the peace of the sky, may the peace of the waters, may the peace of the plants, may the peace of creation be with you.”

Frederik Willem De Klerk
We say thank you very much to Ms. Shiva for her contribution. We will now move to Jostein Gaarder, he is the well-known author of the bestsellers, Sophie’s World and Solitaire Mystery for which he has been honored with numerous international awards. We are privileged also to have him on this panel this morning. He, together with his wife, Siri Dannevig, are founders of the Sophie Prize established in 1997 to inspire people working towards a sustainable future. You have the floor, Mr. Gaarder.

Jostein Gaarder
At the end of last year’s conference, we were informed here in this room about the new intifada in Israel, Palestine. Shimon Peres declared, “It will never be peace in Israel as long as the country is surrounded by poverty.” I believe he is right. I have to admit I have not always fallen in with Israel’s policy concerning the solution to conflicts with its neighbors but I firmly believe in the statement by Shimon Peres. Let me add that I am also filled with respect and admiration for Shimon Peres’ personal efforts for peace. My question now is whether we, in the long run, will achieve peace in the whole world as long as one-third of the world’s population–-the rich and prosperous world–-is surrounded by poverty.
I acknowledge totally Israel’s right to defend itself from terrorism, but it is at the same time necessary to search for the causes behind of terrorism. Hundreds and thousands of stone-throwing kids of course are not terrorists but some among them may become terrorists. Why are they so angry? Now, all psychologists would agree that abused and ill-treated children are in danger of becoming rude and naughty. I am not saying this to defend the naughty boys’ right to be naughty. I am only referring to an almost self-evident psychological mechanism. If a child is badly treated as it grows up, it is in danger of growing into a bad and hateful grownup and vice versa–-a beloved child has good chances to grow into a loving and care-taking person. During the year that has passed since the last Prague conference we have again and again been confronted with this dilemma. We have in mind all the violent demonstrations and acts of criminal damage connected with summit meetings about globalization and world economy. Why are so many people so angry? Why were the black people in South Africa angry? To seek for causes is a human quality.
Imagine the following situation: a child is sitting on the floor and playing with a cat. All of a sudden, a ball rolls into the room and the child automatically turns around to see where the ball came from. The cat just runs after the ball. It immediately starts hunting the ball, due to a basic instinct. To seek for causes is a human privilege, sometimes it is even a human obligation. And every now and then, a necessity for survival. The summit of terrorism so far has happened in New York and in Washington on September 11th this year. Why? How could it happen? I was, before I came to this conference, afraid of asking this question. Afraid that “Why?” would be a sort of blasphemy or a not welcome question to ask. But it has been already asked by Bill Clinton, then by Elie Wiesel. It is crucial to ask this question. I deeply detest all sorts of terror. All sorts of terror. I am not trying to understand or explain terrorism, only how this disaster could happen. I am not a cat. I wouldn’t just run after him. I am not an ostrich, either.
The struggle against terrorism has become one of the most important challenges of the modern world. However, behind the hundreds and maybe thousands of potential terrorists, there are millions of people sharing the hatred, and the feeling of profound injustice in world politics, world economy. If the terrorists are the smoke, we may have to realize that there is no smoke without a fire, if yet, only a looming fire. The international society is responsible for, in President Bush’s own words, to smoke out the terrorists and bring them to court. I agree. But it is crucial, also, to ask the simple question. Why does this immense hatred towards the United States, Israel, and the Western world occur and grow? It may be necessary to go into a dialogue, even with fanatics, extremists, and terrorists. What are the terrorists saying? They are asserting that the United States and the Western world are selfish and arrogant. They may be right. They say that the world has betrayed the Palestinians. Is that assessment just a hallucination? They say we don’t care sufficiently for dying and suffering children around the world, for instance, in Iraq — mere nonsense? They also have in mind years of colonialism, colonial wars, and the Western world’s shameless exploitation of the Third World. Imagination? Fantasy? Then the terrorists, or at least their supporters commit the evil and stupid jump to conclusion, “now it’s your
turn to suffer. It’s your turn to feel insecure.” The terrorists retaliate structural injustice by direct attacks on individuals.
Terrorism must therefore be defeated. But that struggle shouldn’t prevent us from at the same time trying to defeat structural injustice and structural violence. The same can be maybe said about environmental, structural environmental crimes, and I believe we will see in the future more of environmental terrorism, which I would condemn — all terrorism. It is of course also a question whether retaliation is the best answer to terrorism. It should at least not be the only answer. The principle of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, is not just old and primitive. Three thousand years of history should have proved that this brash and cocky slogan is completely useless as a defense. We see the warrants for the terrorists, but where are the calls for Mahatma Gandhi today? Where is Martin Luther King? Where is Albert Schweitzer? We have Kofi Annan among us, and I take this opportunity to congratulate him and the United Nations for this year’s Nobel Prize.
I was yesterday saying some words about what role religion may play for terrorism, and I was saying some words about religious suspension of ethics, which world society, of course, cannot tolerate. I quoted the Greek historian, Thucydides, who wrote in his book about the Peloponnesian War, four hundred years before Christ, he said, “Right or justice, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power. While the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must.” Of course, not a particularly high standard of ethics. Structurally, it may be today a description of how the world is ruled, to a certain extent.
Is it by the way possible to ignore how bin Laden, and I’m not saying America, but Bush, are using exactly the same language? Bush uses the word crusade and bin Laden, jihad. Bush says God Bless America, and bin Laden, Allah Akbar. Both frequently uses phrases like “evil murderers,” etc. They both declare their own innocence and claim to administer the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They have the same determination to win and they are equally confident of success. Now, I am not saying that they are equally thoughtless or unscrupulous. I’m just talking about the rhetoric.
The rhetoric of war and hatred. I totally defend the quest for taking the terrorists, but the language. And meanwhile, innocent civilians are dying and suffering. We can, in the international community today, of course, not tolerate any religious suspension of universal or general ethics, but we see a great variety of the phenomenon, and we meet it almost every day. We are all surrounded by antagonism between religious rights and human rights, and not only when we are talking about terrorism.
My conclusion is only that we need supra-cultural standards for human behavior. We shouldn’t tolerate that anybody act according to God’s rights if opposed to human rights. We don’t anymore live in the dawn of civilization. There may still occur conflicts between religious truths and civil standards as the United Nations Declarations of Human Rights. These and such basic principles should then have the last word. We need a common minimum of human rights, human obligations, rules for human conduct and, as a consequence, also legislation according to this minimum. We have all reasons to support and increase the power of the United Nations in today’s 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize. And not to forget, all people in the world should have the right to a certain minimum of living standard. See Articles 22-29 in the Universal Declaration. My conclusion is that we cannot expect to find a maximum of respect for human rights where there isn’t even a minimum of a living standard. Or, as Bertolt Brecht puts it, “erst kommt das Essen, dann kommt die Moral,” first comes the food, then the moral. Thank you.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much, Mr. Gaarder. Can I just say, I was in the United States very shortly after the 11th of September for about ten days. And although I hold no brief for anybody, I heard on TV, while I was there, an apology from the White House describing the use of the word “crusade” as an unfortunate choice, and from President Bush’s office came that admission and an expla- nation that he was not, even subconsciously, trying to draw a comparison between the old Crusades and what is happening now. Secondly, in support of what Mr. Gaarder says, while I think it’s time yes to say that all sides must watch their language and their rhetoric, the fundamental difference is that bin Laden had declared war against a people, on religious grounds, and as a whole people because they are who they are. America and the alliance are challenging the terrorists because of deeds they perform which, in terms of any law, is a crime in any country. And they are not charging any nation or any faith. But the warning that you issue is a timely one. It brings to mind the necessity for all of us to be clear when we speak, and to analyze our formulation very carefully, because sometimes it can have consequences which those who otherwise have never intended and have not liked to have aroused. Thank you very much.
The next speaker is Martin Kryl. Martin Kryl represents the youth here today in our introductory speaker’s panel. He is a Students’ Forum 2000 delegate from this republic, the Czech Republic, he’s involved with the Czech National Committee of United World Colleges, with Amnesty International and with several local youth groups. He also participated in similar discussions, like the ones we are having at the moment, at the level of the younger people. Maybe many of us from the older generation would like to hear also the youthful input on the important subject that we are discussing today. Martin.

