Topic: Perception of Human Rights in The Developing World

Special Session: Perception of Human Rights in The Developing World

Yozo Yokota

Ladies and gentlemen, I should like to begin the special session entitled “Perception of Human Rights in the Developing World.” My name is Yozo Yokota. I am a member of the United Nations Sub-commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights. I am happy and honored to be the moderator of this session. For the next fifteen minutes or so, we will be hearing the opening remarks by Mr. Yohei Sasakawa, Chairman of the Nippon Foundation and the Goodwill Ambassador of the World Health Organization, WHO. This will be followed by short comments by four distinguished panelists. May I ask Mr. Yohei Sasakawa to make the opening remarks?

Yohei Sasakawa

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and human rights. This is what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states. But time and again on my travels, I have seen the reality of the world very differently. People are denied their dignity and rights for all kinds of reasons. Equality is only a dream for many. Discrimination is widespread.

One of the oldest examples of discrimination relates to people with leprosy. Leprosy is a disease that has caused misery since antiquity. It is mentioned in Indian texts of the 6th century B.C., in the Bible, and in ancient Chinese documents. For thousands of years, it was thought to be highly contagious. The skin and nerve damage it caused often led to terrible deformity. Deformity inspired fear, leading those with the disease to be shunned. The world’s religions were unsympathetic, viewing people with leprosy as unclean. This reinforced the stigma attached to the disease. People with leprosy were regarded as social outcasts for many centuries.

In the 19th century, the leprosy bacillus was identified. However, at the time there was no cure. The route of transmission remained a mystery. Laws were enacted to isolate patients from the rest of the population. In Japan, forcible sterilization was legalized. Forced abortion was common, too. The policy was not to cure patients but to eradicate the disease by waiting for them to die.

In the past two decades, enormous medical progress has been made. With the emergence of multi-drug therapy (MDT), leprosy became curable. Close to 15 million people have been cured since the 1980s. With early detection and early treatment, the probability of developing a deformity is minimized.

But deep-rooted stigma and discrimination die hard. Misperceptions about leprosy abound: it’s “incurable”,, its “hereditary”, it’s “God’s punishment.” Based on such false notions, discrimination persists. It affects not just those with the disease and the cured persons, but their family members, too. By my calculation, dozens of millions of people are the victims of unjustified discrimination. It’s a massive problem. Yet these people are largely invisible. Afraid of attracting further discrimination, many have hidden themselves away and remained silent. When they have gained the courage to speak, they have been ignored.

In Asia, Africa and South America, there are numerous leprosy colonies where patients, the cured and their families live. Many survive by begging. They live trapped in a vicious cycle of discrimination, lack of opportunities and resulting poverty.

Three years ago, I decided to do something about this. Specifically, I approached the UN Commission on Human Rights. Three years on, a crack of light has appeared. Professor Yokota, who is here today, has put this issue before the newly constituted UN Human Rights Council. He has proposed that it draw up basic principles and guidelines to redress this injustice.

This should abolish institutional discrimination. But what about changing mindsets? What about eliminating preconceived notions about the disease? It is not easy. Even when we know the truth and we know our beliefs are false, we cannot change our long-held perceptions. In the case of leprosy, it is a fact that, while the physical walls that separate people affected by leprosy from the rest of society are gradually coming down, invisible walls still remain. We are unable to even lower these walls. We are still keeping these walls in our minds, in order to protect our safe and peaceful lives

I believe that the roots of discrimination lie in feelings of fear of those we perceive as different. This fear makes us build walls in our minds. How can we lower such walls which separate us from the different other? We must respect individual differences so that we can all live together. We must regard every problem as our problem and as the responsibility of all of us to solve.

I look forward to lively discussion which will enable us to find which direction we should go.

Yozo Yokota

Thank you very much, Mr. Sasakawa. He has started with the enormous gap between the words of the Universal Declaration, beautifully written, and the hard reality, where people suffer from various human rights violations. And he has spoken about the specific issue of leprosy-related discrimination. And by taking this up, I think he hinted that we have a common, broader problem of discrimination against people who are different from us; and how we can overcome this issue that he has raised. Having heard this very good introduction, I should like to invite four panelists to make brief comments. The first panelist is Mr. Zaid Ibrahim. He is Chairman of ZICO – Zaid Ibrahim and Company -- the biggest law firm in Malaysia, and he also is Chairman of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus. I’d like to invite Mr. Ibrahim to take the floor.

