Defending Human Rights: Louise Arbour

Some of us remember the spring and summer of 2003 as a moment of brief optimism. While the US led invasion of Iraq had taken place without UN support (Kofi Annan later said he judged it to be illegal), the swift fall of Saddam Hussein, and the rapid deployment of UN aid agencies to the country led many to hope that peace and stability might, after all, be achieved.

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This content was published on Aug 8, 2023 Aug 8, 2023 On Inside Geneva this week: part three of our series marking the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

That all changed on August 19th 2003, when suicide bombers attacked the UN headquarters in the Canal Hotel in Baghdad. Sergio Viera de Mello was killed, along with 21 others, most of them UN workers. 20 years on, that attack remains a pivotal moment for the UN's humanitarian work, and the UN in Geneva will be marking it, as ever, with a special ceremony to remember humanitarian workers worldwide who, often at great personal risk, devote themselves to helping others.

So great were the shockwaves following the Canal Hotel bombing, that when Kofi Annan called Louise Arbour to ask her to“replace Sergio” her first reaction was“what, you want me to go to Baghdad”? Amid the focus on what was happening in Iraq, she had forgotten that de Mello was human rights commissioner.

Her initial reaction, when she realised what job she was being offered, was hesitancy. Arbour had just begun serving as a judge on Canada's supreme court -- not a position people normally leave after a few months.

But, she remembers, Kofi Annan was“very persuasive”, and after some time reflecting on her decision, she accepted, knowing, she tells Inside Geneva, that the secretary general“would have my back.”

Some UN human rights commissioners come to the post with a more political background. Mary Robinson had been president of Ireland. Others, like Jose Ayala Lasso, were diplomats and UN insiders.

Louise Arbour is first, last, and everything in between, a lawyer. Before taking up her UN post she had served on the international tribunal for former Yugoslavia, and the international tribunal for Rwanda.

“The work I did both with the tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda were, if anything, a vindication for me of the significance of law” she remembers.“Of the rule of law, as an organising principle in modern society”.

She is perhaps best known for indicting Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes, and although she had left the tribunal by the time he was arrested and brought to the Hague, she never lost faith that the law would prevail.

“If I did not firmly believe that one day he would stand trial in the Hague, I wouldn't waste my time doing this really hard job. I'd move on and do something that's more anchored in reality ... the law is very patient.”

Taking on the job of human rights commissioner posed different challenges. She admits wryly that as a lawyer and then a judge she was used to“issuing orders that were complied with.”

But the human rights commissioner has no prosecutorial powers. Instead, he or she must uphold international human rights law by simply reminding governments of their obligations, and keeping a spotlight on violations.

And, when Arbour took office, the very countries which had, since 1945, set themselves up as world leaders, seemed to be rowing back on their human rights commitments.

The United States set up Guantanamo Bay. The“war on terror”, some US leaders suggested, meant that fundamental principles, such as the Geneva Convention or the absolute prohibition on torture, were no longer really relevant.

“These were very challenging times,” says Arbour.“2004, you know, this was in the backyard of 9/11. A new, dangerous, unknown world was starting to unfold with a lot of uncertainties, including on the human rights front.”

At the same time Arbour faced a UN structure that, she felt, was bureaucratic and unwieldy.“We were too absent from the field,” she remembers.“The office of the high commissioner was anchored in Geneva, and it was very difficult on both sides: to convince staff members to deploy to the field, and to get the UN system to accept us.”

Today, UN human rights has monitoring missions in many parts of the world, among them Ukraine and Afghanistan. This is, for Arbour, a source of some satisfaction.“Field work, it's very challenging for the member states, you know, you're never welcome anywhere but ... it's where it's happening”.

So how does Arbour think we should mark the 75th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights? By returning, she believes, to the fundamental principles, and sticking to them. Laws, believes this lawyer, are there to be upheld and obeyed.

“The blueprint is more than worth defending,” she says.“If you came from another planet and you just looked at the human rights framework; the universal declaration of human rights, all the treaties, the conventions, the work of the treaty bodies, you'd think you'd arrived in heaven. So why is it not the case?”

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