The Sir Joseph Hotung memorial event: The future of human rights

Sir Robin Niblett KCMG

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chatham House. I’m Robin Niblett, the Director of the Institute. Fantastic to see such a great turnout, I think, combined turnout, I’m going to say. The subject is incredibly important, the future of human rights, an area of great importance and interest to Chatham House, and has been historically, as well, being one of the few policy institutes to have an International Law programme, headed by Harriet Moynihan at this time, so, that’s part of the reason. But also, I think, many of you are here because we’re also using this event as an opportunity to have a, kind of, memorial event in recognition of Joe Hotung, Sir Joseph Hotung, who was a friend, a supporter of Chatham House, for pretty much all the time that I’ve been here, which is now 15 years, and somebody who, although a hugely successful businessman, a very generous philanthropist to some of the biggest institutions here in the United Kingdom, but also in Hong Kong and other parts of the world, was somebody who was deeply interested in international affairs and, kind of, understood the connectivity between international affairs and all aspects of human interaction, and all aspects of business as well.

And he had these particular areas of interest: education, reflected in a lot of his philanthropy; human rights, which is one of the subjects we’ll be doing this evening, but also, for those who knew him, the Middle East. A big supporter of the Middle East Project and some other initiatives designed to try to support reconciliation and peace in that very, very difficult and, at some points, tragic parts of the world.

Sadly, Joe Hotung passed away in December of last year. I had – actually, I’d seen him, I think it was about a week beforehand, actually, for a catch-up conversation. Incredibly sad, his passing, as anyone’s passing is, but somebody who can look back, and did look back, and could have looked back on an incredibly successful life. And it makes me all the more pleased therefore, to be able to say a special welcome to Pat and Ellen, the son and daughter, and their spouses, who are with us today. Great that you could be with us for this event and join us in looking forward and being positive about his legacy that he’s enabled here at Chatham House, through his support of the Institute in general. But also what he’s done is support our next generation, and Chatham House puts a lot of emphasis, to the best of our ability, on making sure the conversations that we have here aren’t just between, kind of, a closed loop of experts, both our own research staff and amongst our members, but that we’re also always trying to engage new people and new young people in international affairs.

There’s a cohort I can see there, which I think has just been taking a look around Chatham House. I’m afraid I don’t know which school or university you’re from, but welcome to this event, but somebody had mentioned to me you’d been taking a look around Chatham House. We have about 20 academic partnerships, with various universities around the world, our Next Generation Programme, a panel of young Advisors; I could go on. But importantly, we also have interns, and I think two of the Joe Hotung Internship Programme Intern Alumni are with us, one in the room, I think, Philippa. Philippa Lockwood, are you here? If you are – well, I hope. Philippa Lockwood might be here, or if she’s not, she might be coming to the reception, but Philippa Lockwood, who’s with the Grantham Research Institute, is one of the interns, and Eliane de Sousa, who’s now with the UN in Kosovo, who’s joining us online. And we have quite a big audience, as we do these days, not just here in the room, but joining us online as well, so, welcome to all of you who are not in the room at this time.

And, of course, welcome to friends and those who knew Joe Hotung and Carol – where are you, Carol? Great to have you with us as well, but also to, obviously, all of our members and participants here. And as I’m going to hand over in a second to Harriet, I want to remind you all, we’ve got a reception afterwards, so, you will stay to the end of this meeting, because we won’t serve the drinks until we’ve finished, even if we go over time. So, there will be a reception afterwards, and I’m going to do something very unfair, but I can see Elizabeth Wilmshurst is here, so, Elizabeth, welcome to you, our Distinguished Fellow, the person who was running the nascent International Law programme when I arrived here, and, you know, in a way, we wouldn’t have our capacity in international law, Elizabeth, without your support and your – I’m going to say your reputation. I was going to say more things, but I don’t want to go over the top. This is an event for Joe Hotung.

So, over to you to introduce the panel. Sorry for taking up so much time, but it is a special event and I wanted to recognise it as such. So, enjoy the event, contribute, as I’ve noted here, questions, please, and involvement. We don’t just talk that way and bring it this way as well. Thank you very much.

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you, Robin, thank you [applause], and welcome, everyone, to this panel event on The Future of Human Rights, in honour of Sir Joseph Hotung. Welcome both to you, the audience here in person, and also to our online audience. I’m sorry that you won’t be able to join us for drinks. As you may know, next year is the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and since that important document was adopted in 1948, there’s been a great growth in human rights law, human rights norms, international human rights institutions and human rights NGOs. And I think it’s fair to say that human rights are fairly embedded in the international system.