Zaid Ibrahim

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The subject is “Perception of Human Rights in the Developing World”. The perception, well, it used to be good. I think a lot of people cherish and value human rights, civil liberties, political rights, and you can even go as far as economic rights, social justice, the right to employment, food, the right to your own culture. So the definition is very broad. And I think there is no problem with that and, a lot of people accept that it is consistent with development--it is not contradictory, it is complimentary.

But something has gone wrong in the last couple of years. There is a lot more skepticism now, and I think it is because you cannot carry this message, this message of moral imperatives that we talk about, about rights and dignity, without world leadership. And this is what is absent today. We have a superpower, but we have no one who talks consistently about those rights, those definitions we have heard this morning in Article 1, those principles we talk about. What we have today is double standards, redefinition of self-defense, and redefinition of torture. We have defined anything and everything to soothe ourselves. And this is what happened in Rome when Pompey ruled: he was given absolute power to define things, what is right and wrong, he had no opposition. And today we have the same scenario, whether in the United Nations, whether anywhere. And because of this moral policy in world leadership, human rights, I believe, will suffer. We cannot promote these principles as we are doing now. What difference does it make to the people in my part of the world when you see aggression and violence being used in the name of democracy or freedom? What difference does it make to them when they know that people suffer? There are thousands and thousands of people dying unnecessarily. Does it make any difference if you say that it is necessary for democracy, for human rights? So I would say that if we want to pursue this agenda of human rights, and human dignity, and peace, and freedom for all, I think we have to come back to the moral leadership of this world. We used to have that. In the classical age, we used to have Ashoka in India or Akhbar. Then in modern ages you have Martin Luther King and his Civil Rights Movement. We have Mandela to some extent--people who won big battles by the strength of moral authority. But we have discarded that. Today it is power, and power, and pure power. And I think if you submit to this--and when I say submit, I don’t mean you have to do silly things like killing yourselves or following Oscar Chavez or anything like that -- I am saying you don’t have to submit to policies that are totally offensive to basic human values. And until we do that we are going to have this problem. When people have a negative perception of human rights, when people think that it is just another word for a small subjugation, then you are not going to get support. You are not going to be successful. And I believe that today. Diversity is the word and we know that. The more diverse you are, the more difficult it is for you to trust one another. This is not my statement. This is a scientific study made by Harvard University. The more diverse we are, the more difficult it is to get trust. That being so, it is all the more urgently compelling that we have this leadership that I talked about that has credibility, this grouping of people, of nations, of leaders who have credibility that can rescue us from this precipice. I believe we are now in a black hole. Not in the sense of Einstein’s relative black hole, but we are on that slippery slope where we don’t know what is right anymore, what is fair. We justify it in any way we want. And I think this is the danger to the world’s peace, this black hole. In this moral relativism that we do not know, there is no guidance, and we just blame this, blame that. And I hope we can pursue this subject, about which I feel very strongly, whether it is in the developing world or in the developed world. If our minds are warped and not clear as to the cause of the problem, we will never find the solution.

Yozo Yokota

Thank you very much, Mr. Ibrahim. I will later let you elaborate more on your point in response to some of the statements made by later panelists. But I just would like to pose one issue and that is: You talked about diversity and the former Malaysian Prime Minister was a strong proponent of the different concepts of human rights from the Asian context, and I wonder if you would like to make some comment about Mr. Mahathir’s statement about cultural relativism. I will give you time later. I just posed this question.

The next speaker is Mr. Japhet Ndabeni Ncube. He is the mayor of Zimbabwe’s second largest city, Bulawayo.

