.
Ivan Šimonović is Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Before joining the United Nations, from 2008 he held the position of Minister of Justice of Croatia. Previously Mr. Šimonović was Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, where he served as Senior Vice-President and President of the Economic and Social Council from 2001 to 2003. He has experience and has published extensively in the fields of international relations, law, human rights, and development of national institutions. Recently Šimonović sat down with UN Correspondent Akshan de Alwis to discuss the future of human rights at the United Nations.
AD: Thank you so much for this interview
IS: My pleasure.
AD: Explain a little about Human Rights up Front (HRuF) and how it's impacting the UN's role in international peace and security.
IS: The basic idea of Human Rights up Front is that some human rights violations are an early indicator of potential forthcoming mass atrocities, and that if we could gather more systematically information, analyze it, and use appropriate channels to trigger timely action we could prevent some tragedies.
The initiative was triggered by the Sri Lanka experience and analysis of that experience indicated that there were some shortcomings in the United Nations system regarding the gathering of information, analysis, and timely ringing of the alarm bell.
So the idea of HRuF was that on behalf of the Secretary General, [the Sri Lanka experience] should be ‘never again.’ We cannot guarantee that atrocities will not happen, but never again will we be silent.
We will observe early signs, we will improve our systems of information gathering and analysis, we will improve our coordination both in the field and in the headquarters, and we will be doing all of these things pro-actively.
So when we have information—what do we do? First of all, we try to deal with the concerned member state and see whether some action taken by the member state can help to avoid negative trends. But if this is not efficient, then perhaps discussing with other international actors, regional organizations, and other member states that could have influence to explore whether they can have a positive influence in trying to avoid a frightening situation. But also, it also obliges the secretariat to bring [information] to the attention of the Security Council.
The whole idea is that we should not be saying to the Security Council what they would like to hear, but what they need to know. If some truths are sensitive or unpleasant to hear, despite of that, they should be brought to the attention of the Security Council. So this is the nucleus of [HRuF.]
AD: What is most important for the future development of HRuF?
IS: What will be I think decisive for the future, while assessing the legacy of the Secretary General as well as of the Deputy Security General and taking into account that their mandate is slowly coming to an end, is how to make a HRuF sustainable. To make sure that it is something that will continue to develop once a new team is on board. Therefore I think during the course of this year, we will be having more and more events that are HRuF related.
I can tell you, as part of HRuF, we at OHCHR will be soon launching, for the first time, an obligatory human rights online course, which every person working for the United Nations will need to take.
The whole idea is that human rights is not contained in just the OHCHR—it is a core mandate of the whole organization.
AD: OHCHR has transitioned from a small office cloistered in Geneva to affecting the entire UN organization and playing an integral role with the Security Council in New York. What has this transformation been like?
IS: I'll give an illustration. We were established as OHCHR in 1993—it was after the World Conference on Human Rights. Between 1993 and 2010 when I joined the office, we have briefed the Security Council fewer times than so far in 2015 alone. So in 17 years [we briefed the Security Council] fewer times than a single year that is still ongoing. And I do believe I will be briefing the Security Council next week!
So if we were briefing the Security Council more rarely than once a year—it wasn't even every year—now it's more often than once a month. The change has been tremendous. It is also acknowledgment of the member states of the importance of human rights to peace and security.
I'm not saying that the agenda of the Security Council should be all human rights violations, but some that are relevant for peace and security definitely have to be included.
There is a very close relation between human rights and conflict in all phases of conflict. Human rights violations are often root causes of conflict. During conflict, you have some violations of international humanitarian law or human rights law and when conflict ends it is extremely important that [these violations] don’t result in discrimination of the defeated enemy in the conflict. If there is no equality guaranteed after the conflict, if there is victor's justice and not accountability for all, no matter the side of the conflict, then we are just sowing seeds for the next conflict.
AD: Accountability is a phrase that comes up often when discussing the mandate of the OHCHR. Human right field operations embedded in country teams seem to have become an important part in this process of accountability and prevention. Explain a little about the role of field operations in the OHCHR.
IS: Yes, I think you are quite right. What is important to state is that our threshold of evidence to monitor and report is not as high as it is for submitting evidence to a court of law. Because, for us, it is important when violations are happening we cannot wait to collect sufficient evidence—we do not have sufficient resources to reach that threshold.
But our job is monitoring and identifying violations that are taking place and publicly reporting on them. So in the practice of our human rights components of peacekeeping missions or special political missions, part of their whole mandate is monitoring and reporting. We have national offices, which have the mandate of monitoring and reporting on human rights situation in each country.
