Outrage must be acted on to effect change
IT IS rare to encounter evil face-to-face, but when you do, you never forget it.
Paul Gordon Lauren has met it more than once. He saw evil in the eyes of Slobodan Milosevic during the former Serbian leader’s trial for genocide at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
During the 60s, he saw it in savage opposition to the American civil rights movement when he toiled alongside Martin Luther King.
He saw it in South Africa as the apartheid beast was meeting its doom.
Yet the lifelong human rights campaigner, scholar, intellectual, and all-round good guy, is more inclined to look for the best in others rather than the worst. This is not an attempt to “always look on the bright side of life” but a recognition of humanity’s triumphs as well as its failures.
He traces the trajectory of international human rights as an advancement in evolution, gaining moral traction from global belief systems.
“Human rights are indelibly religious. Many campaigners became active because of their religious beliefs. The people who founded organisations like the Red Cross and Amnesty International were guided by those beliefs as were those who started the anti-slavery movements in England and the United States.”
He recognises that those who resist change may feel they have good reason to. “They fear that their privileged positions will come under threat and that their social status will be affected as a result. In my own country, it took 130 years after the Bill of Rights for women to get the vote.”
With neat, ice white hair and trimmed beard, Dr Lauren looks like your fantasy professor and, in many ways, he is. Regents professor at the University of Montana, he is genial, as good a listener as a talker, and the world’s leading authority on the history of the rights of man.
Lauren combines intellectual rigor with moral crusading. He sees moral outrage as essential to galvanising individuals and groups to effect change, but it is not enough. Action must follow words that follow thoughts.
“I do not regard myself as heroic,” he says, “but I am not afraid to speak out. I have travelled behind the Iron Curtain and the Bamboo Curtain in Asia on behalf of human rights.
“I was active in the civil rights movement in the US and was nearly killed. I worked with Martin Luther King. The civil rights movement was a moral issue translated into politics. Outrage was followed by political protest and action.”
He is in Cork this week as part of a friendship programme between University College Cork and the University of Montana. His lecture to students was hosted by the school of history, the faculty of law and the department of government at UCC, which has had an institutional relationship with the University of Montana since 2004.
“We regard our partnership with UCC as the most important international relationship we have,” says Lauren, who engaged students at the university with his take on the evolution of human rights, surprising them with allegorical references to the biblical parable of the Good Samaritan.
“It is all about loving thy neighbour and putting that into practice,” he said after his address. “The question: ‘who is my neighbour?’ is central to that. If my neighbour is everyone, that supposes an obligation to help everyone.”
As a courageous man, he recognises valour in others, devoting his lecture to former Irish President, Mary Robinson, who served as UN high commissioner for human rights from 1997 to 2002.
The UN Human Rights Commission — which has since been supplanted by the Human Rights Council — has been severely castigated for its failures to live up to the vision of being a genuine protector of victims of human rights abuses and instead becoming a shield for violators.
Amnesty International accused it of double standards, declaring “membership is too often used to shield the commission members from human rights scrutiny instead of to protect and promote human rights”.
Yet, Lauren regards Mary Robinson as an heroic figure whose turbulent exposition of wrong-doings by governments and institutions bespeaks a fearless passion for human rights.
“The Irish people should be proud of how Mrs Robinson represented them and represented the victims of human rights abuses and the way in which she championed the cause of human rights across the globe in the face of staggering resistance.
“She spoke out fearlessly and endured many criticisms as a result. The problem with the commission was not the result of any mistakes she made but what member states of the UN allowed or did not allow her to do.”
Among his points of reference is John Newton, the former English slave trader who turned full circle to become the foremost abolitionist of his time. His beautifully melodic composition, ‘Amazing Grace’, inspires human rights activists to this day.
Lauren is an optimist, convinced there has been a revolution in the protection of human rights. “Throughout most of history, victims of human rights abuses had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Today many do.”
He is not blind, though, to the disparity between the codification of human rights by the UN and the lamentable failure to enforce them.
“The biggest obstacle to human rights at the moment is claims by states that they are confined by national sovereignty. That is precisely the defence used by Slobodan Milosevic during his trial.”
Prof Lauren’s many published works include Power and Prejudice, Force and Statecraft and his seminal work, The Evolution of International Human Rights: Visions Seen, which was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
The only bit of wanton destruction he engages in is fly-fishing, a passion he shares with the great and the good.
“I saw a photo recently of Britain’s late queen mother. She was fly-fishing in Scotland, dressed in big waders and casting her rod. I was full of admiration and I thought to myself: What a woman.”
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