PICTURE: Courtesy of Amnesty International Australia "We live in a dangerous world, and I believe the world is being further endangered by a narrowly focused security agenda – the key feature of which has been a sustained attack on global values, global standards and global institutions which constitute the system of human rights and international law."

11th September, 2004

In an extract from a speech given in Adelaide earlier this week, Amnesty International secretary general IRENE KHAN argues that a 'narrowly focused security agenda' is endangering rather than supporting human rights...

In September 2002 I visited Burundi, a tiny conflict-ridden country in the heart of Africa. Just a week before my visit, there had been a massacre in which some 174 villagers were killed by the army, so badly that the authorities could not tell how many were men, how many women, or children.

There were only four survivors. My colleagues and I went to the hospital to meet the survivors. We were taken to an empty room in the hospital to wait, and then after a few minutes the door slowly opened – and a little girl came in. She could not have been more than six years old – she still had her milk teeth, a beautiful child with large black eyes in a little round face. She was naked, wrapped in a blanket, with her arm in a bandage with a sling. She told me her name was Claudine. She couldn’t remember her family name, but she recalled in vivid detail how she saw her grandfather, father, stepmother, two sisters killed, and her baby brother bayoneted by soldiers. She herself was wounded but because she was so small, she had somehow managed to crawl between the legs of the soldiers and escape in the commotion without being noticed. A neighbour found her wounded, naked and unconscious in the forest, and brought her to the hospital, but neither the neighbour nor the hospital had the means to buy her any clothes. That is why Claudine, the youngest of the four survivors of a bloody massacre, was still wrapped in a blanket when we saw her.

The next morning I had an appointment with Mr. Buyoya, the President of Burundi. I raised with him the case of Claudine and asked what he would do to stop such massacres. He replied, “ Madam, you do not understand – this is an issue of national security.”

For people like Claudine, war, terror and the threat of political violence is a part of daily life. But in today’s globalised world, insecurity is not limited only to distant places like Najaf and Darfur.

On Saturday we will mark the third anniversary of 9/11. On 12th October it will be two years since the Bali bombings. Next March will be first anniversary of the Madrid bombings – and even as I speak, Beslan is stricken with grief.  From Manhattan to Madrid, Bali to Beslan, office workers, commuters, holiday-makers, schoolchildren have become the targets of a senseless violence they did not provoke and could have done nothing to prevent. Whether rich and powerful, or poor and marginalized, we are all vulnerable today as more and more ordinary people become targets of human rights abuse. 

We live in a dangerous world, and I believe the world is being further endangered by a narrowly focused security agenda – the key feature of which has been a sustained attack on global values, global standards and global institutions which constitute the system of human rights and international law.

Human rights embody common values of human decency and dignity, equality and justice. Their erosion weakens the basis of our common security.

Human rights are based on universal standards and legally binding treaties. If we ignore them, we undermine international commitment and cooperation to find global solutions to global problems.

Human rights are protected and promoted by the international community of states through the United Nations and other international institutions such as the International Criminal Court. If we sideline them, we weaken the institutional framework for collective security.

And yet, in the name of creating more security we see governments attacking human rights, flouting international law with impunity and turning their backs on multilateralism. 

We see it happening in the way in which many governments have adopted tough laws to enhance security. Many of these measures are sensible and necessary, but many others, including parts of the Australian Federal legislation have clearly over-stepped the bounds of international law and human rights. Many of the laws were rushed through in a matter of weeks, seriously undermining the ability of parliaments and civil society to scrutinise the proposals. Yet, most of them go to the heart of such fundamental principles as the right to fair trial, and the right not to be arbitrarily detained.

Some governments have used this negative trend to legitimate their own repressive policies. In some countries like Zimbabwe overly broad definitions of terrorism are being used to conflate legitimate dissent with sedition. In others like China, it is used to legitimise clamping down on minorities. In still others like Russia the long-standing conflict in the Chechen Republic is being linked to international terrorism, ignoring the domestic political dimensions of the conflict.

What we are seeing the arrogant triumph of power over legality and morality.  Nowhere is it more obvious than in the way in which the US Administration has framed and is conducting what it calls the 'war on terror'. By speaking of 'war', the US Administration is denying the applicability of human rights or civil liberties. By speaking of 'terror', it is ducking the application of international humanitarian law. And by combining the two into a 'war on terror', the Administration is trying to put its actions outside the realm of international law and domestic judicial scrutiny.

Openly flouting international law, the US has detained hundreds of people without charge or trial, has designated its own citizens as enemy combatants, refused to investigate mass killings by its allies in Afghanistan, turned a blind eye to allegations of torture and custodial deaths until the pictures appears on the front pages of the newspapers, and condemned hundreds of prisoners, including minors and the very elderly, to indefinite incarceration in Guantanamo, without charge or trial, access to family or lawyers.

This is totally inconsistent with the human rights framework which is based on the premise that there can be no lacuna in the law that leaves individuals unprotected and governments unaccountable.