Japhet Ndabeni Ncube

This is a very difficult subject. Let me read something here that I just put together. Human rights, one can say, are essentially a socio-cultural, political, etc., construct or perception, with its entire attendant values, perceptions, worldviews, ideals and beliefs, etc. Now, once a concept is drawn or driven by a cultural understanding, or its background is culture, then we are bound to interpret whatever concept in various ways and forms according to how one views it. But perhaps before I say anything further, one can pose a question. Who is right? Who decides that these are human rights or these should be human rights? What standard are you using? Is that a value judgment? What do you base it on? Again, when we base this standard on cultures, then it is bound to have different interpretations of human rights, because cultures are very diverse. What is a cultural norm in one setup may be impermissible in another setup. And who spells out these human rights? Is there a global definition, an accepted definition, that human rights are encapsulated in this or that? In the absence of any definitive definition or accepted accommodating definition of human rights, we shall continue to see violations of human rights.

Now I am forced, in one way or another, to draw my contribution from a purely African perspective or point of view. Looking at an African setting, there will be a long past, long traditions, long cultural values, beliefs, etc., that will bind an African country together. And from that there will be what is called proper human behavior: the right approach to life, right approach to your friend, right approach to the next person, and yet at the same time, another country, even an African country for that matter, will do it differently. I am just using Africa as an example. I am sure in Asia it would be the same thing again. From the long past where everything was considered from a traditional standpoint, but what was a long past for Asia may not necessarily be a long past for Africa, Central Europe, etc. And yet today we are the same. We are talking about global human rights. There is a problem there. Then from the long past, which I described as a long traditional past, in Africa and more so the greater part of the Third World, there was the colonial past. In other words, the practices of the colonial era were to impose foreign values on what was there. Once you impose your rule by imposing your cultural rule, your values, you are imposing everything that makes you. The colonial era brought whatever it brought to the Third World: a clash of rights, a clash of values, a clash of perceptions of life; and when you are looking into that and examining it, were any human rights violated? In other words, the colonial era--did it violate some human rights? Then there is the third setup. I’ll call it the current setup--in other words, with reference to the Third World, the self-ruling countries, the independent Third World as it is today—again, what value systems are used there? What beliefs are used there? The current setup in the Third World is summing up the global setup. But then the Third World was unfortunate because it had the long past, the colonial past and now the current past. How are values meted out there? How do you define relevant belief systems? The western world views the Third World, and particularly Africa, as a kind of commotion sometimes. Yes, some commotion that will violate human rights. Indeed, they are being violated left, right, and center. Let’s look at the causes, for maybe we are addressing it as question of whether we are really abiding by human rights regulations. The current setup in the developing countries in Africa, where we are focusing mainly, is that we are trying to bring back the old setup of value systems. At the same time we are trying to combine it with the systems experienced during the colonial era and trying to patch it together with what is the norm today. What a colossal, colossal task we have. What I am trying to draw attention to here is: What yardstick is there for measuring human rights and their violations? First of all, what’s the setup of human rights as they should be and what of violations? Maybe what a Third World country sees as a norm, a normal practice based on their value systems and judgments, is a violation of human rights somewhere else. And definitely that is very, very possible. Which brings me to the point: unless there is an accepted criterion which comprises all the value judgments, the value systems, and then say, this is the setup for human rights, and if you violate this, you are violating human rights. Yes, the United Nations will come up with this and that, but did the United Nations take into account the various value systems, value judgments, value beliefs? That remains the question. There is a small thing that I want to mention within the African setup, and that is that these days there are youth rights, women’s rights, men’s rights, etc. However, in a typical African setup, it is traditional that an African man might marry two, three, four, seven wives. Are there any violations there of human rights?

Now, just to conclude, I had a problem as mayor. In one settlement there is a mosque where the Muslims pray. They have loudspeakers, they pray, everybody hears their praying, and some people, not Muslims, came to me saying, “Mayor, can you stop those people?” I say, “Stop them in what? Praying or praying through the loudspeakers or what? If I go to them I may be violating their right to prayer.” But calling those two factions together, making a dialogue with them, it ended up amicably. No loudspeaker prayers, and they asked the Muslim people if they feel comfortable with that and they said, “Yes.” Which brings me to one thing, that human rights should be observed and maintained through one channel -- dialogue. And that dialogue must bring together two major things: respect for that which is different from you, tolerance and understanding. I think with those, human rights will be enhanced.