Martin Kryl
Thank you very much. It was said that I represent the youth. I will try to present some of my ideas which maybe try to bring some of the solutions to some of the issues that were brought, as to how to achieve understanding and mutual respect that was talked about a lot yesterday, in yesterday’s discussions. I had the great opportunity of being accepted to one of the ten United World Colleges. At the time, I was seventeen and what I knew about these schools, was only the fact that they are some kind of international nongovernmental educational organization that tries to bring together young people from all over the world. They are trying to be international by spreading the world, and the fact that the ten world colleges are located all over the world, in so-called developing countries was really of big interest to me. I also knew that I’d be studying for two years with two hundred other students from over eighty countries of the world, and in my mind I had a picture of an almost idyllic, almost perfect society which I will be living in for two years.
However, when we finally arrived, we were accommodated in quite small rooms of four people, always four students from four different continents. That was added to the fact that the college is located in the middle of the forest in British Columbia, in Canada, a one-hour drive from the nearest town. It required us to sacrifice a lot of our own personal lifestyle, to change our lifestyle, to sacrifice a lot of privacy in order to be able to create the community we were living in. For many of us it created a lot of frustration and, the first few months were rather difficult. It took us — perhaps it may be better to speak from my
own perspective — it took me, quite a while before I realized that there are certain differences between us. May they be simple as the optimal temperature to have in the room for the night, or as complex as attitudes to relationships and to making connections between each other. I realized that if I’m to live with all those people, I must not deny the differences we have, and nor I can pay too much attention to them.
Despite all the problems I had at the beginning, finally the two years I had were really intense and really amazing. A lot of the friendships I have, I have from this College, and they are some of the strongest I have. My point is that it can be sometimes rather difficult to, so to speak, understand, somebody from a presentation made in school or from a TV program. It could be sometimes much more useful, in order to learn how to live together, to actually live together for a while. Perhaps even on a smaller scale than these colleges, because one of the big problems of these colleges that we are trying to tackle is that through this kind of education can come only a few hundred people in a year and it’s totally not enough, but maybe it just gives an example of how education could be tackled and how it could be how, I don’t have the word, but I think you understand. As one of the basic human rights is the right to education, I think that this part of understanding and respect should be included in the education process as it not only creates an environment for people to live together and it helps people to understand each other, but it helps as well one to understand his own way of living and to look at it from a different point of view and to criticize it from his own perspective. I think that this is really important and it should be included in formal educational systems, which unfortunately I don’t see that much from what I have seen so far and from my own experience.
My second observation concerns the nongovernmental organizations that other people have talked about already, and today I think are of growing importance. They concern areas, issues, and concerns that the government doesn’t want to, or can’t tackle. The ones that I have participated in are based on the notion that grassroots-level work is fundamental for changing something. That it is mostly people themselves who must make the needed changes. We try to convince people that they can make a difference. I think especially in the Czech Republic, it’s very important, because for a long, long time people were told the exact opposite, that they as individuals can’t make any difference. And that they should just follow whatever is said to them.
I attended the Student 2000 Conference. I was quite surprised by the variety of NGOs represented there, but even more surprising for me were the questions that most of the NGOs had. And we had a lot of things in common, regardless of the area in which we were working, or in which part of the world we were working. How to reach people, so we can make them slightly more aware of some facts that we want to present? How do we make use of the limited resources we have in the most effective way, or how to make people maybe a bit more sensitive to what is happening around? Those are just some of the questions are being raised quite often by many of the students I have talked to. One of the most important things I got from the Students’ Forum were the views and visions about the shared problems I could exchange with people. And views on how do we solve those problems.
I found it is really important that nongovernmental organizations have access to a pool of experience and knowledge gathered in the work of others. By now, many of them work for a long time, so I think it’s really important for organizations to be able to share this knowledge which is already there. And I find it rather unfortunate that a lot of organizations, even though they might share some causes and aims, are quite often atomized, aiming for the same goals but not cooperating. It appears to me that as important as dialogue might be in between two individuals, it is in between those organizations which can get a lot of important things from cooperation and from coordination with others. I only wish that there would be more platforms like the Students’ Forum 2000 where this dialogue could be provided for the organizations and I hope that the connections and ideas we established at the Students’ Forum will carry on for a long time. Luckily, I have the feeling that it will be so that some of the people with whom I am still in contact, and I hope to be in contact with for a long time. Thank you very much.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much, Martin Kryl, and that brings us to the end of the original inputs. I would now like to invite the other panelists around the table, other participants, to share their views with us, to react. We’ve had some interesting questions asked, and in some cases, far-reaching proposals, in a certain sense of the word.
I think the fundamental question which came out in the discussion is, what do we have in mind when we talk about international institutions? It is clear that there are the two sides and that nobody is saying we should make a choice. We have institutions which are structured in terms of the law, we have governments, we have institutions such as the European Union and others around the world, we have international institutions such as the United Nations, the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF, but we also have international and national institutions in the private sector, NGOs, which are all playing an important role in this great debate. NGOs have the power of persuasion, while governments and other institutions have the power, quite often, of the sword, or at least of authority. What should the interaction between them be in the quest for a broadening and strengthening of a human rights culture? The second issue which came to the fore, was made by Ms. Summers, when she spoke of global governance, even of a global parliament. I understood her to make a plea for sort of an authoritative global governing body, which can coordinate and direct such organizations as the WTO, the World Bank, etc. The question I would like to put before you is, what makes us sure that such a body would be better than the national governments? What do we get if we get a global governing sort of which is subject to the thought processes which Ms. Shiva referred to as free-market fundamentalism? Where do we stand then? Do we have to create the tensions? If we look at the tensions which the possibility of federalization of Europe is creating within Europe, with the pros and the antis? I was involved last night — I have the privilege to be the honorary president of an organization here in Prague, the Prague Society for International Cooperation — of a very lively and interesting debate on this issue of where should Europe go? And if that creates such chaos, what do we have in mind if we believe that there should be something like global government?
There was the important question of why the hatred of America, the West, of Israel, by Mr. Gaarder. There was the thought that in our quest for the strengthening of human rights and human rights culture, is it achievable to say that within a limited time all people should be entitled and guaranteed, in a certain sense of the word, a minimum living standard? Our young participant, Martin, raised the very great importance of education within the human rights concept and the need to revise and look at curriculum in that regard — not just the question of education, but what do you teach and how do you teach it? Thank you for all the important input that you made from this side, and now it’s open for discussion from other panelists. Yes, it’s difficult, my eyes are getting a bit old, that’s Ms. Henderson if I read it correctly. Thank you very much.

Hazel Henderson
Thank you, Mr. de Klerk. I would like to follow up on the discussion of the importance of language by pointing out also the importance of matrix and the globalization, economic globalization that we have today follows the matrix of the gross national product. And this is enshrined also in the United Nations system of national accounts. And it is very materialistic, and it ignores social and environmental costs. And as we know, money does not equate to wealth. And the non-governmental organizations which were in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 lobbied very successfully the one hundred and seventy governments that were there to get a plank in Agenda 21 to correct the mistakes of GNP. And so I wanted just to emphasize just the importance of changing these indicators to be much broader and to really reflect more reasonably the quality of life, where human rights, environment, health, education, etc., are all taken into account in measuring the progress of a society. And this requires multiple matrix, not just money indicators. Thank you.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much, Ms. Henderson. The next will be Ms. Vollmer.

Antje Vollmer
I would like to ask in German because of biodiversity of languages, perhaps. I have two questions. The first question concerns the role of nongovernmental organizations in the context of the new world order. We all respect and follow the role of nongovernmental organizations, because these organizations were the first who started acting globally at a time when many national governments were not yet ready for globalization. Today, however, I have observed that nongovernmental organizations are stronger than legal structures in many of the new countries. And this is why I would like to ask whether many members of nongovernmental organizations consider it to be a problem that in the presence of a democratic structure, it is, at the very minimum, important to build legal state structures or, in other words, that nongovernmental organizations should gain legitimacy. Because nongovernmental organizations always have a mission, but they do not always have a mandate. This, in my view, is a problem of many of the small democracies. The second question concerns the question of Jostein Gaarder: Why this hatred and where does terrorism come from? Based on your speech, I have understood that even an author as intelligent and as brave as you has certain worries about whether a question of this kind may even be asked. I think that this question must be asked, and that now is the right time to do so. First, because I am convinced that terrorism may really be understood, and that it is not true that it is impossible to understand it. It is untrue that it constitutes the invasion of evil as such. We have no choice but to try to understand terrorism. This is because that is exactly what differentiates this conflict from all the others, because this is not a war that may be finished with a victory. It is also not a missionary expedition, as the present generation of terrorist killers cannot be converted to [our] faith. What is at stake is that a second, third, fourth, or fifth generation of terrorists does not exist. The greatest danger connected to terrorism is the possibility of the terrorist idea having more followers. This is why I was thankful to Bill Clinton for his words last night, who said that the idea the terrorists had of the World Trade Center was clearly completely different; Bill Clinton simply stated that the terrorists have been terribly, catastrophically, tragically, and lethally mis- taken, and this is why we must fight for [our] vision of the world. This is a rational conflict, and I believe that it is possible to win this conflict. But it is really important to start with the language, and distance ourselves from images and ideas, these psychotic dualist views of the world, because I believe that if we look at the world in that way, then everything appears absolutely simple. Of course, these visions of the world also contain religious language, but I think our answer must not contain this type of fanatical religious language, and that this rational conflict may really be won.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much. The next speaker is Mr. Yousif Al-Khoei.

