North-South divide over human rights puts pressure on Robinson

It has been a bad week or a good week for Mary Robinson in her new post as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights depending how you look at it. The President of the Congo, Laurent Kabila, has been so unco-operative with the UN team investigating massacres of refugees that the leaders have had to be pulled out last week after Mrs Robinson has been barely a month in the job.

Then her meeting at UN headquarters last Monday with the Algerian foreign minister led to a strongly-worded communique from the Algerian UN mission accusing her of "over-stepping her powers". She had condemned the recent killings of schoolteachers and upset the minister by refusing to accept the atrocities are solely an internal matter.

At her first press conference in New York, Mrs Robinson was rather provocatively asked by a British reporter if she was going to "get on a plane to the Congo" and sort out the mess over the UN investigative team and its clash with President Kabila. To no one's surprise, she said no.

But these incidents can also be seen as a sign of how important her job of safeguarding human rights is going to be. If she does her job properly she is going to make enemies as well as win friends. She is only too well aware of that herself as she struggles to overcome an initial handicap of being perceived by many of the countries where human rights abuses are common as representing a European and "Western" viewpoint.

"That's a certain liability," Newsweek magazine commented in a mainly favourable article entitled "Here's to you Mrs R. Ireland's ex-president takes on global thugs".

In a recent hour-long radio interview with correspondents from around the world, one questioner said that while the heartiest congratulations on her appointment had come from the West during the first weeks of the General Assembly, there was "almost a deafening silence from the rest of the world, especially from Asia, some parts of Africa".

She was asked: "How do you read this? Is this simply a traditional North-South rivalry? We all know that the developing countries wanted one of their own in your position . . . Or is this something deeper like an ambivalence toward how you might pursue your human rights mandate?"

Mrs Robinson said she had not had much time to listen to speeches but in her meetings with prime ministers or foreign ministers "I have received a very encouraging measure of support". Her appointment had been "very welcomed in Africa. It is welcomed in a sense of that I have perhaps a potential to bridge that gap. And I think it's my Irishness that's going to help because as you know, Ireland in its history is of the South and otherwise it's of the North".

This is a reference to the fact that Ireland's colonial past puts it in the camp of what used to be called the Third World but is now known under the more politically correct term as the South. But as a member of the European Union, often referred to as a "rich man's club", Ireland is now of the North, the latest term for what used to be called the West.

Mrs Robinson shows that she knows how to steer through the ideological minefields of politically correct jargon. Using her Irishness as a "bridge" across the dividing lines may yet work but she will be under close observation as the choice of the US and the wealthier UN countries as well as of her boss, Secretary General Koffi Annan, from Ghana, who so far is delighted with his appointment.

The independent UN Association of the US in its study of the issues before the 52nd General Assembly called A Global Agenda describes her as a woman "with a reputation for courage and integrity who also knows a great deal about the human rights field". But it goes on to say: "The principal downside of this appointment is that the G-77 developing nations [the South] might reject initiatives by a member of the developed world as simply imposing the West's concept of human rights."

The Argentine ambassador to the UN, Fernando Enrique Petrella, put this more bluntly in the Newsweek article when he asked: "How can she convince the rest of the international community that Western human rights is what's best for everybody?" Mrs Robinson had defeated the Latin American candidate for the post which had been held by a Peruvian diplomat so there may be still bruised feelings on the sub-continent.

But an anonymous American human rights activist put it this way: "If she gets perceived as the West's darling, out to get the Third World, she's dead before she starts."

Mrs Robinson read out these two quotations at the start of her press conference and added briskly: "That's not what I propose to do nor intend to do. I do not intend to convince the world that European or Western definitions of human rights" are the only ones the High Commissioner is concerned about.

It's a long way from the tea parties in Aras an Uachtarain.