At the same time, human rights, including the principle of universality, are often a source of contestation. We’ve seen challenges, in terms of accountability and enforcement. We’ve seen states co-opting human rights for their own agenda. Increasingly, with the rise of nationalism and populism, we’ve seen sovereignty-centric foreign policies, including here in the UK; very relevant in the last week or so. And human rights organisations are increasingly grappling with challenges around legitimacy, around rising inequality, and about the shrinking of civic space. So, it’s a mixed picture, and our panel today are going to be interrogating what the future of human rights will look like. What is the role of governments, of international organisations, of multinational companies, and of civil society, and how can they help to strengthen human rights and to increase accountability?

Before we get kicking off, I’ve got a few boring housekeeping points I’ll just have to go through. First of all, this event is on the record, it’s being recorded. If you’d like to tweet, the hashtag is CHEvents. After we’ve had a panel discussion, I’m going to open it up to you, the audience. If you’re online, you simply use the Q&A chat function. Please start using that any time from now, and I’ll be looking here to keep an eye on that. If you’re here in the room, you simply raise your hand, and we’ll have a roving mic that will come to you.

Without further ado, I’m going to introduce our esteemed panel tonight. First of all, we have David Griffiths, who is a Human Rights Consultant working here at Chatham House on a flagship human rights pathways project that the International Law Programme are doing, funded by the Swiss Government, so, it will be very good to hear some of David’s insights tonight. David was formerly Director of the Secretary-General’s office in Amnesty International.

Secondly, we have Professor Nazila Ghanea, from the University of Oxford, who was actually formerly my Teacher, I should say, in the Master’s of International Human Rights Law in Oxford, which I would highly recommend. Naz is also the Vice Chair of the Board of Governors of the Universal Rights Group, which is based in Geneva.

And finally, we have Bennett Freeman, who is an Associate Fellow in the International Law Programme, again here at Chatham House, and is a leading light in the world of civic space, and Bennett is also a former US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labour.

So, we’re very lucky to have, I think, many different angles to this very big question of the future of human rights here today, and I’m now going to start with our first speaker, David, so, David, over to you. It’ll be really interesting, as I say, to hear a little bit about the insights you’ve gained so far from your research into human rights pathways and the future of human rights.

David Griffiths

Thank you, Harriet, and I hope you haven’t talked that up too much. I’m still in a relatively early stage of this work, but it’s wonderful to be able to be part of this discussion, to join you and to share a few thoughts on this small area that we have under discussion. And I’m also acutely conscious of the extent of the expertise that we have in the audience, both in person and joining remotely. I see a few familiar faces, and look forward very much to the interaction later on.

It’s a timely discussion, of course, timely not only because – from the perspective of the 75th anniversary of the UDHR coming up, but also, I think, of a real, palpable sense of unease within the human rights movement, within the human rights system today, living in a world increasingly unfriendly to human rights. We see that in so many ways. We see it in the tragic situation in Ukraine, and the plight of many civilians undergoing bombardment and great tragedy upon tragedy. But we see it in a different way here too, in the UK, with this week’s announcement in the Queen’s Speech of the replacement of the Human Rights Act with something that many expect will be a lesser version of that, which will contain less strong protections of our human rights. And so, there is, I think, a sense of a world that is turning its back somewhat on human rights.

And much of this, I think, is encapsulated too in the current situation in Sri Lanka, where we see a powerful example of the legacy of a failure to deal with accountability and to provide accountability, where we see on clear display the relationship between economic rights and civil and political rights, where protests arising from deep economic deprivation have been met by a government which is totally used to its own impregnability and has issued shoot-on-sight orders against protesters. There is no better example in the world today than Sri Lanka as to how human rights come together and how important they are. And Sri Lanka is already historically a case study in the failure of the international system on human rights, the failure to deliver accountability, but we know that none of this is new. I think the question is really, looking at this discouraging context, what is the state of human rights in the world today, and what is its condition to respond and offer recourse, with all of this going on?

I want to highlight briefly three challenges that I think the human rights system has to come to terms with and confront. The first of them is the depth of polarisation that we see in the world today. The human rights system has become – has been from the start, almost, conditioned to polarisation, as if it is a natural feature of human rights. That’s a product of the way that the human rights system grew up in the Cold War, the economic and social rights agenda championed by the USSR, with the civil and political rights agenda championed by the US.

And today we see two dominant paradigms, I think, which see human rights first in terms of democracy, almost human rights as democracy, is the message that we hear from the United States, from the European Union, and from the West at large. And then a second paradigm of human rights as development, and that’s really been co-opted lately by China, with its championing of the old African concept of the right to development. But of course, there is a long-standing aspiration among Global South countries to see human rights as part – one of the tools for addressing inequality, and as a pathway to development.

