UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Salutes AJC's Jacob Blaustein Institute

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Feb 14, 2012, 04:03 ET

NEW YORK, Feb. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, was the keynote speaker at a major international conference marking the 40th anniversary of AJC's Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights.

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Pillay commended the key role JBI played in pressing for and ensuring the creation of the High Commissioner post by the UN General Assembly in 1993. Expansion of the human rights movement, said Pillay, "is due to the institutions and advocacy of visionaries, such as Jacob Blaustein, who believed firmly in the need for a UN human rights program."

The two-day conference, "The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Conscience for the World," explored the High Commissioner's role, the accomplishments and challenges of the current and five previous commissioners; and recommended strategies to increase the High Commissioner's effectiveness in preventing human rights violations in the future.

Michael Ignatieff, former leader of Canada's Liberal Party; Harold Koh, Legal Adviser to the U.S. Department of State; and Bertrand Ramcharan, former Acting and Deputy UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, were among the 20 speakers, including prominent human rights defenders and representatives of major international human rights organizations, addressing the conference.

The JBI conference convened at a pivotal moment for human rights protection efforts at the UN, especially with regard to Syria. Ignatieff pointed out that the High Commissioner's office's fact-finding capacity is seen as the "gold standard" on reporting about human rights violations perpetrated by the Syrian government.

But despite Pillay's characterization of Syria's conduct as constituting crimes against humanity and her call for the Security Council to refer President Assad to the International Criminal Court, Russia and China have blocked any meaningful action by the Security Council.

Immediately following her appearance at JBI's conference, the High Commissioner, addressing the UN, stressed the "extreme urgency for the international community to cut through the politics and take effective action to protect the Syrian population."

Ignatieff highlighted other challenges the High Commissioner faces. They include perennially insufficient resources for the post's wide-ranging mandate, sustaining the post's legitimacy when other arms of the UN system act inappropriately or display bias, and prioritizing human rights issues. He urged conference participants to devise strategies to respond to these challenges, recognizing that there have been conflicts between the roles of the High Commissioner as insider politician in the UN and, externally, as global spokesman for human rights.

In her address, Pillay also discussed the way her office's efforts are advanced by UN human rights mechanisms composed of independent experts. "We have a number of experts with us here today, including of course Felice Gaer [director of JBI], who was elected to the Committee Against Torture in 2000, and in that capacity, has made a profound contribution."

Michael Hirschhorn, a member of JBI's Administrative Council, introduced the conference as a fitting tribute to his grandfather, Jacob Blaustein, who first proposed creating the High Commissioner post. "It is our duty to work for a system under which the rights of every person everywhere will be respected, honored and upheld in essence and in spirit, in principle and in practice," Blaustein said in a 1963 address at Columbia University.

The conference was convened on February 7-8 in collaboration with the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College. The institute's interim director, Jonathan Fanton, spoke about the appropriateness of holding the conference.

SOURCE American Jewish Committee