Yousif al-Khoei
The question I would like to raise is about environmental refugees. In particular, I’d like to concentrate on the marsh Arabs. I think this story might help to actually explain what is wrong with this world, and why so many people get so angry. First of all, for people who don’t know about the marsh Arabs, it’s a very indigenous people who lived for over five thousand years in the south of Iraq, and they inhabit the largest wetland in the Middle East. And they sustain their way of life by basically relying on the environment. They live on reed beds and they rely on buffaloes and rice and wheat and fish. Now, these people were basically subjected to a lot of radiation by Allied forces during the war, which has caused a large increase in cancer among the children and women and everybody else. And then, after the war, having been encouraged by the Americans to rise against the regime, they were badly let down. The government authorities were allowed for a while, by the Allies, to bomb the reed beds, to bomb their villages, and it’s only after the no-fly zone was imposed in the south of Iraq, that we did not allow them to be killed by airplanes, but we did allow them to be killed by other means. And these other means were, a deliberate policy by the Iraqi government to divert the waters into the sea. So that these people cannot use it. And what happened is these people got dispersed, within Iraq and without it, many thousands of refugees, the ones who managed to get out were still refugees, and the world, by and large, knows nothing about them. The ones who managed to disperse in the country, they have become victims of double sanctions by the West and by their own government, and the government uses them as victims of sanctions, when it has themselves killed many of them and they have become like a propaganda tool for the West and the government. Now I think if some of these guys — thank God none have them have turned terrorist — but if they did, I could perhaps kind of understand why. These such desperate people have been dispersed so badly, whose thousands and thousands of trees were just uprooted. What I cannot understand, even like NGOs, these big governmental organizations, nobody seems to be interested in their cause, only because I think they are not strategically important enough. And I really think, in this new world order, we need reconnaissance where victims like that, victims of environmental or other terrorism, can actually get the media, and the world to be interested in their plight. Thank you.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much. Mr. Tomáš Pojar.

Tomáš Pojar
Thank you very much Mr. Chairman. I think we can also talk about the fundamental human rights. And I have to say that, after this discussion, I may be a little provocative at the moment, but from my experience from communist times here in Czechoslovakia, or from my work in the Balkans, in Chechnya, through my travels in Burma, Cuba, and in other countries, I strongly believe — with all due respect to Greenpeace, and my support of Greenpeace, for example — that environmental and social rights are not fundamental human rights. If you now ask people in Chechnya, who are being slaughtered by Russian forces, their main problem is not the environment. If you ask the people in Iraq, their main problem is also not, at the moment, the environment, but the repression from the regime or which has causes from ten years ago, during the Gulf War. If you ask the people in Belarus or in Cuba, I’m sure that environment is not going to be on the list of solutions or priorities. If you go now to Afghanistan, the main topic is not going to be environment, because the main topic is the right to live and I think also political rights, where there is freedom of speech and expression, where there is right to elect your representation and to have your representation. Because I strongly believe that if there is democracy in Cuba, if there is democracy in Burma, and if there is democracy in China, or if there is a moderate, reasonable regime in Afghanistan or in Chechnya, that the issues of environment could be started at least to be solved, that the NGOs can start to work there. That the people can take issues like environmental or social issues into their hands. It’s problematic, it’s long-term, but without the fundamental rights — I think it’s political rights and the right to live — the environmental rights and social rights and educational rights are not going to be also in place. And if education should be the issue, as I think education is important, then you have to have moderate and free education under democratic, or at least moderate and semi-democratic regimes, because dictatorial regimes are going to educate you in a way which I think no one here would like to see being people educated. And I simply strongly believe that first comes the moral, and then comes the food. Thank you very much.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you, Ms. Shiva has asked for a chance to say something again. Please.

Vandana Shiva
I understand where you come from with the history in this part of the world, but the rest of the world did not have this history. Most of the world has depended and continues to depend on the environment. Both for their morals, their freedom, and their survival. The case of the marsh Arabs, a typical case of my point. Now, the right to life that you want to uphold as a fundamental right, for all of us through climate change, through clean air and water, is linked to the environment. But throughout the Third World, for two-thirds of humanity, access and rights to their resources is at the heart of their right to
live, their right to livelihood, and their right to freedom. And this is also an international issue. It’s just not about local communities, it’s at the heart of the conflicts within the World Trade Organization’s intellectual property rights and the international agreement of the convention on Biodiversity. The convention recognizes that the environmental rights, the right to knowledge for indigenous communities, and sovereignty, are principles on how the biological wealth and knowledge of this world be used. The World Trade Organization, through TRIPS, is insisting that biodiversity is up for grabs, to be monopolized, baited and stolen. And if in your thinking, you define that as a fundamental right, derived from the principles of a fragmented notion of human rights, human rights for the powerful, those who can appropriate, those who can steal, those who can plunder, then of course, there will come a time where every peaceful peasant and every peaceful tribe of the Third World will be a potential terrorist. If you look far enough down the line of destruction, there will be no issue beyond war.
But to then say the environment doesn’t matter, social security doesn’t matter, cultural diversity doesn’t matter, you are assuming war is the only condition we can be in. And I do not want to assume it, I refuse to assume it, I believe peace is our basic condition. The right to peace, and the right to live in peace, and the right to live in our diversity, is the most fundamental right. And these issues of who do the resources of this planet belong to, how will they be used, how will they be shared, are at the heart of current wars, they are at the heart of the promise of peace.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you. In the order that I’ve seen the hands, Ms. Summers, Mr. Gaarder
and then Mr. Ramos-Horta.

Anne Summers
I certainly agree with everything that Vandana Shiva has just said, but I would like to make an additional point, and that is what you said about democracy being a precondition for an ability to pursue environmental rights. I think that there are so many examples, we could look to in the democratic world where such rights not only exist, and certainly I acknowledge, in fact I expected Vandana would mention the example of Bhopal, one of the greatest toxic tragedies of recent years. In this incident, thousands of people were victims of an explosion by the Union Carbide plant, people who continue to suffer — and you probably know more about the details than I could possibly explain — but I do know that the people who suffered fifteen years ago, 1984, almost twenty years ago, suffered within a democratic country, at the hands of a multi-national company that was supposedly governed by the democratic norms of its parent country and the country where it was operating. And this did not make any difference. Similarly, I think we can point to most of the developed countries, and even in Europe where I am told that many parts now are so green that they are virtually superfluous, and that is true that enormous improvements have been made in the quality of air and water, in those countries where regulations exist. But that is not to say that all of the environmental problems which cause potential to do damage to human existence and the right to live in a safe, clean and healthy environment, have been addressed. I just draw your attention to the extraordinary number of nuclear power plants in Europe and there is heightened awareness since September 11th of the potential these present for a terrorist attack and the extraordinary damage they can do to communities. So I would just like to say that while I understand that people who are in a life and death military situation might dismiss environmental rights described in that fashion as a virtual luxury, I don’t think anybody — however desperate their life is — rejects the right to life, the right to clean air, the right to clean water and the right to be able to eat unpolluted and uncontaminated food, and that really is what we’re talking about.

Jostein Gaarder
Thank you. First, a comment to Ms. Vollmer, you said it was maybe not the proper time to ask the question “Why?”. I understand your reaction, I felt it was and is sensitive, at this moment of grief and anger, of course I don’t want to help any ideas to come out from the terrorists, that’s not my point. But just like Elie Wiesel also asked the question, “how could it happen?” I think it is very fundamental for us to ask this question. Of course, it should not prevent us from arresting and destroying all the terrorists. That’s not my opinion at all. And I have already said something that I want to emphasize
again because it is very important — that terrorism is not something we can understand. I deeply detest all forms of terrorism whatsoever and I am not trying to understand or explain, because I think that terrorism is what Germans call “das ganz andere,” it’s just evilness, evil and it shouldn’t be understood. That’s not my meaning, you shall not understand terrorism. But we have to. It’s a human obligation and sometimes a necessity for survival to ask why this madness happens. That’s my only point. I understand what you said about the fifth generation of terrorism and that was that. Now I would just like to comment on Tomáš Pojar because what you are focusing on now is extremely important for this conference and for the topic today. It goes very, very, very deep, deep down through history, back to the first work on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when you first had the 21 Articles reflecting liberal society. I mean the ideals from the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries, which were the political rights, the rights of liberty, which are very important and fundamental, and are the first 21 articles. I have never experienced myself to live in a communist regime, where I had not these freedoms, I have only and always lived in a country where we have had total freedom of speech, I have not had any other experience. Also as most people in my country, the social rights are covered. I have had all the social rights–-they are in the last nine articles–-from 22 through 29. All people have a right to food, nutrition, school, health and even weekends and so on. I have had all of it. But because I have had always this freedom of speech, I only feel humble for others, who have had communist dictatorship. But since I have had my political rights and also social rights, I think that as a world citizen, it is important for me to emphasize that to have a minimum standard of living is a human right. It is a human right and, well, you turned around the slogan of Bertolt Brecht “first comes food,” you said “first comes the moral,” but what I mean is that it’s not a viewpoint I have. It’s just an empirical description in a society, where in great cities today in Western Europe, you see poor people running around, thieves. It is very easy, but maybe not very fair, to condemn a pickpocket who is starving, for instance, in some city in Asia. That was the point made by Bertolt Brecht, his context was poverty at the street level. That was the context in which this slogan was expressed. Thank you.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much. I will give you a chance after Ramos-Horta.

