The UN has "lost the plot" in fighting human rights abuses, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, said yesterday. She called for all UN staff to be retrained to focus on the essential elements of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
This is the second time during her three-day visit to Britain that Mrs Robinson has criticised the organisation that appointed her High Commissioner for Human Rights two months ago.
During a press conference at the UN Information Centre in London yesterday Mrs Robinson also signalled her willingness to consider regular reviews of the international sanctions against Iraq and she confirmed that addressing human rights abuses in Algeria would be a matter of priority during her time in office.
On Tuesday Mrs Robinson made a surprising attack on the UN and yesterday she returned to the theme. She said: "The UN needs to renew with vigour the commitment from 50 years ago and take stock. There is a need for a sense of renewal."
Mrs Robinson added that the UN had not paid enough attention to developing a rights-based approach to international development and its staff needed in-house training in human rights legislation in order to focus on their role. She said, it had "troubled" her during her two months in office that many people in the UN had developed a "gap in perception" with regard to their work and actual rights abuses. Human rights programmes, she said, must be balanced where necessary with civil and political rights but it was "equally important" not to be selective with those rights.
"There is a need to renew our own vision . . . even if we are not able to enforce all the standards," she said.
Mrs Robinson insisted that the UN must be seen to have integrity of purpose which, she said, was "not being realised". Describing her priorities in office, Mrs Robinson said she would work for the renewal of the core values governing the work of the UN and move away from the complacency and bureaucracy within the organisation that she had referred to in her speech at Oxford University.
Earlier, Mrs Robinson was presented with a World Citizenship Award by the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts during a short ceremony at the National History Museum in London. She was honoured for her "courage, tenacity actions and words" in caring for marginalised and isolated people, said Ms Heather Brandon, chairperson of the World Board of the association. President Nelson Mandela is the only other person to have received the award.
Last night Mrs Robinson received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of London and this afternoon she will visit Queen Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace.
She will also be meeting an all-party parliamentary group in the House Of Commons to discuss human rights.