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HUMAN RIGHTS BECAME A MAJOR ISSUE FOR HUMANKIND
Human rights day and 50th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights
Speech by the President of the Republic of Slovenia, Milan Kucan
Ljubljana, 7 December 1998
"In this way, from 1 December 1948, human rights became a major issue for humankind. They became the ultimate dividing line between democracy and totalitarianism, a means of differentiating between the reality of life for people in individual countries and the political pretence of their leaders. From that time on it has been clear that establishing the rule of human rights reduces the space available to arbitrary regimes and limits the state's capacity to repress and abuse its citizens in the name of national interests." stressed President Milan Kucan at the celebration of the 50th anniversary marking Human Rights Day.
"From that time on, it has been clear that people are free only when they enjoy all civil rights - political, economic, social and cultural - and when these rights are enjoyed everywhere. Human rights are universal and indivisible. Their universality also means that asserting these rights cannot be confined to particular environments and areas, or be guaranteed only within this or that national frontier.
It would of course be an illusion to think that the fulfilment of human rights can be guaranteed merely by international institutions of repression, however needed or essential they might be for the prosecution and punishment of the worst excesses. It is first and foremost each individual country, as a member of the United Nations, that is called upon to do this. It is the individual country which is firstly responsible and duty bound to ensure the enjoyment and protection of the human rights and basic freedoms of its citizens."
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I consider it an honour to be able to speak here at the Slovenian United Nations Association on Human Rights Day, which this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Through this Declaration, human rights became a universal value of modern humankind. The United Nations Declaration was the first document on human rights in history to be adopted by an international organisation that declared its universal validity. The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which were adopted at a much later stage, join the Universal Declaration to make up the International Bill of Human Rights.
In this way, from 1 December 1948, human rights became a major issue for humankind. They became the ultimate dividing line between democracy and totalitarianism, a means of differentiating between the reality of life for people in individual countries and the political pretence of their leaders. From that time on it has been clear that establishing the rule of human rights reduces the space available to arbitrary regimes and limits the state's capacity to repress and abuse its citizens in the name of national interests.
From that time on, it has been clear that people are free only when they enjoy all civil rights - political, economic, social and cultural - and when these rights are enjoyed everywhere. Human rights are universal and indivisible. Their universality also means that asserting these rights cannot be confined to particular environments and areas, or be guaranteed only within this or that national frontier. The fulfilment of human rights is linked to peace and stability, to democracy and social security, and to general economic, social, cultural and political development. Human rights may be asserted in their entirety if this assertion is accompanied and affirmed by the development of a society's general prosperity and its political awareness. The priority of certain rights over others, and the separation of civil and political rights from social and economic rights gives merely an illusion of freedom. An important message was carried in the words of Eleanor Roosevelt, who chaired the Commission for Drafting the Declaration, and who said: "Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighbourhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere."
The universal nature of human rights also demands their universal protection. For this reason, in order to strengthen the protection of human rights, and to supplement their universal application in international law, the United Nations set up some extremely important institutions of international justice: the International Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (to which the UN General Assembly recently elected a judge from Slovenia) and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. In this way the international community has shown its determination to see that the worst violations of human rights, crimes against humanity and international law, crimes of genocide, war crimes and crimes of aggression do not go unpunished. And for this reason they fall within no statute of limitation.
It would of course be an illusion to think that the fulfilment of human rights can be guaranteed merely by international institutions of repression, however needed or essential they might be for the prosecution and punishment of the worst excesses. It is first and foremost each individual country, as a member of the United Nations, that is called upon to do this. It is the individual country which is firstly responsible and duty bound to ensure the enjoyment and protection of the human rights and basic freedoms of its citizens. And yet this does not diminish the responsibility of individuals, groups and associations to commit themselves and to be especially sensitive to the respect of human rights, basic freedoms and to spreading awareness about them. There would be little weight in the mere protection by the state of rights and freedoms, if this was not an expression of the will and demands of its citizens; and if this did not express the universal awareness that through the expansion of rights for one single individual, the area of freedom for all humankind is expanded. Alongside the responsibility of the state, there is therefore the responsibility of each individual to be aware of his or her rights and to assert them, and to be aware of the rights of others, their protection and actions in their defence. There is also the role of the civil society, to raise awareness of human rights and activities for their protection, and to warn and protest against their violation. There is the responsibility of the state towards the international community and the United Nations. Ensuring social and economic development, the prosperity of each individual and general prosperity, and overcoming differences while understanding the unique quality of each individual as a human being with dignity and rights in different civilisations, remain the challenge that faces us on the threshold of the new millennium.