Both of these, democracy and development, form a legitimate pairing with human rights, but now that the state of polarisation between these two agendas, within the human rights system, has become a tremendous roadblock. Diplomats on all sides underscore the extent of polarisation now, as the two sides are unable to engage with one another and to look beyond their respective framing, rather than looking at the substance and the relationship between these issues, as, in order to understand a situation like Sri Lanka, we must do.

The second challenge I’d like to highlight is one of relevance and resonance. On a – we see this on many levels. On a global level the UN Secretary-General’s vision, known as ‘Our Common Agenda’, effectively subordinates human rights to the SDG framework, and that is a common theme of his leadership of the UN. There’s also the Paris Principles, of course, with the urgency of climate change there is a sense perhaps that the Paris Agreement – Paris Agreement, I should have said, not the Paris Principles – the Paris Agreement and the SDGs are somehow more resonant, more in tune with the moment than human rights.

Is the fate of human rights, we must ask, to end up as – with, sort of, smears in other frameworks, as an intellectual resource for other frameworks? But we see the same problem of resonance and relevance for human rights at the national level too. That the rise of populism is often invoked in this regard, as we see political movements defining themselves in opposition to human rights norms and ideas, we see growing contestation and contextualisation of human rights. And of course, you know, we can look at the UK Bill of Rights in that perspective as well. The same arguments apply here perhaps, as were made by the United States against the Bangkok Declaration before the Vienna World Conference on Human Rights in 1993. Warren Christopher, then the Secretary of State, described cultural relativism as the last refuge of repression.

And so, there is a need for a re-centring of human rights, a reclaiming of the importance, the relevance and the resonance of human rights norms and human rights discourse, and I think that that’s really about saying that the business case for human rights and its relevance to our lives has to be made afresh in every society, in every generation.

And the third challenge I wanted to raise, and I hope this is something we can get into in the discussion later on, is the need for the human rights system to develop a really holistic, potent agenda that speaks to the times. So often in human rights, as it is an ever-expanding compliance-based system, we hear about the lack of vision. Where is it going, and how is human rights really going to take on the big challenges of our time?

But I think the future of human rights really depends, to some extent, on its boldness and its ability to confront some of the big existential challenges of our time. And so, I would like to see the human rights movement really coalescing around an agenda that focusses upon inequality, upon the climate, upon the challenges of – the profound challenges of big tech and the exponential changes in technology, and all of that really underpinned by a commitment to strengthen civic engagement in the world. That, I think, is the level of ambition that’s needed from the human rights system and I think if, and only if, the human rights system is able to deal with, in some way, those three challenges, will it be able to thrive in the future. Thank you.

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you, David. I think you’ve certainly raised some really big, existential questions for us tonight, so, I’m glad we came out of the rain to those, and it’s a very, very big topic, but I think you’ve really set the scene, and called out some of the challenges and some useful thoughts on the future. Naz, getting maybe a little bit more granular, I know you have a lot of experience in the international human rights mechanisms, including at the UN, and it would be useful to hear from you a little bit about, well, how effective you think they are, in particular in trying to push for, sort of, stronger human rights standards and accountability right at the moment.

Dr Nazila Ghanea

Thank you, Harriet, and it’s an honour to be on this panel. May I first add my condolences and honour Sir Joseph, where we remember him regularly in the Bonavero Human Rights Institute, also because of his benefaction and generosity there.

The future of human rights in five minutes. I decided to narrow my lens or frame my thinking primarily about, how do these universal standards and these legal obligations find their place at the domestic level? Around eight years ago, just after the Arab Spring, I was part of a research team where we were looking at the domestic effects of international human rights treaty ratification in the countries of the Gulf Co-operation Council, so, the six countries in the Arabian Peninsula. And so, what we were interested in is, we had noted that the number of human rights treaties that were ratified by this, these six states had gone up quite substantially in the late 90s, early 2000s. So, what were the effects of that domestically, were there effects of that domestically? And that becomes – you know, there’s a literature and, you know, data-driven research, etc., around that. So, really what happens when countries ratify these obligations, and do people have access to those rights?

So, this has – this ambition of course, plays out in many different ways. Of course, the international human rights mechanisms are also hopeful that when a state ratifies a UN human rights treaty, or when it comes to report to the United Nations, whether, for example, through universal periodic review, or regarding a specific treaty, for example, child rights, the hope is there, and sometimes a slightly naïve hope, that this will trickle down and this will impact the domestic level.

But there’s a lot of conditions attached to that, and a lot of assumptions that may playout in, you know, the next speaker’s contribution as well, and that is, is there an open media in that domestic space? Are there independent and active human rights NGOs in that space? Are the – is the population aware of when that country is reporting in Geneva on its human rights obligations? Is it reporting to its human rights obligations in a timely fashion? Are people knowledgeable about their rights and, you know, do they seek to pursue them? And these don’t always exist, or sometimes they become more blunt.