And of course sometimes for member states it is unpleasant to hear some allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or human rights violations. But in the long run, it in their own benefit to hear these things, because it makes them—sometimes reluctantly—introduce measures to prevent human rights violations.
AD: The logical next development of a system of national offices is regionalization. Is regionalization on the table for OHCHR?
IS: Definitely. OHCHR will be coming this year before the 5th committee, which is in charge of making these decisions, with a proposal that we are calling the Change Initiative. It means that [there] would be some restructuring of the office to make it more operational, and some of our staff would be moving from Geneva to, as we call them, eight regional hubs.
In those regional hubs, we would be able to have—for the first time—global coverage: to cover all member states, whether we have specific national office or not. I think it's very important from the point of view of equality for member states and I think it's also very important in the sense of coming closer to our partners, to member states, and to civil society. It will facilitate, by vicinity, actions aimed at capacity building as well.
AD: A global process like this must be expensive, yet the OHCHR has infamously received only a marginal percentage of the UN’s budget. Is there anything the public can do to help, and what are the steps your office has to make to be more catalytic with limited funding?
IS: It's a famous saying, that—and it's not only a saying, it was reaffirmed by the World Conference in 2005—the UN is based on three pillars: one of those pillars is peace and security, the other one is development, and third one is human rights.
But in reality, the human rights pillar, especially in sense of financing, is thinner than the other two, because one of three pillars is getting less than 3 percent of the regular budget of the UN.
So as the OHCHR, we have to rely on extra-budgetary resources, meaning support from donors mostly - and those donors are member states. I would say that about 60 percent of our budget is coming from donors. And then there are some states that are saying "Oh, doesn't that expose you to the danger of being donor driven?" It's certainly a valid concern, however at the moment, because of a lack of regular budget resources, we need to rely on some donations. But of course it's then essential to make them very transparent, and through that reduce the possibility to a minimum that donors have some special role or influence.
Photo caption: Ivan Šimonović, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, speaks to journalists following his closed-door briefing to the Security Council on the human rights situation in Ukraine. Mr. Šimonović was in Ukraine from 14-19 May, 2014 on the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission (HRMMU). UN Photo by Paulo Figueiras.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
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The Future of Human Rights: Interview with UN Assistant Secretary Ivan Šimonović
Stakeout
Ivan ?imonovi?, ASG and head of the OHCHR New York Office
October 12, 2015
Ivan Šimonović is Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Before joining the United Nations, from 2008 he held the position of Minister of Justice of Croatia. Previously Mr. Šimonović was Deputy Minister in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, where he served as Senior Vice-President and President of the Economic and Social Council from 2001 to 2003. He has experience and has published extensively in the fields of international relations, law, human rights, and development of national institutions. Recently Šimonović sat down with UN Correspondent Akshan de Alwis to discuss the future of human rights at the United Nations.
AD: Thank you so much for this interview
IS: My pleasure.
AD: Explain a little about Human Rights up Front (HRuF) and how it's impacting the UN's role in international peace and security.
IS: The basic idea of Human Rights up Front is that some human rights violations are an early indicator of potential forthcoming mass atrocities, and that if we could gather more systematically information, analyze it, and use appropriate channels to trigger timely action we could prevent some tragedies.
The initiative was triggered by the Sri Lanka experience and analysis of that experience indicated that there were some shortcomings in the United Nations system regarding the gathering of information, analysis, and timely ringing of the alarm bell.
So the idea of HRuF was that on behalf of the Secretary General, [the Sri Lanka experience] should be ‘never again.’ We cannot guarantee that atrocities will not happen, but never again will we be silent.
We will observe early signs, we will improve our systems of information gathering and analysis, we will improve our coordination both in the field and in the headquarters, and we will be doing all of these things pro-actively.
So when we have information—what do we do? First of all, we try to deal with the concerned member state and see whether some action taken by the member state can help to avoid negative trends. But if this is not efficient, then perhaps discussing with other international actors, regional organizations, and other member states that could have influence to explore whether they can have a positive influence in trying to avoid a frightening situation. But also, it also obliges the secretariat to bring [information] to the attention of the Security Council.
The whole idea is that we should not be saying to the Security Council what they would like to hear, but what they need to know. If some truths are sensitive or unpleasant to hear, despite of that, they should be brought to the attention of the Security Council. So this is the nucleus of [HRuF.]
AD: What is most important for the future development of HRuF?
IS: What will be I think decisive for the future, while assessing the legacy of the Secretary General as well as of the Deputy Security General and taking into account that their mandate is slowly coming to an end, is how to make a HRuF sustainable. To make sure that it is something that will continue to develop once a new team is on board. Therefore I think during the course of this year, we will be having more and more events that are HRuF related.