Yozo Yokota

Thank you, Mr. Ncube. I think you have focused on an important area, and that is to see how human rights would be seen from the African context, and you gave a few examples of the problems that you yourself have faced in that connection. I think there are a lot of points to be discussed later. I now would like to move on to the third speaker, who is Mr. Kanan Makiya. He is a writer and Professor of Islamic and Middle-Eastern Studies at Brandeis University in the United States. He is originally from Iraq, but now he resides in the United States.

Kanan Makiya

Thank you very much. Given the short time, I’ll try to jump to the point as quickly as possible. I want to begin by observing that, in spite of the enormous gap between words and deeds that have been alluded to by our keynote speaker earlier on, it is interesting to observe that, certainly since World War II, the idea of human rights--not the practice, please don’t get me wrong--but the idea of human rights, has gained wide currency throughout the world, including the non-western world. All of a sudden--perhaps through the efforts of organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, which have an underground presence in so many countries--this is an acceptable contemporary living idea that is constantly present in all forms of media throughout the world. Even if you take its extension of that idea of human rights, the idea of promoting human rights is, on the face of it today, less contentious than, let us say, democracy promotion, which has also been alluded to by previous speakers. Promoting human rights does not, on the face of it, smack of imposition from the outside, from a successful part of the world upon a less successful part of the world, for instance. I am not saying completely, but it does not at least carry the political connotations of democracy promotion, certainly since the Iraq war. But our problems begin when we try to unpack what we mean by human rights. It is then that this happy consensus, at least of a principle, of a very general word across the world, breaks down. And again, this has been alluded to by previous speakers. For instance, are economic and social rights human rights or not? And if centuries of tradition, say, on the question of women’s roles in public life, might come into conflict with human rights as, say, defined by Western Europe, who is to decide which is right and which is wrong?

During this morning’s panel, President Havel put forward the idea of a moral minimum as a basis for handling what the panel was dealing with, which is global variety. Now, my question to the audience and to my fellow panelists is: are human rights, howsoever defined, part of that moral minimum? The idea of a moral minimum, as President Havel alluded to it, I think -- and those who might know better should correct me -- means looking into moral systems as they currently are for something that one believes a priori that they all have in common, and finding those things, and setting them down, so to speak, apart from individual systems. So the question immediately becomes, from that framework: Will human rights find themselves inside that moral consensus? If we were to undertake such an exercise--and when we include countries as diverse as Saudi Arabia, France, China, Sweden, and so on--I think the moment you put it this way, it becomes clear that there is very little that could be agreed upon. I very much doubt whether any kind of a consensus could emerge from this, from that kind of an exercise, or anything useful.

But towards the end of this morning’s session, I believe while she was summing up, the moderator Mary Robinson suggested an alternative word, the idea of a moral core, as opposed to a moral minimum. Now, she did not have time to elaborate on it, but I am going to make my claim here that I think what she has in mind, or my interpretation of it, something of which I very much approve, would definitely include some definition or other of human rights. However, when you talk of a core set of values, we immediately have to address the issues that my close friend James Zogby and great human rights activist on issues of oppressed minorities all over the world raised, which is the issue of justice and root causes. The moment you include justice and root causes into some notion or some to-be-agreed notion of human rights, you can be certain that you are going nowhere. Moreover, a core set of values, to use that particular phrase, if they are going to emerge, have to be promulgated by somebody, and they have to be defined, perhaps by the same party or parties that are going to be promulgating it. It is, in other words, a moral core, an active process, and a political process. It is not a passive exercise as envisioned by President Havel, an exercise of discovering a minimal set of values upon which many people can all agree without shaking up the universes, the moral universes in which they operate and work. So a moral core requires a willingness to engage in, not just dialogue, but in a struggle for a definite core set of values that arise not, in my opinion, from Western tradition, but from the very fact of global diversity, which is the theme of this conference. Now the disheartening notes, the source of pessimism, however, is--when I look around me in Europe, for instance -- I have to ask myself: is Europe willing, are the great nations of Europe,willing and able to struggle in this way that I have alluded to, for core values that are, of course, so very much at the foundation of what Europe itself stands for and is?

