 Welcome to Cooper Union. Today we'll be focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We will be celebrating its 72nd anniversary in just two days. And today we'll be focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Order, actualizing the UDHR articles and actions through the UN human rights mechanisms. And today I'm very fortunate to welcome John Pache. He had a career in the UN from 1966 to 1999 that was fully dedicated to human rights and fundamental freedoms. His insights result from serving as secretary to the Commission on Human Rights from 1978 to 1991 and again 1993 to 1994. He was also the head of the Special Procedures of Technical Cooperation Research and Rights to Development and in more recent years he's appointed as a UN senior human rights official to six countries, Middle East, Africa and Asia. And what we'll be talking about today mainly is his recent published book, The United Nations Commission on Human Rights, a very great enterprise. John, thank you very much for dedicating a life to human rights and also sharing your reflections from all of that deep work to realize human rights around the world into this publication, promoting some possible paths that we can pursue as we move forward on human rights. Thank you very much, Joshua. Nice to be with you. We've seen some things together in the past, some action of the in Geneva and other countries. It has been great to be on the front lines with you during some of those experiences. Maybe you could share with us briefly what really inspired you to get involved in human rights and then stay involved for all those decades. What were some of the highlights you've seen of impacts of how civil society and people's movements have really changed and shaped the global institutions? Well, you know, it was a series of misadventures, if you like. In 1966, I was fortunate to be selected for an internship in the legal office of the UN in New York at that time. And after a couple of months, I thought that was the worst thing I could do. So I thought I might as well go back my home then, which is Malta. And I was, it was suggested to me that there was this department called Human Rights looking for a couple of youngsters to help with a study on administration of justice. So I just suggested that I get interviewed by John Humphrey, who was the first director of the Division of Human Rights. He was the secretary of the commission with Eleanor Roosevelt. And he tried his best to discourage me. And in so doing, he kind of intrigued my curiosity. So I applied and I got selected on a two-year stint and I was ready to go back after the two years because it was okay, but it was sort of, you know, the end of the Cold War and things were rather kind of, you know, depressing, if you like, in spite of Manhattan. And the Six-Day War broke out in Palestine in June 1967. And I was assigned responsibility for the resolution of the General Assembly, which asked for investigation. And I took on that assignment. And that coincided with a similar assignment on South Africa, South Africa, which, to cut the long story short, turned out to be what we know today as special procedures. So I was the head of special procedures during the first 10 years of their existence. And it was the formative period. Then Chile came along and, you know, the rest of the story. So before you know it, we had set in motion a set of ad hoc procedures that turned out to crystallize into the most sort of well-known system for protection in the UN humanized agenda, if you like. And that evolved, that's all described in the book. But what is interesting is that the breakthrough to ad hoc procedures was the decolonization, which was taking place mainly in Africa. You know, up to that time, there was not a single sub-Saharan African country as member of the UN. It was mainly accepted Sudan. There was Egypt and Sudan, I think, and maybe Ethiopia, I'm not sure. But anyway, so with the influx of the decolonized countries into the Commission on Human Rights, they came with their own priorities. And before you know it, they were saying fine with the drafting of the treaties after the declaration was adopted in 1948, but we can't wait. So this whole ad hoc procedure became a system and the system, as you know, still exists today. They overtook the treaties. The declaration, which was adopted in 1948, as rightly pointed out, was supposed to turn into applicable or implementative international human rights law in the shape of a convention on human rights. It turned out that it was separated into two covenants, not one, one on civil and political rights and one on economic, social and cultural rights. So the treaty, that slowed down the entire drafting process of the treaties and then their ratification. So those covenants did not come into effect until 77. When I started at the UN in 66, they had just been adopted by the General Assembly and opened for ratification. So it took from 1940, 1951 to 1966 for the Assembly to agree on those covenants. There were several reasons why the book describes them, but I can share some if you like. But the fact is that the Human Rights Program changed its profile from its original intention. It was instead of being a set of treaties protecting human rights worldwide, at least in those states were ratified, it became mainly investigatory. And before I knew it, I found myself running this sector. I mean, if you look at it, they really have developed from the special procedures, they're really the eyes and ears of the council. And there's independent experts and there's special rapporteurs and then