Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

Mary Robinson

As Mary Robinson and her three-vehicle convoy drove through the Palestinian town of Hebron two years ago someone opened fire and a bullet struck one of the cars. She had been touring the West Bank and Gaza to investigate complaints by the Palestinian Authority that Israeli soldiers had been using excessive force against their people, especially young stone throwers. The Israeli army blamed Palestinians but Palestinian police said militant Jewish settlers fired at the convoy in an Israeli-controlled part of the town.

Given that the UN High Commissioner for human rights was there to investigate Israeli behaviour, it's not too hard to guess to which side the gunmen belonged. Though upset, she refused to allow the incident to intimidate her or deter her active commitment to international human rights. In the end it wasn't bullets that persuaded her this week not to seek a fresh mandate, but the machinations of the US government and the fact that her department was starved of proper funding (receiving just 2% of the UN's overall budget).

Washington was angry at Robinson's outspokenness and the fact that she took her responsibilities quite literally and was not a mere stooge of western foreign policy interests or acted in the lethargic manner of her predecessor, Ecuadorian, Jose Ayala Lasso whose low-key, overly-diplomatic approach did little to advance the human rights agenda.

Mary Robinson was, in fact, initially supported by Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton when the commissioner's appointment came up in 1997 (as she was completing her term as the first woman Irish President), even though the signs of a determined personality were already there. In 1979, at the age of 25, Mrs. Robinson was appointed Reid Professor of Constitutional and Criminal Law at Trinity College. From 1969 to 1989 she had been a member of Seanad Éireann. In a highly conservative Ireland she campaigned on women's rights, contraception, divorce, homosexuality and abortion.

In 1990 she shook the establishment and broke the cartel of the major parties when she was inaugurated as the seventh president of Ireland. Her presidency was characterized by inclusiveness and a concerted effort to use the office not only to improve the situations of marginalized groups within Ireland but also to draw attention to global crises. Mrs. Robinson was the first head of state to visit famine-stricken Somalia in 1992 and also the first to go to Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide there.

In 1993 she was invited to attend 'A Celebration of Culture and Creativity' in Ballymurphy. Despite an intense lobbying campaign by a coalition which would have withered the steeliest of souls, and which included John Major, Sir Patrick Mayhew, all the Unionist parties, the SDLP, the nationalist 'Irish News', Cardinal Cahal Daly, Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring and opposition leader John Bruton, President Mary Robinson set all their protests to one side, went into West Belfast, met the local community and shook hands with their elected representative Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams.

By this gesture - courageous in political terms - she was following her own principles that you do not demonise, marginalise or alienate the dispossessed, and for setting an example of the merits of communication she was pilloried by politicians and the media. She was right, of course, and they were wrong - as subsequent developments were to show. Her politics on the North, incidentally, were by no means pro-republican. She resigned from the Labour Party in 1985 in protest at the Anglo-Irish Agreement which she felt had been imposed on unionists without consulting them. She also opposed the Framework Documents, drawn up by the British and Irish governments in 1995, complaining, again, that they were too pro-nationalist

Her record of independent thinking, forthrightness, her experience as an international juror, made her a prime candidate for the position of United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, to which she was nominated by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Though I have always thought that he cuts a rather poor figure as a champion of the oppressed, Mary Robinson quotes Annan as saying to her when she was appointed: 'Stay an outsider within the United Nations.'

That, she most certainly did. She travelled extensively from her Geneva base, often causing controversy with her interventions. In May 1999 she warned NATO against inflicting civilian casualties in Belgrade during the Kosovo conflict, but also persisted in the case for prosecuting Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes.

At the United Nations conference on racism in Durban, South Africa, last September, which she spearheaded, the United States and Israel walked out because of criticism of Israel. The US had also opposed apologising to former African colonies for the slave trade in case this led to demands for reparations.

She called for international observers to be allowed into the occupied territories but also condemned Palestine suicide bombers. She described the September 11th bombings in the US as 'a crime against humanity' but also said that US military actions in Afghanistan had led to excessive civilian casualties.

'I cannot accept that one causes "collateral" damage in villages and doesn't even ask about the number and names of the dead.' (Afghan and US authorities have not given a number for how many Afghan civilians have died in these bombings, though it is believed to be well in excess of the number of those killed in the September 11th bombings.)

Then Mary Robinson incurred the wrath of Washington by criticising the US treatment of prisoners from the war in Afghanistan now being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. She said that the US is wrong not to recognise the men at Guantanamo as prisoners of war and afford them the rights set down by the Geneva Conventions.

Though enjoying much support in western Europe and many Arab and developing countries it was the fact that she was a thorn in the side of the world's largest superpower that ensured she would not be re-nominated for a full second term and would have been blocked in the UN General Assembly. The 'New York Times' quoted a senior Bush administration official as saying: 'We made clear, quietly, our views that she shouldn't be renewed.'

Mary Robinson has given her reason for leaving as lack of financial support within the UN, though this explanation masks the determined opposition to her by the United States. 'Annan will have to pick some person that is more agreeable,' a Western ambassador told the United Press International.

What has happened to Mary Robinson is nothing short of a disgrace and it leaves the world a much more dangerous place. Praising her, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh said: 'It is easy to criticise small countries, but she has dared criticise also the big countries.'

'She has paid the price for her willingness to confront publicly big governments like the United States and Russia when they violate human rights,' said Reed Brody of Human Rights Watch.

Mary Robinson once said: 'I've always recognised the importance of standing up to bullies, addressing shortcomings and being outspoken - an awkward voice.'

Those who have allowed her to be sidelined are the very authorities who claim to believe in democracy, freedom of information, free speech and, above all, human rights. In getting rid of Mary Robinson they have weakened the voice of human rights and, through seeking a compliant replacement, have shown that that is their exact intention.

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