José Ramos-Horta
Thank you Mr. Chairman. I just want to make some points in the context of some statements, comments that have been made in the past few weeks about some of the root causes of the terrorist attack in New York. And many tried to explain that the root causes are in poverty. However, Osama bin Laden and all of those who took part in the attack in New York, Washington, and in the third plane that crashed before it hit its target, crashed over Pennsylvania, were actually people who made fortunes, hundred of millions of dollars in fortunes, out of capitalism and globalization. Osama bin Laden, has one of the richest families in the world. He is certainly not one that has to complain about poverty. He reminds me of those extreme leftists in Europe in the ’60s, most of them anarchists from good families. So I find the argument that every poor is a potential terrorist not well founded. My country, we are about nine hundred thousand poor people, and none of them was, is, nor will be a potential terrorist. We were invaded, occupied for twenty-four years, one-third of the population was lost, no one came to our rescue, and yet, we don’t look at America or the West as evil. And our people went to the streets in Dili, within hours of the terrorist attack in New York, to take flowers, candles, to the U.S. mission in Dili, to pay tribute to them. And yet, many of us, including myself personally, a sister of mine was killed by an American aircraft in 1977 supplied to Indonesia. But these are casualties of the Cold War, policies of the past that should not bring an individual or a group of individuals to carry the acts that they did. So, whenever a group engages in this kind of violence, as far as I’m concerned, it loses all arguments. There’s absolutely no debate possible, no explanation possible. That’s why I refused a week or so ago, when I received a letter from one of our Nobel Peace Prize Laureate colleagues to sign a joint statement. Eight of them signed, asked me to join in the statement, calling on the U.S. not to use retaliation. I responded to this friend, I respect you enormously, but I refuse to sign. This is not the time to moralize and to lecture Americans. This is the time to show solidarity with them. And I refused, and I do not come from a rich country, I do not even come from the Third World, I come from the fourth world, we haven’t even reached the status of the Third World. So I refused to sign that statement. And my other point is, Osama bin Laden and the others invoke injustice against the Palestinians. Well, Yasser Arafat and all the Palestinian leaders have denounced and, have said, you do not speak for us. What extraordinary arrogance — some wealthy Saudi Arabian millionaire, who made his money from Wall Street and global capitalism, purports to speak for the poor in Palestine? Second point, third point that I want to make is, everybody seems to be lecturing the Americans in the last few weeks. And one criticism people make about the U.S. for many years is that they lecture a lot. Well, I have heard so many lectures in the last few weeks about the evils of the United States. Everybody seems to be so ready to lecture the U.S. about what is wrong with the U.S., what they should be doing and should not be doing. Well, maybe some humility on our part, some discussion, and leave the Americans some benefit of the doubt that well, in due time, they will do
some soul-searching themselves. And then my last point. I hear also so much hatred of America and the West. My question is, by whom? In Sub-Saharan Africa, you don’t find it. Sub- Saharan Africa is one of the most neglected regions of the world. But there was never one terrorist organization borne out of the Sub-Saharan Africa that attacked the West. You don’t find a single one. You don’t find terrorists out of Sub-Saharan Africa that go to U.S., or go to Europe and blow up houses and airplanes. So hatred toward America and the West is by whom? Certainly not by the East Timorese, certainly not by the twenty million Mozambiqans I know, not by the one hundred and fifty million Brazilians I know. So, I think let’s not exaggerate this phenomenon of resentment. They are limited in numbers, in many countries manipulated, and Osama bin Laden was able to carry out this terrorist attack because of extraordinary wealth he accumulated thanks to what he seems to hate so much: international capitalism.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Tomáš Pojar
I just wanted to make myself clear. I consider environmental and social rights as human rights, but not as fundamental human rights. And I think that there is difference of access to human rights in India and neighboring Burma. And that it’s worse in Burma and the source or deep roots of the human rights are being violated. Or you can take any other country as an example which I have named here before, that was my point.

Yousif al-Khoei
I would like to respond to Mr. Ramos-Horta. I can understand fully what you are saying. But the point is, I hope you did not get the impression here, that anybody has any hate or dislike for America. I think it is only right that when you have a superpower, and it’s the only superpower, and you have a lot of nuclear weapons around, that people should act and show their concerns about the potential danger for world peace if there is any hawkish response from the United States. I think that’s all very important and crucial. And I don’t actually think people are lecturing the United States. I think they are trying to put the brakes for any hawkish response, and I don’t think anybody would be against fighting terrorism as such, but people would be very worried if this fight became against the norms the international community has put forward and against all the conventions. But I’d just like to say a little bit about what you said about East Timor and Africa. Do not forget, the United States has a strategic interest in that region, and that’s oil. It doesn’t have the same interest in East Timor or Africa. And I would like to call bin Laden a CIA-created terrorist, because this is what he was. And I think sometimes you have to critically re-examine your policies. If you support these guys through whatever means, to become so powerful, that they turn their weapons against you, you should re-examine these policies. That, in no way, should be taken as lecturing the United States or disliking it. Thank you.

Elie Wiesel
Mr. Chairman, since my name has been evoked a few times, about the questions, may I make a few comments? As a student in the beginning, I came to philosophy because of its questions, and I left it, somewhat, because of its answers. I’m always in favor of questions. Questions bring people together, answers do not. However, the question I asked yesterday was really a philosophical question, what is happening in the world? Now, one thing is clear. I as a Jew, am occasionally asked, why do so many people hate you so much for so many centuries? Usually I say, why should I make the haters’ work easier? Let them do the explaining, not me. I want to know why they hate me, people who never met me. Why do they hate people who haven’t been born yet, simply because they were Jewish? In this case, strangely enough, the terrorists who committed the horrible, ugly, obscene murder, didn’t do the explaining. I think it’s for the first time in the history of terrorism, that they did something, and didn’t do it with words. It’s extraordinary. They killed. They didn’t want to die, they wanted to kill, and in order to kill better, they killed themselves. And they didn’t say why. They didn’t ask for anything, they didn’t condemn anybody, they left no word, no testament, nothing. Just nothing. Their killing became the explanation. Others did the explanation for them. So they killed, and bin Laden’s spokes- person did the explanation. So therefore, it’s for them that say why do they hate us? Now, we of course are human beings, and human beings of course do this soul-searching. I fully agree with my friend Ramos-Horta. José, I didn’t sign that letter either, because I do feel that terrorism must be stopped. And I hope you believe me, I have seen enough violence. I am so much against violence that you cannot even imagine. I think violence is ugly. It’s not only unjust, it’s ugly, and I’m against it anywhere. However, in this case we must stop it. I don’t know how, I am not a general, I am not a minister, I am not a president, but I know it must be stopped. As for language, my young colleague, with whom I had yesterday a theological debate, the problem is that we have, lately at least, degraded language. Language doesn’t mean what it used to mean. For instance, we are looking for words that are no longer the right words. For instance, there are no longer poor countries. We say they are Third World countries, or fourth world countries. But they are poor and we should be honest enough to say, look, they are poor, and we must help them, it’s our duty to help them overcome their poverty. On another level, governments no longer lie, they simply engage in disinformation. And I could give you a whole list of names, we are using names. For instance a whole revolution in fashion. My God, fashion has a
revolution? Revolution means blood, it means violence. Revolution of literature, revolution of theater. Be careful with words. As for the terrorists themselves, I have studied lately, for the last few years the subject of terrorism. It used to be a romantic notion, they used to be called revolutionaries. In the beginning of the twentieth century, in Russia, in St. Petersburg, the local revolutionaries wanted to kill the governor. They couldn’t kill the czar, they wanted to kill the governor. And everything was ready. They worked on it for months. They knew exactly what he did every minute of that Sunday. And this man was bad — he didn’t know it — but this man was bad. At the last minute, he took his children to church, and all these revolutionaries couldn’t go on, they couldn’t kill him, because they couldn’t kill children. That was romantic terrorism, which I’m against again, but at least it was romantic. Today they kill children, they kill anyone. Terrorism is surely based on hatred, there is no doubt about that. Now what is hatred? For the last at least fifteen years, I have organized conferences all around the world, called “Anatomy of Hate”. I wanted to understand hate. How does one produce hate? A + B is hate. And once hate is there, how do you vanquish it, how do you defeat it, how do you disarm it? Hatred is cancer. It goes from cell to cell, and from limb to limb, and then from person to person, and then from group to group, and finally, it devours everybody. And therefore, it must be vanquished. How? I don’t know the answer. But one thing I do know: Education is its major component. Therefore, I haven’t heard enough about education. One of them at least spoke about the right to education. We must glorify education, we must celebrate education, we must help education, and education should be to the honor of the human being. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Jostein Gaarder
Well, first a short reply to Elie Wiesel. I think that we all share your message absolutely. You say that terrorism is filled with hatred, and I think we all think so. You say that terrorism is a cancer, definitely it is. It has to be defeated, absolutely. And but my message was to try to find a sort of way of understanding. Not the terrorists, I said that expressly. Not the terrorists. But because — this is a comment to Ramos-Horta — the announcement of Arafat, was very important and a very good thing he did so. But before that, very spontaneously, you had the riots among the Palestinians who were clapping their hands for these terrorist actions. That was terrible to experience. So where is the hatred toward the United States, I totally agree with you, mentioning Africa and so on, it is a phenomenon we are now seeing, if we are not closing our eyes. This hatred, we are seeing it. For instance in Pakistan, we are seeing it among certain groups within the Islamic societies around the world. All terrorism is the enemy of course, and not the Muslim religion of course, and not Muslims. The point that this is a question of trying to conciliate, trying to build bridges, trying to come further — even though I totally agree, maybe it’s not the proper moment to say this. I didn’t criticize the United States, either. I have a lot of critical remarks on a lot of societies, but it’s not the proper time to criticize the United States for all the bad things that nation has done through history. But it’s important to try to understand why so many people, not the terrorists themselves, are supporting the terrorists. They are the people I would like to go into a dialogue with. And also about getting sick, it’s enough, I agree, why do they hate us, the Palestinians? Don’t you think also, in that terrible, very sad situation in the Middle East, there are two sides? There may also even Israel’s hating Palestine? Of course, hate the terrorists, I totally support, but in the sad situation like Israel, I think evil creates evil, and hatred creates hatred. Without taking any party I think that is very easy to see. Let’s also be quite sure that we shouldn’t make any comparison between this terrible bin Laden network and this terrorism, and Palestinians in general claiming the right to have their own country and so on, of course that is not similar. Thank you.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much. The last participant before coffee and tea will be Ms. Shiva, and when we come back, it will be Mr. Karavan and Mr. Michnik.