Slovenia accepted the observance of human rights as its international legal, constitutional and civilisational duty. A commitment to the respect of human rights and freedoms had been evolving in Slovenia for a long time. It was built into the very foundations of the independent state of the Republic of Slovenia. Eight years ago, on the calling of the plebiscite, the Slovenian parliament gave out a Statement of Good Intention, in which it committed itself to respect human rights and freedoms, and all the principles of international law. And in full observance of these rights, invoking the principle of every nation's right to self-determination, the independence of Slovenia was effected through entirely legal procedures. In 1988 the United Nations Association of the Republic of Slovenia published a collection of international documents on human rights. That year also saw the founding of the Council for the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Freedoms - the forerunner of today's Human Rights Ombudsman. The trial of the Four in a military court in Ljubljana prompted the civil society to set up the Committee for the Protection of Human Rights. Human rights and basic freedoms, plus their guarantee and protection, were also enshrined in the Slovenian Constitution. Moreover, Slovenia committed itself to observance of human rights, and international law protecting them, through its membership of the UN and the Council of Europe.
Slovenia is declared today to be a democratic state based on the rule of law and on social welfare. Yet a real awareness of the significance of human rights for a democratic society, and the will to respect and protect them, require much more than simply legislating for them. They require a systematic and general effort to make them as much as possible a real part of our lives. They require a common conviction that the protection of the individual, along with his or her dignity and rights, is the supreme goal and value, and one which is not possible to achieve once and for all, for it requires affirmation and new fulfilment in every given situation. No national interest and no higher political, conceptual, nationalistic or religious aim can justify the subordination of these rights. And this applies in full measure to Slovenia, too.
Human rights are directed at the individual. They are acquired at birth and not by the will of the state (or by its consent). The state, that is a democratic state based on the rule of law, cannot take them away from an individual, nor can it limit them in the long term. The state is bound to protect them and to ensure favourable conditions for their fulfilment. This holds tue also for collective human rights. In Slovenia there now exist all the basic institutional conditions for such a functioning of the state. And yet in practice there is still a tendency for the principle of expediency to be placed above the principle of law. The world of politics does not have the right to decide whether it will observe the law or not. And a country does not have this right, or else it is not a democratic country based on the rule of law. The rule of human rights as an affirmation of the state based on the rule of law is not a matter for political assessment. There are not and cannot be any higher state or nation-building interests over and above the legal obligations of state bodies. It is not possible to build a democratic state based on the rule of law through undemocratic and unconstitutional practices, through arbitrary acts, pragmatism and opportunism. Only a country which respects its own constitution and laws, and which places itself under the rule of law and human rights, can be respected by its citizens and treated by other countries as a respectable member of the international community.
In Slovenia there are no systematic, crude violations of human rights. This is encouraging. Yet this does not mean that we can afford to be satisfied with the level of human rights enjoyed thus far. We are also guided towards some critical consideration by the Human Rights Ombudsman. In his third annual report, the Ombudsman indeed advises us of certain violations. These include the inappropriate attitude of the state towards the individual, regarding both respect of the individual's dignity and information about rights and about the means and systems of obtaining assistance when these rights are violated; some state bodies which are operating ineffectually and even illegally; the inadequate concern for those social groups that bear the greatest burden of economic transformation, including the long-term unemployed, who lose all hope of ever living again from the fruits of their own labours; the ineffectiveness of the appeal procedure, the large backlogs in the courts, and particularly the disturbing appearance of racist, religious and other forms of intolerance and xenophobia.
Yet in establishing these facts - which are of course not the best commendation for Slovenia in terms of respecting human rights - the most important factor is not that these violations occur. Indeed violations occur in every country. What distinguishes individual countries, however, is the decisiveness and weight of their response to identified violations. Our concern is therefore not aroused simply and primarily by the violations of human rights as identified by the Human Rights Ombudsman and civil society organisations such as the Helsinki Monitor and Amnesty International, but also by the response of the National Assembly and the government, which do not attend to these findings with any urgency or rightful commitment, and do not take any decisions which might eliminate the causes of recurrent violations. An inadequate sensitivity is what causes most concern and sends a poor signal for the future.