There has been a tendency, parallel with the spread of the idea of human rights that I started with, for Europeans to relativise values. This comes to the question that I think was hinted at by the Chairman: Relativise them. In other words, accept the idea that I have my values, and you have yours, and never the twain shall meet. There is nothing between you and me upon which I am willing to fight any longer. I recall even when the issue of Salmon Rushdie came up so many years ago, there was timidity about the way so many Europeans went about defending Rushdie. They did not defend him on the basis of the assertion of a set of universal values, which they claim stood for everyone, anywhere, irrespective of where they came from. They defended him on the basis of, “You have no right to issue a death sentence on somebody in my land, in my territory, with a different set of values.” That is very different from how it would have been done in the 19th century or in early 20th century when universals spoke to us more than they do today. So we come across a real problem. We can relativise to the point of nothingness, where we lose everything and we lose the meaning of words themselves in words like “dialogue” and “discussion” where actually the purpose is to politicize words and destroy their original meaning. Or we can assert those meanings and realize that they stand for something bigger than ourselves. The fact is that writing was discovered in Sumeria, in the country that I was born in and brought up in, but it belongs to the human race, to the human species—so, too, with human rights and certain other core values. But I fear that this approach to human rights is very much in danger from the relativism that is sweeping this continent and that has brought us some very sad situations.

Yozo Yokota

Thank you, Mr. Makiya, for a very interesting analysis of the diversity of the perception of human rights and a possible finding of the core values commonly acceptable to all people of the world. It is interesting that Makiya brought the notion of human rights into the discussion we had this morning about a moral minimum or moral core values and so on. I think that is an interesting point that other people might wish to comment on later.

Now the last speaker is Mr. Tomáš Pojar. For English speakers, if you see his name, you are tempted to pronounce it as “Pozhar”, but you are not supposed to do it. According to the Czech language, I understand it means fire. Mr. Pojar is a Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic.

Tomáš Pojar

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, I have to confess that I am lucky that I am the last to speak. I will be very short. And I am also lucky that I am speaking after Kanan, so maybe I will elaborate a little bit further on where Europe stands. And I have to say from the beginning that I do share his skepticism, since I was born in Prague and I was raised during the non-democratic times here, during the time of the Communist regime, and I still remember something about what it looked like seventeen years ago.
I can hardly speak about my perception of human rights in the developing world. Rather, I will speak about my perception of human rights from my own experience, as a citizen of a Central European country and now a member of the European Union. So my perception derives from some kind of a European framework.
When the issue of human rights is raised, I always think of a few really basic, political rights such as the freedom of speech and freedom of expression in general. I think this is the core of human rights that we should always be talking about and thinking about, because if we escape from it into some kind of cultural relativism, then we get lost in the jungle. And I have to say that I strongly believe that Europe at the moment is not willing and is not able to struggle for those basic human rights, and I am not talking about the situation within the European Union member states, or on the European continent, but rather globally.
I have to confess that I have never thought about leprosy, other diseases or similar issues when the issue of basic human rights was brought up. Also, I always think not only about group rights but also about individual rights. I strongly believe that it is our duty to support individual human rights and their defenders, no matter if they are on the outskirts of Europe or on the other side of the globe.
I think that as Europeans, we tend to think about the struggle against the death penalty and struggles for other great causes which in the end have limited practical consequences, and we are forgetting those individuals. If we don’t go back to the real defense and support of those individuals, no matter in what culture and in what region of the world they are struggling, then we are on the wrong path. When you look at the proposed text of the European Constitution and you read the part about basic rights and freedoms, you might be shocked by how inflated this part is. I think we in Europe should really get down to the core of what basic rights and freedoms really mean.
I share the view that the culture of relativism – sometimes, it seems to me, even of nihilism – is spreading, and that it is killing all efforts at real debate and real dialogue about the issue of human rights. At the ministerial and intra-governmental conferences that I travel to, just like at the non-governmental conferences, meetings and seminars that I used to travel to earlier, I see that when someone praises dialogue and only dialogue, it often means that the individual or representative in question wants in fact not dialogue but a total relativisation – that is, nihilism – and does not want to talk about basic, core human rights.
Of course I think we should talk about dialogue – real dialogue -- but we should not misuse the word in a way that gets us nowhere. And I think that what we in Europe should really do is to support the defenders of human rights everywhere. We should have the will to continue in this struggle because it is not only about the defenders of human rights and human rights elsewhere in the world; it is about our strength and about preserving our culture and our human rights for the future.