Vanadana Shiva
Two quick reflections, one on the anatomy of hate. I come from a society which has been so plural and so peaceful. We are the home of every religion of peace and compassion. We’ve experienced it as our life. And yet today we are surrounded by every color of fundamentalism — Hindu, Islamic, Sikh, pick a diversity, and you can see a fundamentalist shape to it. And in the fifteen years where it has been growing, my understanding is that as people have been robbed of their positive identity, the identity of a weaver to be able to weave clothes. Of farmers to grow their food, of teachers to teach in schools. Every positive identity is destroyed by the forces of globalization that thinks that contaminated food can be dumped with high subsidies on Third World markets. Displace the peasant, displace the weavers. Over time, you get disenfranchised people available to the politics of hate because the politics of love has been taken away from them. When Hindu and Muslim weavers weave together, they weave in love. When they are both displaced and the only parties that can cater to them will cater to them on the language of, “You don’t have a job because there are Muslims in society. You don’t have a job because the government panders to the Hindus,” and you get a culture of hate going on the foundation of negative identity. It’s that destruction of positive identity coming from the funda- mental right to make things, to produce things, to shape society, which are repeatedly called secondary non fundamental rights, which is the root of the violence and hate we are seeing. ’Til we recognize that fundamental rights give us meaning, they give us dignity, they give us the generosity to love and embrace each other in our diversity, we will always create the conditions for war and hate — even while chasing a mirage of some, narrow fragmented fundamental right. And I think it’s that narrow fragmentation now in time that worries me. About peace laureates not standing for peace, about peace laureates not looking at the implications of interventions today that will do something tomorrow. Already Pakistan is destabilized. Its destabilization is going to overflow into India. I believe today’s peace initiatives need to take assessment and responsibility for every intervention, including the unfolding of it. I very often think the worse curse we have in modern society is the Cartesian mind. That refuses to see connections, that refuses to recognize processes and everything is a neat little box, in total control, fully determined, with no overflow. The problem is, there is constant overflow and it’s the overflow where peace and violence is determined. And I really feel we need to move into a different mindset of relationship, of process, of ecology, where we can take deeper responsibility for every act we engage in and every act we support.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much. Our debate is picking up. I like the fire of it, the directness of it, and the focus which we are gathering. So we will continue in that vein at 11:25, please.

Dani Karavan
I would like to say something about the yesterday’s afternoon session. I was very sorry that after everybody has been here to listen to the panel when President Clinton was here, very few people remained, not enough, in my opinion to listen to the story about, the problem about human rights and health. I don’t think there are enough tears in mankind to cry while listening to those stories. About what happened in Africa, what happened all around the world, with AIDS and other illnesses, and how people are treated. And I think the fact that we are not aware of that and we are not interested in that, is something that should be changed. To listen to the story of Dirie, and to know the book which she wrote about her experience, terrible experience in Somalia, that still many, many of people there, and she was asking for help. She was asking, help us, help us, but not enough ears were here to listen. And I think this should be put on the table everywhere, to help people who suffer. The other thing, which I would like to put on the table here, nobody has the right to kill. No ideology, no God. There’s nobody who should use the name of God to give excuse of killing mankind. And this should be kind of slogan that should go over the world. Like we see always by the media, to knock and to knock and to knock and to knock, don’t kill, don’t kill, don’t kill, you’re not allowed to kill. Everybody has the right to live. And I think this is one of the very important things. And if we are talking about environment, environment is exactly like food. Because air is before bread and water is before bread, so environment should be protected. We should fight for the cleaning of environment. We don’t see it, because bread you see. Air you don’t see. And you don’t see that the air is polluted, and you don’t feel that the water is polluted, and you don’t know what kind of harm it’s doing to humankind. Therefore, these should be together — we cannot make something as more important, something as less important, because life of
people is dependent on air and on water, with bread. And don’t forget about the beauty of nature. The beauty of nature is very important to people-kind. We know examples in the world where tribes have been killed by changing the surrounding. Killed not physically, but slowly, slowly, because the environment which they were supposed to live in, the beauty that were used to seeing has disappeared, and it has been changed. We forget when we talk about policy about the possibility of using culture, the diversity of culture to use culture to educate people. There are so many cultures, and so many beautiful cultures, all cultures, we don’t know them, because we don’t understand the language of people who are telling these stories for centuries. We should know it, we should help to develop it. We should do everything so that it will exist, so that it will continue, in spite of the depression and the — I don’t have the word — the kind of the media. You see a little village that was built from earth and from straw. Nothing is there, they don’t have even water coming from the wall. I remember when the emigrants came to Israel, they were surprised to see that water can come from the wall. But they have television. And in the television, we are bombing their mind with terrible things. So how could we control, yes, control. We should control. To control is also a democratic way to educate people, on this media that is destroying the mind of children, of people all over the world. We should create. I don’t know how to do it; I have only, like my friend Elie Wiesel, questions. Maybe it’s very easy to put questions and it’s very difficult to get conclusion and to find answers. Even answers you said, are more difficult and more dangerous than the questions. So another thing which I think is very important is to take away the borders, that people are feeling their obligation to their country and their culture, and not to human rights. And they said, “Oh, this will do something bad to my country, it will do some- thing bad, but therefore I should protect something.” This was shown very strongly in a play which I have seen in New York recently, The Nuremberg Trial. In the end, it’s a discussion between the American judge and the American jury, about what kind of punishment. And he said, no we should leave them because now they will be against the Russian. You understand? And that what happened also with bin Laden, because he was against something that help somebody else so then it was right to help him. Even he was absolutely somebody that did kind of against human rights. So I think this is very important. I think this is one of the main things. To break this kind of responsibility to the government or to the nation which we are belonging to. We should be free person, we belong to the humanity. We should fight even against our country, against our ideology, if this became something that create danger and create something against human right. Therefore, I am an Israeli, and I want to say right here: I am for the Palestinians. I would like the Palestinians as soon as possible to have their own
homeland and the rights for self-determination. I am against terror. Always. Even my people, when they fought in the second war, when they had been fighting as partisans against Nazi regime. When they had to risk their lives not to kill the innocent, they did it. And I know it. I knew it from those people. I had the chance to hear it from them. And when we fought the Englishmen, in Israel, we try to do everything, not to do anything to innocent people. And I think that even the right to fight for your freedom, for your own country, for your liberation, does not give you the right to kill the innocent.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much. I think Mr. Karavan raised a very important issue, put the question on the table, or rather made the assertion that we should not, because of the cause we believe, prioritize too much and say now this is the important right the others are not important. But he raised the issue of control of TV, which immediately brings to the fore the freedom of speech. So, in our debate let us look a bit at the tension between different human rights. If you go to a well-balanced constitution, you will find the tension between the right to work, aimed at the have-nots, the right to protect private property ownership, aimed at stabilization of the haves. This is how life is. Life is full of contradiction. And somewhere or another we have to, I think, strike a balance between seemingly conflicting realities and seemingly conflicting demands and seemingly conflicting rights which are claimed or which are owed, and seemingly conflicting responsibilities. I will, at the end, read to you, to sum up, from a speech which I have delivered three weeks ago, which wasn’t made for this occasion, on this issue. Let us talk a bit, also on the issue of where does any “ism” take us? Whether it’s religious fundamentalism, economic fundamentalism, is there something also like environmental fundamentalism, which excludes other realities and say, this is the sole purpose? Because so many of our contributions this morning made an absolute of reality and truth, but we should not make an absolute, I believe, of one truth, to the exclusion of another truth. Mr. Michnik.

