Human Rights Brief
A Legal Resource for the International Human Rights CommunitySpring 1994
Schwartz Advocates for Minority Rights Before UN
Professor Herman Schwartz was a member of the U.S. delation to the United Nations World Conference on Human Rights held last June Vienna Austria. Delegations from the 180 UN members attended the conference, the first in 25 years to focus exclusively on Human Rights. The following article is excerpted from his statement on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities, delivered to the United Nations Human Rights Commission.
Mr. Chairman,
The issues before us are as old as recorded history and as fresh as this morning's news . . . Human beings seem unable to accept someone else's right to be different . . . The emergence of nationalism and pseudo-scientific racism in the last two centuries have introduced their own horrors: the murder of millions of Jews, Poles, Gypsies and others by Hitler; Iraq's continued suppression of the rights of the Kurds; ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia -- the list seems endless . . .
Efforts to protect national minorities were made when the world map was redrawn after World War I. Concern for racial, religions, national and other minorities was the subject of one of the first actions of this Commission in 1947, when the Subcommission on Minority Rights was created. And in 1992 the General Assembly adopted an ambitious Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities. . .
[Recent] revolutionary transformations raised new hopes that democracy, development, and respect for human rights, goals acknowledged at the Vienna World Conference as "interdependent and mutually reinforcing," can be achieved. In many countries, however, these goals risk being dashed by the spread of hatred and resentment among the different national ethic, religious, and linguistic minorities in those countries . . .
Our delegation's statement last week on Racism and Racial Discrimination described the racial prejudice still burdening our black minority. Americans will always bear the shame of our near extermination of Native American populations in North America . . . we are still trying to make amends for our incarceration of Americans of Japanese descent during World War II . . .
We have tried to do something about these ills. For over 125 years the Fourteenth Amendment to our Constitution and our civil rights laws have barred any kind of discrimination and we are still passing new las to try to enforce that ban. I have been fortunate to devote most of my career as a lawyer and teacher to trying to make these legal norms a reality, and in my own lifetime I have seen great gains . . .
It was a source of pride and inspiration for all Americans that Toni Morrison, Dr. Ralph Bunche and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., won Nobel Prizes. Other Americans from minority groups that in earlier years were held back by prejudice are soaring to the top in every area. We have learned that bouillabaisse is much richer and more nourishing than plain consomme. . .
Throughout the centuries war and upheavals have thrust national, ethnic, religious and other groups from states in which they were in the majority into states and under regimes where they became minorities . . . Not infrequently these former majorities have abused their power over the former minority, breeding resentment and yearning for vengeance. Many seem never to have learned what British poet W.H. Auden wrote at the outbreak of World War II:
"I and the public know
what all school children learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return. . ."
To its credit the world community has begun to take some small steps: In a variety of international instruments, it has condemned discrimination of every kind. Further, it has urged nations to take positive and affirmative action to promote ethnic, linguistic and other diversity in schools, public institutions, communications media and other settings. It has also tried to deal with expressions of private intolerance. . .
United States Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, one of our greatest jurists, taught that "the Government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher." If it condemns bigotry and prejudice, the minds and hearts of the people will surely follow . . .
During the last five years I have had the privilege of assisting in the preparation of many of the new constitutions in the former Soviet bloc. It has been gratifying to see that almost all contain bans on discrimination and a commitment to promote the rights of persons belonging to minorities. . . Majestic declarations and noble words are clearly not enough.
This Commission cannot, of course, solve a problem centuries sold. It can, however, take some meaningful steps to help.
Among the options to consider are:
It can and should encourage the newly designated United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to devote careful attention to minority issues, in close cooperation with the Human Rights Centre . . .
The High Commissioner should be encouraged to establish close working relationships with the various regional bodies, some of which, like the CSCE, are already engaged in dealing with minority issues.
[T]he High Commissioner should also be encouraged to work closely with nongovernmental organizations, which often have the necessary links and familiarity with the relevant hostile groups.
There is a natural impulse to throw up one's hands where these problems are concerned and to assume they are hopeless. Sometimes they are. But as the 1992 agreement between Austria and Italy on the situation of German speakers in the South Tyrol has shown, it is possible to resolve some of them peaceably, even those decades old and marked by violence . . .
Last year, Ms. Ferraro closed her intervention on this subject with a few words of the late President John F. Kennedy. Those words are worth repeating today.
"Let us not be blind to our differences -- but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which those differences can be solved.
"And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity."
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
WCL Hosts Conference
On April 5, 1994, the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, in conjunction with the Washington College of Law and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, hosted the Conference on Inter-American Human Rights System: Defending Human Rights 1959-1994. Marking the 35th anniversary of the founding of the Commission, the Conference convened jurist, diplomats, and human rights activist from non-governmental organizations to analyze human rights violations in this hemisphere and the institutional response to these violations. A complete review of the Conference was not possible in this issue of The Human Rights Brief due to publication deadlines.
The proper citation for this article in the Human Rights Brief Volume 1, Number 2, beginning at page 5 and 10 is: 1 No. 1 Hum. Rts. Brief 5,10 (1994).
