Defending human rights: Navi Pillay

What does it take to go from being a young woman of colour, growing up in 1950s apartheid South Africa, to leading the UN’s human rights work? And along the way to be the first woman of colour to open a legal practice in South Africa, and to serve on the international tribunal for the Rwandan genocide?

Answers to those questions and more are provided by Navi Pillay, in our exclusive interview with her this week on Inside Geneva. It’s all part of our series marking the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and if you were inspired by our earlier episodes with Mary Robinson and Louise Arbour, then don’t miss Pillay.

Now 81, I had wondered whether she would have time or inclination for yet another interview about her role at the United Nations, and rather timidly wrote asking if she remembered me. The answer came back within hours “of course I remember you!”, and shortly after that, we were laughing on Zoom – she reminded me that I had once written that she sometimes, successfully, used humour to get her human rights points across.

Education the solution

Despite the restrictions and inequalities of apartheid South Africa, Pillay’s parents were determined their daughters should get an education. It was, she remembers, “the solution to get out of this.”

At high school a bright and determined Pillay observed that her teachers were afraid to address the realities of the system they were working in. “They would teach us about democracy in Greece, but not why don’t we have democracy in South Africa.”

The rigidity of the apartheid system became even clearer when, graduating from law school, she started looking for jobs, which she describes as a “lonely and scary” experience. Penalised for her race as well as her gender, some law firms said they couldn’t have their white secretaries taking instructions from a coloured lawyer, others said they feared young “Miss Pillay” would only stay a year or two and then leave to get married and start a family.

Every time she met such a “brick wall”, Pillay, she was always determined to find the gap, however tiny, that would let her through. Her perseverance paid off, and she began using the law to challenge some of the worst excesses of apartheid, resulting in improved conditions for prisoners, like Nelson Mandela, being held on Robben Island.

Rwanda

There followed an appointment as a judge on the international tribunal for Rwanda, after the 1994 genocide in which at least 800,000 people were killed. Pillay recalls that when she arrived “there were still bodies in the churches.”

The role was challenging; many of the appointees did not have much experience of international law. Added to that was the need to find legal definitions of rape and sexual violence, crimes which had been committed on a widescale during the Rwandan genocide.

The tribunal took much longer than Pillay had expected, and, understandably, many of the victims who testified were impatient for justice. But, she says “all of us knew why we were there. To render justice. And to acquit where there was insufficient evidence.”

UN Human Rights Commissioner

When UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon asked her to be UN Human Rights Commissioner, Pillay was by then serving on the International Criminal Court, and still had some months to go. But, she remembers, Ban said to her “we need you now”, a call she didn’t feel she could refuse.

Arriving in Geneva, out going Human Rights Commissioner Arbour briefed Pillay on the challenges of the job, including the time consuming but necessary field trips. Pillay remembers she thought “no, I’m going to do it differently,” but soon realised that unless she travelled, talked to governments, and observed human rights problems up close, her credibility would be damaged.

Her strategies ranged from firmness. “I used to remind them {governments}, YOU signed this treaty, now implement it”, to humour. Visiting a Caribbean nation the then head of government assured her there were no human rights issues in her country whatsoever. “Then why do beat your children?” asked Pillay, referring to corporal punishment in schools.

When the government leader responded that it was their “tradition,” Pillay pointed out that it was in fact a colonial practice introduced by the British. From there, with the support of the UN’s human rights office, the country successfully eliminated corporal punishment.

Big powers

But, like many who have served as UN human rights commissioner, Pillay feels the playing field is not level. The big powers, simply by being powerful, tend to escape scrutiny. “The United States has not ratified the convention on the rights of the child, or CEDAW, the convention against discrimination of women,” she points out.

“And”, she smiles wryly, “they told me that’s because they’re a democracy, they have their own institutions.”

Perhaps that’s why, when it comes to marking the 75^th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Pillay does not wax lyrical, but instead points out the less obvious but still significant successes.

The declaration, she says “is a common standard that every state has agreed. No state has distanced itself from that treaty.”

And from that declaration have come many conventions and treaties which, as Louise Arbour said in her interview with Inside Geneva, would make the world seem like “heaven”, if they were actually implemented.

For Pillay, that’s where all of us come in. It’s up to us, she says, to make sure our governments honour the treaties they have signed. “These are the tools that civil society has. You have the law, now push for implementation.