United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva
This lecture tries to debunk the imaginary constructs that surround human rights investigations and that often help to convey a distorted image of the ways and means, as well as the expectations and outcomes that they entail. With regard of ways and means, High Commissioner Pillay will discuss how the methodology of human rights inquiries has developed over time, together with some of its fundamental elements. As for expectations and outcomes stemming from these investigations, she will illustrate some fundamental principles and their practical applications.
Interview carried out on February 15, 2010 at Palais Wilson, Geneva [16'14]
Mrs Navi Pillay was nominated as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on 28th of July 2008, at the end of an extensive selection process. From 2003 to 2008, she served as judge on the International Criminal Court. In 1999, she was elected Judge President of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, which she joined in 1995, having been elected as judge by the General Assembly; her four-year term with the Rwanda Tribunal was renewed in 1998.
Mrs Pillay was an attorney and conveyancer of the High Court of South Africa from 1967 to 1995, and was appointed acting judge of the High Court in 1995. In 1967, she became the first non-white woman to start a law practice in South Africa's Natal Province, providing legal defense for opponents of apartheid. She exposed the practice and effects of torture and solitary confinement on detainees held in police custody, and successfully established the rights of prisoners on Robben Island.
Mrs Pillay co-founded the Advice Desk for the Abused and ran a shelter for victims of domestic violence. As a member of the Women's National Coalition, she contributed to the inclusion in South Africa's Constitution of an equality clause prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of race, religion and sexual orientation. Mrs Pillay participated in the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda's groundbreaking jurisprudence on rape as genocide, and on issues of freedom of speech and hate propaganda. She is also co-founder of Equality Now, an international women's rights organization based in New York.
On 15 February 2010, Mrs Pillay gave a 16-minute interview to the Graduate Institute on several burning human rights issues, ranging from women in Afghanistan to the Universal Periodic Review of Iran, the 4th World Congress against the Death Penalty which will be held in Geneva 24 to 26 February 2010 and the Business & Human Rights mandate given to Prof John Rugge. She concludes her interview by giving advice to graduate students aiming to embark on a human rights career. See video above.
No registration required
Auditorium Jacques-Freymond, 132 rue de Lausanne, Site Barton