Given the close connection between the emergence of Slovenian democracy and human rights, and particularly the justification in the right to self-determination and the demand for Slovenia's international recognition through these rights, we should expect a much more refined response from Slovenia's politicians towards violations of human rights, beginning with the incident which was most serious and most abhorrent for the civilisational standards of the democratic world, when the armed forces were misused to intervene in a civilian matter at Depala Vas, and then the entertaining of signs of nationalist and other forms of intolerance towards those who are different. It is mere pretence if human rights concern us only each time the name Slovenia appears in the annual reports of the US State Department, the Council of Europe or other international organisations, and not for the simple reason that rights are violated in this country. The standing of the country in the eyes of the world is of course important, but what is vital is the standing and trust which the state enjoys in the eyes of its own citizens. It is because of them that the state exists, and it is duty bound to serve them. In its relationship towards human rights the state cannot have two policies, one for foreign and one for domestic use.
In Slovenia we have a very valuable experience. We exercised our right to self-determination in a democratic, legal and non-violent way. We defended ourselves against aggression without major human casualties. This binds us all the more not to be indifferent to events in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Kosovo and elsewhere, where human rights are violated massively and through state aggression. It was because of the indivisibility and universality of human rights, and from a sense of responsibility for conditions in the international community that Slovenia supported the commitment of the Secretary General of the United Nations to include human rights among the fundamental activities of the United Nations, alongside peace and security, economic and social development, developmental cooperation and humanitarian assistance. Such an approach represents an important fleshing out of the activities of the United Nations. The fulfilment of human rights is no longer confined simply to monitoring the implementation of conventions, but has an essential dimension of supporting political, social and economic development. The guaranteeing of human dignity and rights has become very closely connected to the resolving of social issues and the eradication of poverty. In this way political tensions are also reduced, and the causes of threat to world peace are eliminated. The United Nations Organization was aware that its fundamental mission was to ensure respect of human dignity and protection of human rights. For without this it could not fulfil the hopes placed in it by people of all countries and nations of the world.
As we pause for some critical consideration of the respect and assertion of rights, it appears to me not out of place at tonight's celebration to reiterate the fact that rights are linked to responsibility. Each one of us has a claim to all human rights, yet only in respecting the equal rights of others. The rights of one person, group part or entirety of society, without respect or consideration of the rights and freedoms of others, including minorities - ethnic or other - can threaten the rights of all people and freedom itself. We can therefore only speak of the rule of human rights when people respond to the violation of a fellow human's rights with the same sense of grievance and determination as if their own rights had been violated.
We should remember, after all, that in this century which is drawing to a close, Europe has witnessed the complete disregard of human dignity and the denial of human rights. Europe witnessed the clash of the democratic world with Fascism and Nazism. It witnessed the abuse of the human desire for a socially just society to set up the rule of communist regimes. It witnessed the collapse of societies which substituted the socialist idea with collectivism and forced it upon people instead of personal freedom and competitiveness. It witnessed all of this because when human rights were violated, there were far too many people who should have spoken out and protested but who remained silent. Yet in this century Europe also witnessed an enormous flowering of awareness about the importance of human rights and the victory of efforts to ensure that human dignity and rights determine the boundaries over which neither the state nor the equal rights of another person can tread. All of this is an experience and a warning to new generations, that in the creation of the civilisation of the new century and new millennium one single constraint must rule the world, states and politicians, and that is the pressure for the rule of human rights, respect of human dignity and the sanctity and unique nature of human life, tolerance towards what is different and mutual respect of diversity.
Distances in the world are continuously becoming smaller. Independent Slovenia, too, is entering this new world, carrying with it bitter memories of this century and respect of human rights in it, as well as of its own path towards respecting these rights.
The Declaration of Human Rights was created from the terrible experiences and disappointments of humankind over the flouting and denial of human dignity in the Second World War. But the conceptual foundations for this Declaration go much farther back, to the times of the first awareness and activities which protected citizens from the arbitrariness of those in authority; to those times when people formulated the Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of the Person and Citizen. "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood." The sense of this noble thought has indeed been incorporated into and extended in the Slovenian Constitution. We may, and should, be proud of this. But from this pride we must also foster a respectful attitude to the rights of each person, and a responsibility to prevent the violation of these rights, which we should see as the violation of our own rights and the limiting of our own freedom. I believe that we have sufficient courage for this. For as the Declaration states in its preamble, "…recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world, whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people…" And we, too, have consciously taken this aspiration as our own aspiration and the guiding principle of our actions.
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