And it has contributed to the climate of fear and mistrust which has dominated the world post 9/11, in particular through its discriminatory and restrictive policies on refugees and asylum seekers.  Scapegoating refugees and migrants is not new of course – as we know Tampa preceded 9/11 - but it has gained a new lease of life in the context of the War on Terror. Some parts of the media have played upon it, as have some politicians to win short-term electoral gains.
 
Australia is not alone in this of course. Today, security laws and policies in many countries, including the UK and the US deliberately target foreigners, refugees and asylum seekers, creating an environment in which racism and xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism can flourish. And so, new seeds of discord are being sown around the world.

The 'war on terror', followed by the war in Iraq, has created a deep sense of injustice and alienation by pitching one group of people against another. Increasing polarisation between communities has strengthened the hands of fundamentalists, Christian, Muslim or Hindu. The liberal space for dissent and tolerance is shrinking in many countries as hardliners take over from both ends of the spectrum. Civil society is no longer quite so civil in many countries as the voices of dissent, of minorities, of women and other social activists and human rights defenders are muzzled, sometimes violently.

There is growing cynicism about human rights. The angry reaction of the Arab League to Australia’s offer to send troops to assist international efforts in the Darfur crisis is just one reflection of the feeling in many parts of the world that the West has lost its moral high ground to advocate human rights. Today, in a far harsher way than any of us could have anticipated, the theme of 'them and us', 'you are with us or against us' is being played and re-played around the world. And the victims of that divisive philosophy are, unfortunately, ordinary men, women and children in places like Darfur. 

The 'war on terror' has reinforced the backlash against women’s human rights from Christian and Muslim fundamentalists. Take women in Afghanistan, where much was made of the Taliban’s treatment of women but the international community has miserably failed to make life more secure for women, let alone ensure protection for their rights. There is a serious risk that in Iraq we will see a backlash against women’s human rights.

Add to that poverty, discrimination and inequality. Globalisation that was supposed to bring us together – lift the boat so to speak – has led to greater polarisation. We are living in a world that is not only unsafe but also inherently unfair. Where’s the “fair go” when in an age of unprecedented economic growth a billion people are still surviving on less than US$1 a day - nearly two thirds of them in Asia and a quarter in Africa? What’s fair about a world in which 1% of the people own as much wealth as 57% of the rest? Or when laws, policies and practices discriminate against women, denying them equality with men, politically, economically and socially? Can we speak of a fair world when over half the population of Africa do not have access to life saving drugs, but five of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world earn twice the GDP of sub-Saharan Africa? True justice is both socio-economic and legal. Human rights are also about economic and social rights – but they are systematically being ignored, despite commitments of the kind we find in the Millennium Development Goals. Can we truly believe that we will make the world safer for a handful of us through military might or security measures, while the rest of the population continue to live in misery?   

Insecurity is bound up intimately with the failure to respect human rights, on the one hand, and concerted action to undermine them on the other.

So where does that leave us?

I hope with the realisation that reinforcing is the way to also reinforce security. As Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, has said: “In the long term we shall find that human rights, along with democracy and social justice, are one of the best prophylactics against terrorism.”

That is why we must not lower our standards on human rights. People have the right to be secure from violence and governments have the responsibility to ensure that security. But governments cannot respond to terror with terror. The right to security – like all so many rights - is not absolute.

Those who commit cruel, criminal and callous acts must be brought to justice – but it is essential that this be done in accordance with international standards of human rights. If we are not prepared to protect the rights of those whom we believe to be guilty, we endanger the rights of the innocent.

Again to quote Kofi Annan: “The moral vision of human rights is among our most powerful weapons against terrorism. To compromise on human rights would be to hand terrorists a victory they cannot achieve on their own.”

That is why I believe that global insecurity far from diminishing the value of human rights actually heightens the need to respect them. That is why I advocate for a paradigm shift of security which places human rights and human beings at the centre of the international agenda.

There can be no real, lasting security, without respect for human rights and the rule of law.  This is more formal language for saying that we in Amnesty International believe in a fair go for all.  That is what respecting someone’s human rights is about.  And giving people a fair go is clearly something Australians understand and support. 

A fair go for all means addressing more forcefully than has been the case so far the real sources of insecurity and injustice which confront the majority of people around the world, such as hunger, disease and discrimination, unemployment and illiteracy, state oppression and police corruption. Let’s face it, for some people HIV/AIDS is a bigger threat than terrorist bombs. For most women, the likelihood of being battered at home is a higher probability than being bombed on a bus. This is not to undermine the real threat of terrorism, but to put it into perspective so that we can build a more balanced response to global threats.

The world does not need a 'war on terror', it needs a culture of peace based on human rights and social justice. It needs a shared vision of collective security and global solidarity.

Yes, we live in an unsafe, unfair and endangered world. We could live with our fear, or we could roll up our sleeves and have a fair go at making the world not just safer but also more just for all.

This is an edited extract from Amnesty International secretary general Irene Khan’s 2004 Annual Hawke Lecture, titled 'Human Rights and Security: Security for Whom?', presented at the University of South Australia on 8th September. The full text of the speech can be found at www.amnesty.org.au.