Retiring UN chief has ‘no regrets’
SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 2018 THE UN human rights chief has defended his outspoken criticism of abuses in dozens of countries from Myanmar and Hungary to the United States, insisting that his office doesn’t “bring shame on governments, they shame themselves.”
Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein stressed at a farewell news conference at UN headquarters on Thursday that “silence does not earn you any respect – none.”
Looking back at his fouryear term as UN high commissioner for human rights, the Jordanian prince said he would give his successor the same advice his predecessor, Navi Pillay, gave him – “be fair and don’t discriminate against any country” and “just come out swinging”.
Mr Zeid said he would leave the Geneva-based post on August 31 very concerned about populism, intolerance and oppression “becoming fashionable again”.
“It all builds because once you start down the path of intolerance, it’s very difficult to stop it, unless at the end of the day you have conflict,” he said.
Mr Zeid said the question he has been asking populist leaders in Hungary, Poland and Austria – who are making political gains thanks in part to their opposition to mass migration – is, where do they want to see their countries in 2030.
If the trend is going to be “increasing authoritarianism” where countries pursue individual agendas, he said those agendas would collide “and eventually we have what we’ve already seen in the 20th century”.
Mr Zeid recalled that it took 100 million lives lost through two world wars, the Holocaust and the Spanish influenza epidemic “to drive humanity to the point where it recognised that it had to begin to do things differently”.
That led to the formation of the United Nations, where ZEID RA’AD AL-HUSSEIN countries would try to solve problems together, “not at the expense of one another”, he said.
But if the populists are allowed into “this space”, Mr Zeid said, “I think we’re in very perilous waters”.
He was critical of militant attacks, but stressed that “the world is not going to break because of these terrorist outrages. It will break because of the over-reaction or the exploitation of this agenda by governments”.
“I have no regrets that I’ve said what I said,” Mr Zeid said. “I think I’ve tried my best and I hope others will see that at certain times the UN needs to speak.”