there's working groups of five going around looking at many of these important issues and you get involved in the covenants and the thematic ones. That's true. And also they have the good fortune of not being limited in their jurisdiction to states who ratify treaties so they can go anywhere and ask anybody really. It caused us some degree of what the bureaucracy would call challenges. In fact, it's actually huge problems, but we call them challenges. But that was part of the education. And ironically, what was interesting is that in time as they gathered momentum and as you rightly pointed out, they spread. In 1986 or so, I remember it was the mandate on Bolivia with the then Envoy Hector Grosso Spial who came back to report to the commission about his work on Bolivia. And he said, look, he said, you asked me to investigate these violations and I've done it. But I think it's about time that we accompany our investigation with recommendations for remedies. And from that, the year after the commission asked for a voluntary fund to develop technical cooperation in human rights. And that was a landmark because A, it injected funds, which was severely limited because the UN human rights program relied solely on what is called the regular budget and it got something like 0.5% of something ridiculous. We had to do a lot of sort of expert navigations through the budgetary bodies to get the money to send our reporters wherever they needed to go and so on and so on. But that then gave rise to what is today the voluntary, the technical cooperation program. And sure enough, I found myself in charge of that program for a time anyway. Until then, Vienna conference came around and they took me off all this and put me in charge of the Vienna which took three years to prepare and which produced the declaration, Vienna declaration, which is the agenda of today. And then it goes on. I mean, it was a kind of series of events totally unplanned that happened to materialize and which not only me but some others as well happened to be there at that time and having acquired some degree of expertise or rather thick skin to be able to cope with this work. We saw a lot. We did see a lot of good stuff and a lot of the other as well. 93 is a great year to kind of do a leaping off because that really was the time when we have many countries talking about cultural relativism but civil society from Asia really showed up to say torture is not an Asian value. And maybe you could give some insights into that historic 1993 meeting, some of the gains. I know I think the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights was created from one paragraph, also the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. So that was a big moment in 1993 to then start out to where we are today. Protection of human rights of women as well. You know, the human rights of women were only treated in the anti-discrimination mode. There was no such thing protecting women's human rights as such. The convention that existed is only relating to discrimination between men and women. But in 1994 the Rapporteur on Violence Against Women was set up, et cetera, et cetera. Well, 93 was key. And the cultural relativism that you mentioned, it emerged over all these years from time to time. At that time it was some Asian states who brought that up. Well, this year we saw initiative by your government who, to my great surprise, considering its history and tradition, purports or purported to have another declaration on human rights or unalienable rights and so on, which of course is understandable because it does happen from time to time. But fortunately, the international community has so far survived these attempts at kind of particularizing what is by definition universal because it relates to governing people and protecting people. So, you know, that's become semantics and platitudes, which I have really no applicability, no value. But anyway, yes, Vienna, it was in the regional meeting in Bangkok, which took place in, I think, January or, yeah, January 93, where the Asian states, for the first time in their history, it's very important, met around the human rights agenda. No such meeting had ever taken place in Asia among governments on human rights. The Americas have a magnificent history. In fact, they preceded the UN and the first drafts of the declaration came from states like Cuba and Panama and so on, but actually, and Chile, because they were, anyway, told in the book. And the fact is that the governments sort of needed reassurance. We had big problems, for example, in trying to define who were the governments that could participate at the Asian regional meeting. Canada, for example, was an observer. The United States was an observer, or was it? I don't remember now. But anyway, this issue of cultural relativism came around, of course, and a compromise was reached. A compromise was reached. I remember Japan was there, but it was not a comfortable member of the Asian group, because Japan traditionally was part of the Western Europeans in terms of patterns of voting and stuff. So there you go. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot from, there is also a lot from the African meeting in Tunis in 92, and in San Jose de Costa Rica, in shortly after Bangkok. There was regional meetings where prices, especially because they brought out the importance of the NGO fora that took place at the same time as the governmental meetings. And that is the formula that the book is borrowing in order to recommend an arrangement in the future so as to re-admit or reabsorb the energy of the civil society into the work of whatever the council will look like. And there was the discussions among the NGO themselves were historic. And they are the ones who came around with a formula that eventually addressed the issue of cultural relativism. I think National Act International is the slogan for that. I think that brings up a really good point. And it gets to some of your aspects about the US, where in San Francisco in 1945, it was 42 civil society NGOs that participated, that did pressure Eleanor Roosevelt to maintain that perspective. And when she finished drafting, she returned to what is now today the United Nations Association to make sure that civil society was active across the country. And we need to be more active, as you pointed out, the US Commission on Unalienable Rights is definitely an aberration of the universal standard. And it's been criticized by civil society very strongly. But also, it's those kinds of attempts that we realize the UDHR is so important because every country can stumble, such as the United Nations did, such as the United States did under this now former administration. And the UDHR makes sure that we civil society can point to these universal standards and know that the government is a duty bearer and has an obligation to its people, we the people. So I think you could share a little bit about that aspect about civil society and the role that it's played throughout that time, building on 1993, but why it's so vital today in the Human Rights Council that new body created in 2006. Well, first of all, you have to recall that the original draft of the what became the charter of the UN did not have any provision on human rights. And in May 1946, before it went to the conference at San Francisco, the four major powers of the time proposed amendments to the draft charter to include the provisions that we know today as human rights provision, setting up of the commission and so on so forth. That was due to the pressure from civil society already. So when the in October 24, 1945, the charter came into effect. It had this built in obligation to set up human rights mechanisms. So when it came back, then it went on and then in 1993, ironically, the doubts raised by some governments on relativity relativism actually worked to strengthen the whole concept. Because coming out of that, the notion of universality became stronger than ever. And don't forget that it's human rights is not a law subject. Human rights is an anthropological subject. It is all about human behavior. No, the law only kicks in when governments agree that certain provisions are acceptable and that they would be prepared to implement them in their own jurisdictions. So the program never looked back after 1993. As you mentioned, the sectors like indigenous, like racism, like women, like disabilities became the new agenda, if you like, after the world conference. The institution of the High Commissioner is a very special case because there are some who doubt whether the High Commissioner that we got was the High Commissioner that we actually wanted or needed. And there were a lot of doubts at that time. As you know, the whole idea had a long history for over 50 years. The idea was bandied about and there was a lot of discussions about it, but it always sort of missed agreement as it were. So when in 1993, all of a sudden, there was a consensus, well, then it was showed in home, but nobody actually stopped to think whether that is really what we wanted. So much so that in 2006, when the council was established to replace the commission, the mandate given to the council did not really reconcile with the mandate given to the High Commissioner. And that is still an issue that from time to time necessitates some form of compromise, if you like. With time, High Commissioners have accumulated experience, and I think the institutions happily coexist, I suppose, with all the deficiencies of the council. And luckily, we've had a few, a number of High Commissioners who managed to steer the institution in the right direction. So, but yes, I can't agree with you more. But then of course, we had Kofi Annan after Vienna, especially in the early 2000s, with his reforms. He did two major reforms of the UN system, including the Human Rights Commission. And that strengthened the office very much. The first High Commissioner was, the resolution was in December 1993, but Ayala Lasso, the first High Commissioner, took office in February 1994, in time for the genocide in Rwanda, where in fact, within days of taking office, he was off to Kigali to see what he could do under his good office's mandate. So, it added a new momentum and a new spirit, if you like. And I think that, I mean, the idea of the book is really to provide a kind of whole, not history really, but account of everything that happened between 1946 and 2019, even though the book is untitled the commission, it actually covers the council as well until last year. But because it has to, it's the same story going right through. And the structure of the book is, it's actually quite user-friendly in spite of its intimidating size. But, and it relies on the main digital library of the UN, which is superb in New York. And there is no such work. I'm not saying this because it's mine, but I did it because it needed to fill a vacuum, because it's useless to speak about human rights unless you know what you're talking about. You know, the way, for example, it neglected or sidestepped its responsibilities in the genocide in Cambodia is a big shame really. On the other hand, the, its advice, the reporter on summary executions