Adam Michnik
Thank you. I would now like to bring up an objection. Of course we can ask ourselves questions — we must ask ourselves questions — about terrorists, fundamentalists, about the relationship between Islam and Judaism, et cetera. But we must keep reminding ourselves of the question about the origins of Nazism. Of course, poverty was one of them, but to answer that it is necessary to fight against poverty and it is not necessary to fight against Nazism, that would be a paradoxical, fatal answer. And now the same is happening. Of course, we must analyze all causes, and it is necessary to ask all questions, but task No. 1 is to fight against terrorism. It has been said that the United States is active in the Near East because it has its own interests there, oil. I remember that the last American intervention took place in Kosovo, and that it was a military action in support of the Muslims against Christians. And we must not forget that it was even illogical. There is no fuel in Kosovo. My final remark: If it has been said that we have superpowers with nuclear weapons, does that mean that nuclear weapons only exist in the United States? I do not remember anyone ever demonstrating against nuclear bombs in the Soviet Union. And while we’re discussing the Palestinian celebrations in Ramallah or in Gaza. That was the decisive proof that this is a disease. It is not normal to organize celebrations in honor of a terrible crime that has no comparison. I remember the crowds that cheered when Hitler entered Vienna in 1938. It was a large pro-Nazi demonstration, where crowds yelled “Hail Hitler.” It was a mass disease. That’s all. Thank you.

Kelly Cristine Ribeiro
In Brazil we have many houses which have no bathroom, but have TVs and satellite dishes. I think that with this, we can realize the human necessity, of fun and sense and feeling much more than material resources sometime. I think that the great problem, the big problem is not to control, but is to give options to those people, so they have more options, to work with than feeling and so on. Everybody here has a lot of different options, books to read, meetings like this. Those people that are in the countryside, of the several countries, they don’t have options. They really need a sense of fun and of feeling. They need to work the feeling, sometimes more than material resources. Also, I really think that we need to learn how to spread the feelings that are here in this moment, the knowledge that is here in this room. I think we should spread, in the sense that we are speaking about here, the knowledge of all wars that we are speaking these last days, to other people, to poor people that don’t have such options. Only this way will we be able to create a world better than this.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much to Kelly. I have two names, three names on my list, from around the table, and then I would like to give the opportunity for a short question, or very short input from a few members of the audience, so get yourself ready. There is, I believe, a roving microphone. When we reach that stage, put your hand up high, and somebody will bring you a microphone. The next speaker is Mr. Ramos-Horta.

José Ramos-Horta
I want to, Mr. Chairman, to follow up just with two minutes more of my earlier comments, because my thoughts were not thoroughly organized. I missed some points that I wanted to make. And that is, we have been witnessing in the last month or so, anti-U.S., and anti-U.K. demonstrations in places like
Karachi, Jakarta, Tehran. And these demonstrations are supposed to be, as we watch on television, against the intervention in Afghanistan, which means protest against intervention in an Islamic country. As legitimate, as well-founded as these demonstrations might be — because I have followed international events for many, many years — I recall some of the most tragic events of the twentieth century, and that was the Iraqi invasion of Iran. In the aftermath of the fall of the Shah, Iran entered into a period of Islamic revolution and turmoil, with some disastrous consequences for its own armed forces, where generals were executed. It was at the point in time when Iran weakened internally, that Saddam Hussein breached the 1973 or ’75 Algiers agreement on border settlement between Iran and Iraq, and invaded Iran. The war went on for almost ten years. I don’t care to say who supported whom. We all know who was on one side and who was on the other side. My point is, at that time, more than a million people were slaughtered. Muslims, from both sides, Iran and Iraq. And it was for the first time since World War I that chemical weapons were used on civilians. Thousands died. And my question is, where were the demonstrators? Did we see demonstrators in Karachi, in Jakarta, protesting against the killing of Muslims? Or is killing of Muslim by Muslim supposed to be correct? Politically and religiously correct? Where are these demonstrators, where were they? And the list can go on of slaughter, killings of innocent civilians. In Algeria, not obviously, by the government, one hundred thousand Algerian women and children, schoolteachers, and journalists, were killed in the last ten years or so by Islamic fundamentalists who wanted to overthrow the state and impose a Taliban-type regime in Algeria. Which demonstrators have been demonstrating against these fundamentalists in Algeria who have been slaughtering Muslim Algerians? The list goes on. My point, my question that I agonize over, to which I seem to reach the conclusion myself is, we have a classic case-study of political manipulation by individuals with a politically determined agenda. The same people demonstrating in the streets of Jakarta against the U.S., for instance, never demonstrate against the killing of the Acehese in Aceh, one of the most important Muslim historical regions in Southeast Asia. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered in the past thirty years, thousands have been slaughtered in the past five years alone. So, are they really protesting, speaking out, in support of the persecuted Muslims, or is there also a political agenda to overthrow a given political structure, political order? And they go on manipulating. And I end with a bit of sarcasm. If Osama bin Laden is such a modern warrior, multi-millionaire, who wants to protect Muslims, from persecution, from humiliation, why wouldn’t he start in Afghanistan, liberating Afghans from the Taliban regime? And once he finished in Afghanistan, why wouldn’t he go to Iraq and liberate the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein? Frankly, I’m totally confused, because if Osama bin Laden is such a great warrior to free Muslims from humiliation, persecution, why not start in Afghanistan? A regime that has brought so much suffering to people there, as Ms. Shiva mentioned earlier, where women are disfigured with acid, for not wearing a veil. So my conclusion is simply: Political manipulation. And when we hear about demonstrations in Jakarta against the Americans, how many, a country of two hundred and fifteen million? My point, I don’t think we should dramatize the so-called anger toward the West, because it comes always, typically as we observe for the past twenty years, at least, from the same kind of group of people who have a political agenda.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Mr. Al-Khoei and then Ms. Henderson.

Yousif al-Khoei
I just would like to respond to some of the points here. I’m sorry, I didn’t get the name, but I think there were some questions directed to me. When we talk about, I hope people will get this right, and I get the feeling there is some kind of agenda, to turn this into a Muslim-West thing, and I’m really happy that both President Bush and Blair haven’t fallen into that trap. When we talk about oil in the Middle East, it does not mean we are saying that America is all evil, we’re not even saying that’s evil. We’re just saying that’s a problem. We should address it. That doesn’t mean what they did in Kosovo was wrong, or what they are doing. And nobody is actually putting American foreign policy at the level playing what the terrorists are doing, which is sheer murder, sheer crime. So I think that has
to be distinguished quite clearly, that these people who keep talking about hating America. T should not be used out of context. The second thing, regarding all this talk about Palestinians applauding these events — I mean, all I saw was about ten Palestinians, in the spur of the moment, who did not have the right news, and did not know exactly what had happened. Something happened in America, they heard, and they clapped, and the television screens concentrated on them. It became a news bulletin around the world. Now that, again, we really need to avoid. The Palestinians did not applaud the killing of seven thousand Americans. The Palestinians do not like innocent people killed. You have a few people who are ignorant, I’m sure there may have been a few minorities here and there who may have applauded what happened, but that didn’t make headline news. So I think we have to put that in perspective as well. And I really appeal here, to some of my Jewish friends, that you have a political problem, a problem on the ground, which would better tackled head on. When you talk about terrorism, I really applaud what my friend here Karavan said. I mean, sometimes, look at your own policies. Look at state terrorism. And reexamine it and try to keep people happy. And don’t, if you have access to many parts of the media, don’t try to exploit that. Now, I want to say one more word about these demonstrations, and why the Muslims did not demonstrate when Iraq/Iran was happening. I partly agree with you. I think the Muslim world has its own agenda, like everybody else. They tend to treat events in Kosovo and Kashmir and Palestine differently to what they like to see, events in East Timor. But I think that agenda exists with the Jewish community in Israel. You don’t really see many people who come out, very frankly, and say things about some of the problems which happen there. Now, I want to turn the question of demonstration back on its face to you. I mean, where were people, we’re talking about terrorism in the West, when the Taliban, only four years ago, killed five thousand Hazaras in their own country, over two nights? That hardly got a mention in one or two newspapers in the West. And I think this is a problem, if you don’t come out of that kind of terrorism, Taliban terrorism — which is not even state terrorism — when it happens. The Taliban is not even recognized as state, it’s recognized as — I don’t know what kind of entity. But where were people who are talking about terrorism today, then? Thank you.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you. Ms. Henderson. We have really drifted quite far apart from the subject of our discussion, which is human rights and international institutions. But I allowed it to happen because I believe that instead of an artificial discussion about something which is not dominating the mind at the moment, we needed a little bit more of an opportunity to talk about what has gripped all our minds so much. But if, in a few further contributions, we can come back to that, I will appreciate it. In any event, we have a lot of heavyweights this afternoon with great international experience and governmental experience, who can tell us how the United Nations, World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the IMF should reform, and how we can strengthen them to serve the cause of human rights better, so I’m passing a little bit the buck to this afternoon’s discussions. Hopefully, by then all the participants would feel that they have cleared their minds of the matters that we discussed this morning. Ms. Henderson.