Yozo Yokota

Thank you very much, Mr. Pojar. He has focused on the basic issue of the concept of human rights from his country’s experience and the experience of the Central European countries and places importance particularly on core human rights, like the right of the press and rights of expression and so on. I think this is interesting and perhaps there may be some points to be raised by other speakers. Now I will invite any panelist who is willing, to make a few short comments, but I would like to invite first Mr. Ibrahim, because I asked him a question earlier.

Zaid Ibrahim

I think authoritarian leaders, or those who don’t really want to see full-blown democracy and human rights will always have reasons or excuses and justifications. And some of them will talk about, in my part of the world, “Asian values”; they say they are not quite consistent with full-blown democracy and human rights. Singapore, particularly, is a great proponent of the uniqueness of these so-called Asian values, and my former Prime Minister is one of those firm believers as well. But, by and large, while it is true that we can accept that priorities may differ amongst countries, and priorities may differ in the implementation of democratic norms, then I think we have to concede. But at the end of it all, I think we all have the same desire, the same wish to see democracy and the rule of law. So I think it is just a difference in priority, in the sequencing of those priorities. Now my second point is that I think that this diversity thing, the world that we are now in, I think problems are more complex, but unfortunately as we get more sophisticated technologically, we seem to have another approach when dealing with human problems--we seem to think that simple answers or simple solutions will suffice. This is the tragedy of our time. We have real complex issues -- religious problems, ethnic problems, the issues of globalization and the issues of poverty. The issues are a lot more complex, so I would have thought the approach to human rights, the approach to democracy would require a lot more sophistication, a lot more patience, more tolerance, more understanding of the issues--and this is, I think, what is missing. And I hope that conferences such as this, and messages that will flow from this conference, will be that: “We require a lot more effort to understand these problems that we talk about,” whether it is a group of fundamentalists or whether it is a group of radicals who oppose civil law, who oppose civil rights, or whether it is a group of political issues in the Middle East. In all these places, these issues, real issues, require a lot more understanding and appreciation before we can find the right solution.

Yozo Yokota

So, are there any other panelists who would like to take the floor at this time? Yes, Mr. Ncube.

Japhet Ndabeni Ncube

Thank you. I think what it has boiled down to is that it is very difficult to talk about the guidelines of how human rights should be observed. Just like democracy, it is interpreted differently by different people but still works towards a kind of unison. I think that is the right thing. Just like democracy, human rights issues should be a process. We are very lucky that, globally we are talking about it. It is not someone’s prerogative to talk about human rights as they would about democracy. It is the worlds’ prerogative. Let’s address it together. That we have started talking about it is the right direction. It will take some time, as people will have to understand what is involved in the whole process of human rights. As it is now, a human rights violation to A may not necessarily be a human rights violation to B. So shortly this process will need to bridge the gap in terms of understanding what is meant by human rights and when they are violated and when they are respected.

Yozo Yokota

Mr. Makiya, would you like to take the floor at this time?