come back from Rwanda and says there's a genocide going on here and asked the security council to do something. The security council didn't even note the report and look what happened. So, there are gaps both inside the human rights institutions and outside. We live and learn, of course, but still, it's not good enough. We just have to keep on pushing. And that's what the book is about. The book is trying to- What are some of the ideas for initiatives to, in a way, guarantee those gaps are close and ensure that inherent dignity and human rights of all peoples when they're born? Would you share some? Well, yeah. And also, when you take into account the development and artificial intelligence and then in related fields where there's a serious threat to the human persona. You know, this talk of, instead of carrying a certificate saying that you have been vaccinated, for example, there is talk of having something put in under our skin like a bit like what we do with dogs to kind of follow what treatments we have and so on. Even our names are secondary now because it's your ID card, which is actually a number and which is based on your, what was called biometric data, says who you are. In my little island home, I have two homes, Australia and Malta, by the way. I'm a young Australian, but an old Maltese. There's a new law coming in where you can choose any name you like almost, because it doesn't really matter what name you have, except for people to say hi Joshua or not hi 2346 or something like that, you know. So, and that's dangerous because that reflects the abandonment of your life of the protection of the individual, not only physically, but in spirit. You know, the Universal Declaration is very clear about this. And that's why I keep on saying that this is not a law subject. This is an anthropological subject and governments need to get stronger. They have become, they have shrunk. They've outsourced most of the responsibilities and with them has been an erosion, a very serious erosion in the protection of human rights of individuals. When I was in Iraq, for example, I was, as you know, I headed the office there for a couple of years. I remember the United States Army in the green zone, they were protected by private security, you know, and who were, apart from anything else, who have paid huge amounts of money more than the servicemen who were serving the country. You know, there's something not right there, you know. And therefore, where does that leave us as individuals? You see, and that's where business has a lot to answer for because most of this is done for the sake of making profit. I think that really gets to probably the last challenge that we can address and that what is being done by the civil society spearheading it related to business and human rights. I know there's a forum on business and human rights. There's also a working group on business and human rights. There's even a draft potentially binding treaty. But what do you think we need to do? Because in a way, when the charter was drafted, it was state's obligations. How can we make sure we can hold business accountable and address that in our final moments of our program today? It's a big problem. It's a huge challenge. I don't think that it'll work. The global compact, which is the present regime based on self-regulation, has not worked. Business keeps on maximizing profits at any cost. And that is where the red line has to be drawn. There has to be a line above which, below which, you cannot make profit. Above which, you can make as much profit as you can. But that red line is our security and safety as individuals protected by human rights. That's the way we have to go. And that's why it's necessary to re-inject civil society into the human rights council. At the moment, it's there, but it's behind the scenes. But that's not good enough. They have to be able to place issues on the agenda of the council and to get responses from the council. That's absolutely essential. I do appreciate you looking at an assessment of the decades and current challenges to implement divisions in article of the UDHR. Is there a specific article of the 30 that you really think is absolutely essential? Or is it just that they're all interdependent and interconnected? Well, I think the most vital ones are the first one and article 29. Because the first one speaks about the individual acting in brotherhood with other individuals. And 29 says, yes, you have all these rights, but you have to remember that you have to exercise them bearing in mind the interests of society, if you like. The relativity issue. I think those are the two key ones. But there is also a very interesting one, which people often do not look at with the third preambular paragraph that says that if man is not to be compelled to have recourse as a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human race should be protected by the rule of law. Tyranny and that's rebellion. The word rebellion in the university declaration of rights, man. So it actually says a lot that at the end of the day, we need to have this, otherwise we're going to have chaos. Absolutely. And as you can see. Thank you so much, John. And I look forward to commemorating the Universal Declaration and Human Rights with you over the next couple of days. But thank you very much for appearing on Cooper Union and sharing your insights with us here in the islands, from one island to another. Mahalo and look forward to commemorating the UDHR throughout the rest of the week. Pleasure. Thank you so much, Joshua. As always, good luck and go best. Take care. Bye-bye.