I can tell you, as part of HRuF, we at OHCHR will be soon launching, for the first time, an obligatory human rights online course, which every person working for the United Nations will need to take.
The whole idea is that human rights is not contained in just the OHCHR—it is a core mandate of the whole organization.
AD: OHCHR has transitioned from a small office cloistered in Geneva to affecting the entire UN organization and playing an integral role with the Security Council in New York. What has this transformation been like?
IS: I'll give an illustration. We were established as OHCHR in 1993—it was after the World Conference on Human Rights. Between 1993 and 2010 when I joined the office, we have briefed the Security Council fewer times than so far in 2015 alone. So in 17 years [we briefed the Security Council] fewer times than a single year that is still ongoing. And I do believe I will be briefing the Security Council next week!
So if we were briefing the Security Council more rarely than once a year—it wasn't even every year—now it's more often than once a month. The change has been tremendous. It is also acknowledgment of the member states of the importance of human rights to peace and security.
I'm not saying that the agenda of the Security Council should be all human rights violations, but some that are relevant for peace and security definitely have to be included.
There is a very close relation between human rights and conflict in all phases of conflict. Human rights violations are often root causes of conflict. During conflict, you have some violations of international humanitarian law or human rights law and when conflict ends it is extremely important that [these violations] don’t result in discrimination of the defeated enemy in the conflict. If there is no equality guaranteed after the conflict, if there is victor's justice and not accountability for all, no matter the side of the conflict, then we are just sowing seeds for the next conflict.
AD: Accountability is a phrase that comes up often when discussing the mandate of the OHCHR. Human right field operations embedded in country teams seem to have become an important part in this process of accountability and prevention. Explain a little about the role of field operations in the OHCHR.
IS: Yes, I think you are quite right. What is important to state is that our threshold of evidence to monitor and report is not as high as it is for submitting evidence to a court of law. Because, for us, it is important when violations are happening we cannot wait to collect sufficient evidence—we do not have sufficient resources to reach that threshold.
But our job is monitoring and identifying violations that are taking place and publicly reporting on them. So in the practice of our human rights components of peacekeeping missions or special political missions, part of their whole mandate is monitoring and reporting. We have national offices, which have the mandate of monitoring and reporting on human rights situation in each country.
And of course sometimes for member states it is unpleasant to hear some allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity, or human rights violations. But in the long run, it in their own benefit to hear these things, because it makes them—sometimes reluctantly—introduce measures to prevent human rights violations.
AD: The logical next development of a system of national offices is regionalization. Is regionalization on the table for OHCHR?
IS: Definitely. OHCHR will be coming this year before the 5th committee, which is in charge of making these decisions, with a proposal that we are calling the Change Initiative. It means that [there] would be some restructuring of the office to make it more operational, and some of our staff would be moving from Geneva to, as we call them, eight regional hubs.
In those regional hubs, we would be able to have—for the first time—global coverage: to cover all member states, whether we have specific national office or not. I think it's very important from the point of view of equality for member states and I think it's also very important in the sense of coming closer to our partners, to member states, and to civil society. It will facilitate, by vicinity, actions aimed at capacity building as well.
AD: A global process like this must be expensive, yet the OHCHR has infamously received only a marginal percentage of the UN’s budget. Is there anything the public can do to help, and what are the steps your office has to make to be more catalytic with limited funding?
IS: It's a famous saying, that—and it's not only a saying, it was reaffirmed by the World Conference in 2005—the UN is based on three pillars: one of those pillars is peace and security, the other one is development, and third one is human rights.
But in reality, the human rights pillar, especially in sense of financing, is thinner than the other two, because one of three pillars is getting less than 3 percent of the regular budget of the UN.
So as the OHCHR, we have to rely on extra-budgetary resources, meaning support from donors mostly - and those donors are member states. I would say that about 60 percent of our budget is coming from donors. And then there are some states that are saying "Oh, doesn't that expose you to the danger of being donor driven?" It's certainly a valid concern, however at the moment, because of a lack of regular budget resources, we need to rely on some donations. But of course it's then essential to make them very transparent, and through that reduce the possibility to a minimum that donors have some special role or influence.
Photo caption: Ivan Šimonović, Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights, speaks to journalists following his closed-door briefing to the Security Council on the human rights situation in Ukraine. Mr. Šimonović was in Ukraine from 14-19 May, 2014 on the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission (HRMMU). UN Photo by Paulo Figueiras.
The views presented in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of any other organization.