Kanan Makiya

I am going to make a proposal instead of discussing a theory. I am going to suggest something very forceful and challenge my fellow panelists to find something wrong with it. I am thinking about this core set of values, returning to that basic point. I want to suggest, exactly as my colleague Tomáš said, human rights begin with individual rights. That does not mean they don’t include other rights; but let’s say we are focusing on individual rights. I know rights to assemble and to free speech are full of caveats and qualifications, but I want one simple right upon which we can all agree across this globe, this diverse globe of ours -- the right of the individual to be free from physical pain. It is a very simple right, and I am just asking not to be tortured, that is all. I don’t want anything more than that. I want a declaration of the world, of nations through the United Nations, that individuals worldwide now have set down, through their various institutions, one criteria, the practical implication of which I think would be revolutionary if it was actually possible to follow through. But can we agree --it is very hard to see how we would disagree -- can we agree and make a huge statement in the press and even in a bigger meeting than this with all the representatives from the whole world and so on, that freedom from physical pain be an absolute thing, that the world renounces and looks now harshly upon all those who would, in government or outside government, try to get their way through inflicting physical pain on a human being who is not in a position to free himself? Seems to me simple but also very far-reaching in its consequences, and I wonder if my fellow panelists would agree with that, and can they think of anybody in the world who would be unable to put their name to a document like that. And if we got together as activists and pushed this through, what would it mean for the world?

Yozo Yokota

Thank you. Mr. Pojar, would you like to say something about this?

Tomáš Pojar

I would just say that in the end we would not be able to agree. Even on that. I don’t think that there can be something as specific as that that is going to be agreed upon by everyone in the world. I really don’t believe that we can come to that conclusion.

Yozo Yokota

I am sure other panelists would like to respond to that question, but I see some other people around the table, and I wonder if one or two or three of you would like to make brief statements in connection with the representations.

Bronislaw Geremek

Yes, just a word. I do not believe that we are unable to accept that freedom from torture is a human right. I do believe that if we were unable to do it, what would that mean to the international community? But maybe it is not enough. Maybe it is just the beginning of something very important. I do believe that such a proposal would obtain a common agreement, but let’s go further. I think that the question of the dignity of the human person, which is the very source of human rights, can and should be declared as a principle of the international community. So let’s be courageous with the definition of human rights.

Yozo Yokota

Thank you very much. Who else would like to take the floor? Would you like to?

Grigory Yavlinsky

Thank you very much. Sometimes it looks to me a little bit strange when we are discussing what the minimum of moral imperative is. I want to say, what can be less than the right to life and the right to human dignity? What can be less than that? So I think it is absolutely clear that that is the cornerstone of all kinds of modern politics. And the question is not how to define it; the question is how to implement it in practice. And the problem is that the current politicians of the world are the people who don’t care about that. And that is the challenge to which only people all together can respond. But, honestly speaking, I don’t see such movement. Not in Europe, not in the United States, anywhere; and that leaves a very high level of suspicion about the near future.

Yozo Yokota

Thank you. Since there are other people around the table, I wonder if you would like to take the floor.

Farhad Kazemi

I must say I do agree with Kanan, my friend, on that basic principle. But I do agree with you, that some of the major countries, maybe even my own country, are going in reverse on this issue. I mean, it is the question of how you define torture. This is going to get into serious modeling problems, but as a principle I cannot agree any more than that.

Yozo Yokota

Our time is almost up. I think there seems to be some agreement among the participants, and also around the table, that there are certain core human rights. Torture was mentioned, right to life was mentioned. These could be agreed upon by any group of people in different religions, in different civilizations, in different parts of the world, developing countries or developed countries, industrial countries, but we don’t know yet to what extent we can agree on it, and on what human rights we disagree and so on. It is something we could explore in the future. Next year, as Mary Robinson has mentioned, we will be celebrating the 60th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the General Assembly of the United Nations, and from now until the time that we celebrate the 60th anniversary, perhaps we could start discussing each provision of the Universal Declaration and whether that can be accepted by all the members of the United Nations, all the people representing different religions and different civilizations and different cultural backgrounds. I wonder if this is an interesting exercise to carry out. Within the sixty minutes that we have used for this session, I think that we have heard very stimulating, very interesting and very insightful statements. The time is very short, but I think we had full discussions on the topic and there is a lot to think about in the future after this session, to bring home and think more deeply about. And I would like to thank my friend, Mr. Sasakawa, who in his opening remarks spoke from his own personal background about fighting against leprosy and discrimination against leprosy-affected persons. And I appreciate also the panelists’ very useful interventions, and I would like to close this panel with thanks to the audience for your kind attention.