Hazel Henderson
Thank you. Well, I did want to return to the issue of renovating international institutions. And I would start with the need to reform the global financial architecture. And this is on the lips of all the finance ministers in the world, because we keep having these recurrent financial crises, and when you have a situation with 1.5 to two trillion dollars a day going around the planet in this currency exchange, this completely overwhelms the possibilities for democratic governance within national economies. So this issue is on top of the agenda as many of you know at the United Nations summit, which is coming up in Mexico in March of 2002. This is the summit on financing for development. I’m happy to say that this summit is going to take up all of these fundamental issues that people like myself have been trying to get into the discussion for many years. They will take up the issues of the global commons, which was mentioned by Anne and Vandana this morning, and they will take up the issues of taxing, of commercial uses of the global commons, of fines for misuses, they are talking of taxing currency speculation, cross-border pollution, arms sales, and using these resources which are considerable, for example, taxing currency speculation is estimated to alone bring in up to fifty million U.S. dollars a day. They are also going to be touching on the issue of providing global public goods. This issue challenged economists. A book that came out, edited by a friend of mine, Inge Kaul, on global public goods, in which she challenged economists, including Jeffrey Sachs — whom we’re going to hear from this afternoon — to expand the economic framework. Where economists are very used to the idea of public goods at the municipal level and at the national level — airports, harbors, etc. — her point was that we now have a global financial system. We’ve taken down all the firewalls between the world’s
economies, so now we must have also global public goods. And so I just wanted to draw attention to the fact that these kind of reforms and innovations are on the agenda and I hope that I will see many of you in Mexico in March of 2002. Thank you.

Dani Karavan
I’m afraid of institution. I’m afraid of institution, because institution is mostly composed by interests of people who are composing the institution. What happened in Durban, makes me have the feeling that my fear has risen. Because those discussions in this institution have been guided by an agenda which was absolutely stupid and doesn’t have any fundamental rights be discussed. To say that Zionism is racism is like saying that Christian is racism and Judaism is racism. Not because Zionism is a religion, because Zionism is exactly like other ideologies which exist, it did good things and bad things. Because it has been founded by people, and people are doing sometimes good, and sometimes bad things. So I’m afraid of institutions. In this case, I remember you say that you are Jew, when you have seen cartoon in one of the newspapers. But I would like to also comment some- thing to you, my friend. I don’t know what kind of program on television you have seen, but you have to be aware that the Palestinians have this group of jihad, and those people were on the street and Arafat himself has to shoot and to kill one of them. So it was not ten or twenty or something that we don’t have to mention them, it’s very dangerous not to mention, not to see things as they are. And also, I’ve seen how my country, my government, has been shooting children, boys. I don’t want to enter, Bush sent them to the
street. Why were they on the street, not in schools? But they were on the street and they were throwing stones and my army has been shooting them, knowing that from history, gun will not succeed against the stone. It’s mentioned in the Bible, in the beginning, the story about David and Goliath. The
moment people are throwing stone, they will succeed. So therefore I think we should look carefully at things. And to be courageous, to look at yourself, to look in the mirror and to know that you are doing bad things, and to start to understand why, and to stop it. Thank you.

Anwei Law
I don’t quite know if this is the proper place to say this, but I think it is because I do think we have to look at ourselves. And I think that those of us in the United States have to look at ourselves. So many people in the United States don’t really know that the rest of the world exists. I come from West Virginia — not much diversity. I think some of the wisest statements we sometimes know come from children or students. The evening of September 11th, my eleven-year-old daughter was listening to television and heard President Bush say, “God Bless America”. And she looked at me, and she said, why do we always say ‘God Bless America’? Why don’t we say, ‘God Bless the World’? And I think that this is something people in the United States really have to understand. We’re all in this together. I
really like what Mr. Karavan said about this whole community. We are a community — we have to be, if we’re going to survive. And I’ve been extremely touched by such an outreach of support by people I
don’t know, about what happened. Which didn’t personally affect me, physically or in any way. Where is the media telling us about all this goodness and all this humanity? You know, and I try to tell students, you have the power to say, “I don’t want to go to this movie. I don’t want to do this”. Don’t let people tell you what we shouldn’t be able to do. Maybe I’m naive, but why can’t we say to the media, “let’s show the voices of humanity”? And let’s show how humanity often wins. I think one of the most touching things I’ve seen here — and I know I’m digressing a little — was when we went on the first day to Terezín, to the ghetto area, to see the songs and to hear the children, the voices of the opera, and the poems and the writings and the paintings. You just know that humanity wins. And I think we need to be telling people more, and showing the examples of where humanity wins, rather than showing all the times that it’s threatened.

Juan Fleming
I have the privilege to be my country’s Argentine Ambassador to the Czech Republic, but I’m speaking in my personal capacity. And I hope I’m not out of order because you were, I think this afternoon, addressing the United Nations. But when you spoke about the tensions that exist between different human rights, I thought it would have been proper, to mention two things for this conference, if I may. The first one, if it hasn’t been thought of, I’m sure it has perhaps has been thought of, to address a message to the Secretary General, congratulating him and the UN for having won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the second one, I think should accompany that message, goes back to the debates in the ’70s. It was a time when the issue of human rights such as civil and political ones were being broadened to the point of allowing international institutions to look into domestic jurisdictions. And that created a lot of tension. But now it’s an accepted fact of international life. Here we have been discussing the broadening of human rights, to cover issues like the right to work, the right to education, the right to environment, the right to political life, of course I think that’s very key, the right to life. Perhaps a message should be addressed by this forum to the Secretary General and the United Nations to see whether in their debate that input that this forum is making could be introuced, and perhaps that can also help improving the world a little bit more. Thank you very much.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you. On the first suggestion, I think there is unanimity that we ask the secretariat of the forum to pass on our congratulations. On the second suggestion, I think we should reserve the consideration of that also until the afternoon session. Because we will continue a debate on the same issue of international institutions and there is work being done on the finalization of a statement at the end of this conference tomorrow. Also, summing up sort of the collective wisdom which we've collected over the period of five conferences, a sort of a real statement of where do we stand, what do we believe in, and maybe your suggestion could also be accommo¬dated in such a statement.

Comment from audience

First of all, I would like to thank the organizers of this lovely gathering and apologize to them that I will use its one shortcoming as the basis of my short speech. I am someone who feels the pain, fear and anxiety of all people: Of those who lived through the American tragedy and of those who are now living through another tragedy on the other side. I equally feel the anxiety of old laboratory animals, whose short life is nothing but pain and fear. I have been a vegetarian for the past two years, and the beginning of this journey occurred in a moment when I was about carve a chicken, and suddenly, the chicken seemed to me like a body of a small child. There are more of us vegetarians here now, and there are also many representatives of Eastern philosophies here who not only do not eat animals, but who also consider some of them sacred.
What is it that I want to say by all this? I want to say that this proclamation of ours that we want to understand each other cannot occur only at the level of reason. We have to try to feel with the others as well. Because our mind can logically say, "okay, this is stupid, it is a non-rational being," but if I want to feel what a vegetarian feels in front of a table full of meat, I have to understand how I would feel in front of a table with a chopped-up neighbor on it. So my appeal is: lets not try to understand with reason only, let's try to feel the feelings of others. The question, which will probably remain unanswered, as Mr. Wiesel has said, is: Can we improve the world if we do not let the small ones close to us, as Jesus preached, if we do not perceive the problems of children as big problems, and if we do not view animals as our friends the way St. Francis of Assisi did? Thank you.

