Twenty years ago this month, I was privileged to attend the UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. The conference was designed to catch the wave of change generated by the end of the Cold War and surf it to the beach of a new global consensus on human rights. It was the largest ever gathering on human rights. It demonstrated the extraordinary growth in civil society organisations across the world and their collective influence, and addressed some of the major ideological and organisational challenges affecting the UN human rights system.
The romantics among us also felt that Vienna's reputation for music and the finer things of life made it the perfect place to create something inspiring and lasting.
The conference has receded into history. Opinions on its success at the time varied from euphoric to cautious. The French declared the Vienna Declaration that came out of the conference to be a 'human rights revolution' and 'a triumphant 20th century legacy to the 21st century'. NGOs said it was 'above our fears but below our hopes'.
Looking back on it now, I believe Vienna made a lasting and fundamental contribution, and represents a turning point in the defence of the international system that was set up following World War II to uphold and promote the rights of the most vulnerable. It was not perfect nor a quick fix. Human rights violations continue in many parts of the world. But by rebuffing the two principal threats that at the time were threatening the fundamentals of the system, it maintained the stability, unity and consensus that the system required to be more effective.
The first threat had its origins in the power struggle between the socialist and capitalist systems. The Cold War not only divided Berlin. It divided human rights into two politicised and hostile camps. Socialist nations championed social and economic rights over the civil and political rights prioritised by capitalist nations, and some on both sides used human rights as a proxy battleground. For example, Cuba criticised poverty in the US while the US criticised political repression in Cuba. Such point scoring made no difference to the suffering of ordinary people.
The Conference rejected this demarcation of boundaries. It declared, after hearing the views of over 170 governments, that the holistic character of human beings and human development necessitated that human rights were indivisible, complementary and interdependent. In case anyone thinks this is just empty talk, it should be noted that Foreign Affairs in Canberra said before the conference that it never discussed economic rights in its policy considerations, but now Australia's aid program mainstreams all human rights.
The second threat was articulated most forcibly in our Asia-Pacific region. It increased the challenge to the system by adding a North-South dimension to the East-West split. China and some newly affluent nations in Asia like Soeharto's Indonesia, Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore and Mahathir Mohamad's Malaysia argued that civil and political freedoms should wait until their societies reached a level of development comparable to western nations, and that Asians had a different concept of human rights.
The Vienna Declaration rejected this relativist notion of human rights and reaffirmed the classic concepts found in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It declared that cultural and other differences could not justify derogation and that human rights are universal, and are the intrinsic entitlements of all human beings regardless of geography, faith, politics, gender or race. This was a major triumph for Asian and Pacific NGOs who'd caucused in Bangkok prior to the conference and made it clear that governments espousing those views didn't speak for them.
The benefits of this reaffirmed consensus are obvious for those in our society who are vulnerable to discrimination on grounds such as gender, race and disability, not to mention new democracies like Timor-Leste and Indonesia, which have now embraced the international human rights system in total.
The conference failed to deal with north-south inequality, debt and the democratisation of development, and to get undertakings that would ensure universal ratification of key human rights instruments. Nor did it adopt measures to establish an International Criminal Court, a High Commissioner for Human Rights and more donor aid for human rights. However, these proposals were workshopped at the conference and have since been implemented.
The conference acknowledged the vital role of NGOs, and that human rights are the legitimate concern of the international community. These too represented indirect rebuffs to the revisionist states that Asia-Pacific NGOs had confronted in Bangkok.
As delegates dispersed from Vienna, I learned that Austrian TV had prepared a short video of the conference. It was dedicated to the NGOs who had fought the good fight. 'You are the conscience of the world', it said. They were right. But it's one thing to be a conscience in the relatively cordial and secure surrounds of a congress centre in Vienna and an altogether different and more difficult thing to play that role in a repressive society. The memory of Vienna will be sullied if we do not look after NGOs in those circumstances around the world.
Pat Walsh AM is a human rights advocate and author. He attended both the Vienna world conference and the Asia-Pacific preparatory conference in Bangkok.
Hands image from Shutterstock