Comment from audience

Thank you very much for offering me this opportunity to speak. I'm a repre¬sentative of the Students' Forum. And I'm going to try and look at the topic of human rights from a different perspective. My concern is basically trying to look at it from the context of cultures. It so appears to me that we have been talking about conflicts and human rights and international institu¬tions. And maybe also we need to be talking about international under¬standing. And one of the barricades that I see blocking us towards reach¬ing an international understanding is cultures. When we talk about some of these conflicts that manifest themselves in wars and terror, these are probably a clash of cultures. You know what makes you Czech, what makes you Israeli, what makes you Palestinian, what makes you Zimbabwean, what makes you this and that. Some of those things are the ones that we need to understand in order to solve some of the problems that we are talking about, for instance human rights.
In other parts of the country, we talk about human rights. We say education is a human right but in other parts of the country, that's merely a privilege, just because of different levels of advances, different government, and soci¬eties. Those societies are primarily defined by their cultures. Cultures I be¬lieve are the core of any society's uniqueness. It is what provides a sense of identity. And I'm taking this opportunity to introduce today the Students' Forum initiative on addressing some of these social problems practically. We have meetings on, conferences on different things such as human rights, but we also try to deal with these issues practically by promoting youth leaders that address such issues. And one of these issues is a young person who's in Zimbabwe, trying to establish a cultural center where different issues such as AIDS will be looked at in the context of culture. Where cultural exchanges will be carried out to promote international understanding. I would like to take this opportunity to ask all the delegates at this conference to think about what defines them, for instance, their cultures, and how we can try and understand each other's cultures, like the gentleman over there said. On that note I would like to invite you to the Students' Forum stand to come and look at some of the projects and invite you today just think about some of the issues that make you different from me, or me different from you. We are not really different, but there is a certain degree of uniqueness which we need to understand, in order to appreciate diversity, and to sort of try and build an international understanding, which I believe is, the core of addressing issues such as human rights and AIDS.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Thank you very much. On that high note, ladies and gentlemen, I would just offer, before I make a very short closing remark, our panelists one or two sentences each, if they have anything on their hearts. Shall we start, right to left.

Dani Karavan
We are discussing international institutions and human rights, at least we should be discussing that topic but we have concentrated a lot on terror¬ism and war. I would just ask this question, whether it is not very important to have in the future, some international regulations or conventions concerning export of weapons. I don't know the exact number, but I heard some days ago on the BBC, that England, France and the United States are actually exporting eighty percent of the weapons in the world. And I think, also talking about terrorism, this should be a very important topic for international institutions.

Anne Summers
Just to conclude, very briefly, Mr. de Klerk, you made the comment when you opened this session that whether or not an "ism" is necessarily a fundamen¬talism and whether there is something such as environmentalism that could be seen as a fundamentalism. I would just like to end on a plea that we all understand the inter-relatedness of everything. That we can't just concen¬trate on one single issue. We can't talk about the environment without think¬ing about air and food and water and people's right to live in safety from all kinds of toxic and dangerous substances. And just as in the point Hazel Henderson made a few moments ago, you can't talk about reforming global financial architecture without talking about border controls, gun controls and a whole lot of other seemingly unrelated subjects. We can't talk about improving our human rights in whatever con¬text we choose to focus in on, for the purposes of the immediate discussion, without remembering the inter-connectedness we all share. And I think if we were to remember this, and if our lives were guided by this principle, we wouldn't have the same kind of irrationality, hatred and destruction that has occupied us so much today.

Vandana Shiva
I think if we are to really, truly defend the indivisible nature of human rights, in all their diversity and all their plurality, then we need to bring symmetry kick into international institutions. Today's newspaper covers the cancella¬tion of the World Food Summit. Five years ago, at the World Food Summit - which is about hunger and ways to get rid of the hunger that eight hundred million people and more are facing - the entire focus was on how to not allow the right to food to be declared a human right. Just as at the Water Forum in the Hague last year, the entire energy of the corporations was how to not allow the right to water to be declared a human right. While the Food Summit has been cancelled because of September 11, the World Trade Organization meeting will carry on, if not in Qatar, then in Singapore. And we can now see the commitments of the international community, there's no commitment to insuring human rights are met, but tremendous commit¬ment to trade and commerce. The same issue we face again and again on the environmental front. The convention on Biological Diversity, Climate Change, Kyoto, subverted the intellectual property rights regime of WTO forced on Third World countries, South Africa, Brazil, India so that drugs that can be made available for two hundred dollars become twenty thousand dollars. Seeds that we could have for two rupees, we pay two thousand rupees. And not just that, our best duties to the earth, to duty to protect biodiversity, to save seed, become criminal acts in this new definition, because saving seed ends up being piracy under intellectual property. It's also turning our duty to share knowledge and information into a theft. The Nobel Prize in Economics has been awarded for how biased information creates bad economics. And yet, entire trade treaties are about keeping information away, including infor¬mation about that night, December 1984, when Union Carbide's factory killed three thousand people, and when the government of India asked Carbide, what is the chemical, they said, "we can't tell you, it's a trade secret."

Martin Kryl
I have just a short comment to what I have heard in this debate, and it seems to me really obvious how media have a great power over what is talked about and what is the issue today. I'm not saying that we shouldn't pay attention to the horrible things that have happened, but if it would have happened somewhere else, I don't think we would have paid as much attention as we do now. So I would really like to point out that media has great power, and it is a issue that I haven't heard much about at this conference, so I'm really looking forward to the afternoon discussion about international institutions. Thank you very much.

Frederik Willem De Klerk
Now ladies and gentlemen, I would like to thank our panelists, those who introduced the discussion, stimulated our minds, and those around the table who participated, very much for their participation for the high level of the discussion. I enjoyed chairing this. I would just like to end within three minutes, so we don't go too much into the lunchtime. Three minutes of telling you what I found necessary to discuss with American audiences on a recent tour. The theme of the speech was, "What is Right?" And in a sense, this whole conference, and when one talks about human rights, is what is right and what is wrong? And if we analyze the global ethical debate, then it tends to be dominated by three approaches. By religious fundamentalism, by social idealism, and by economic pragmatism. And we see this if we look at various policies, if we look at various ongoing protests such as in Seattle, Prague, and Genoa, if we look at the Catholic Church on contraception, the right to life debate in the United States. We see them in the fervent conflicts be¬tween fundamentalists of different religions in the Middle East and elsewhere. We see them in the Third World's demands for global justice that were most recently articulated in the United Nation's Conference on Racism in Durban. We see them most awfully in the fanatical evil of the terrorists, who struck at the heart of America on the 11th of September. And then comes to the fore this looking inwards, looking outwards, what is right, what is wrong. If we look at these three philosophical approaches, in its positive manifestation, all three of these have contributed greatly to the development and well-being of mankind. Religion, values, is the final source of purpose and meaning for billions of people throughout the world. Also for me. Time-tested norms and values provide us with sure direction in a shifting and uncertain world. Yet, in its most extreme form, religious funda¬mentalism is also used to justify the destruction of ancient Buddhist stat¬ues. Of the pitiful subjugation of women in Afghanistan. It was used to justify apartheid. It is today used to inspire children to become suicide bombers, or to justify the vilification of homosexuals. It is now being used as justification for the cold-blooded murder of thousands of civilians. Throughout the ages, even unspeakable atrocities have been committed in the name of religious principles. We should also not discount the enormous gains that mankind has made because of the reforms that have been initiated by social and political ideal¬ists. The world in which we live today is a far better, kinder and more just place because of them. But when idealism is not curbed by religious princi¬ple, by values, and by pragmatism, it can mutate into the most dreadful ideologies. Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, all started off with their own per¬verted visions of a better world, for which, if necessary, they were prepared to sacrifice millions of lives. And there is no doubt that economic pragmatists have been primarily responsible for generating the wealth and technology that has fundamentally transformed the lives and improved the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Yet, in its extreme form, economic pragmatism can be used to justify a callous disregard for justice. It can lead to the exploitation of the weak and the devastation of our fragile environment. Now where does all this leave us? I believe it takes us back to the heart of the human condition. And that is trying to make the best choice in a com¬plex, and changing, and imperfect world. None of us, no human being, can lay claim to the knowledge of the absolute truth. We need to combine the adherence to basic values and the striving for a better world, with the practical question of what is possible and what not, what is affordable and what not. And I think the answer in this debate, where everyone wants to say, "My cause is supreme," is to find a balance. To strike a balance between the seemingly conflicting truths. I want to close by saying that often the best choice is the one that is the least bad. It is the decision to retrench thousands of loyal workers so the company and the majority of the workers can survive. It is the decision to kill an intruder to defend the lives of your family. It is the decision to report a friend who has committed a crime. Difficult decisions, trying to do the right thing. There are no easy answers. I hope that this conference and this de¬bate about human rights will strive to strike this balance between the needs and the aspirations and the priorities of all human beings. And that we will harness all the good causes into a coordinated whole, striving for a balanced vision as to how can we build a better world. Thank you very much for your participation.