So, in 2006, we had a change in the key intergovernmental organisation that supervises and is concerned about human rights, and we had – there was a lot of ambition in that time of change. We had a change from the Commission on Human Rights to the UN Human Rights Council. Now, some things – you know, did things change in that – since 16 years ago? Well, some things changed. So, for example the Human Rights Council, it was decided that it should be a leaner body, so, now it has 47 member states, not 53. Okay, that was a marginal change. It was decided that this new intergovernmental body could meet throughout the year, and not only once a year.

Now, we have to – in the blurb of the event, it talks about the 1990s as a golden age, but it was only a golden age for human rights because there were major disasters, including of course the Rwandan genocide, but it was subsequent to – I mean, why is it that it’s only after major disasters that we seek to reinforce the human rights mech – the international mechanisms, including in the field of human rights? But, be as – be that as it may, there was a reinforcement of the number of mechanisms, and the resolve to do better.

Now, the Commission on Human Rights could not meet after the Rwandan genocide for about nine months. So, you know, when it expressed its concern, it was already nine months after the genocide. So, it’s good that the Human Rights Council can meet more often, that it can call special panels, and so, it can be more timely in taking notes of human rights disasters and crises. But that, of course, gives options as well.

Stakeholders have somewhat of a better access to the UN Human Rights Council, so – and there’s a new mechanism that was introduced, whereby every member state of the United Nations now has to report periodically to the Human Rights Council. There were member states of the UN that had never been under consideration by the Commission on Human Rights. So, already some 60 years of human rights reporting, and some countries have never come up for consideration. Either there wasn’t enough information about them, or, you know, in a world of, you know, human rights crises, they had never risen up high enough for that urgent attention.

So, now every country has to report every four-and-a-half years, and so, that’s – these are good developments, but much of the hope that had been invested, that now we would have an intergovernmental body that was concerned about human rights, that would not be polarised, that would put the focus on UN human rights standards rather than other state interests, well, some of those have not delivered, which moves me on rapidly to two alternative ways forward.

So, what we want to see is that there is – the universal standards and obligations remain as they are, but that they have a stronger domestic footing, and that that accountability can be mirrored to the same standard, not to an alternative cultural interpretation or context-specific dilution. But to the same – those same obligations are mirrored and accountability can be somehow developed at other focal points, closer to home, right? And I’ve – I’m not discussing regional standards here; they also have a role here, but let’s just think about the international obligations, and I want to suggest two very different models that we might explore.

One is the Subcommission on the Prevention of Torture, and what the Subcommission on the Prevention of Torture does is that it says that a state has an obligation to prevent torture, so, I already want to welcome that, because it’s not only responding to violations, it’s an effort to prevent violations. Of course, we’re talking about quite an abhorrent human rights violation, which is that of torture, but I don’t see why we shouldn’t consider that more broadly, that prevention is our priority.

So, what does the SPT – I’m going to call it – do? It says that, well, in order to prevent torture effectively, we need international experts to be able to have ready access to all places of detention, and that they can come at any time, they don’t need prior permission, unless, I don’t know, there’s a riot at this prison, in which case, you know, there has to be a truly exceptional situation, or a civil war, but there has to be a truly exceptional reason why these experts can’t have access to be able to come and inspect that – all places of detention around the world. That’s all – that’s positive, so, we’ve got prevention, we’ve got access. And then we have national focal points in each country, that is continuously inspecting places of detention, and has a connection with the SPT as well. So, we have three different ways: a focus on prevention, a national focal point that has the same body of expertise, building up and ensuring accountability, and then we have international counterparts that also have access.

So, I want to suggest that these are some of the learnings from the SPT we should be seeking to mirror in other arenas of human rights as well. Not saying it will be easy, or that states will welcome it with open arms, but that I think that’s – gives us something of where we should be headed for the future of human rights.

Very differently, on a very different model, I want to refer to Faith for Rights. Now, in – there were many challenges in the UN in the 90s, and – in the 90s and 2000s, and one of them was that some of the polarisation was really playing out regarding incitement, defamation of religions, and it was essentially around religion and human rights. And states were trying to silence blasphemy or freedom of expression and for the cause of preventing offence in – of religion or belief.

Now, of course, freedom of religion or belief is one of the many international obligations that states have, and it is key and important, just as other human rights, but this was really an effort to diminish other rights in the name of religion, in vague terms that could not be compliant with other human rights standards, such as fair trial and freedom of expression and opinion, minority rights, due process, etc. So, one effort that has grown up over the past five years is the Faith for Rights Initiative, that is moving that discussion to a different level, and is saying that faith-based actors and civil society actors themselves should mobilise through peer-to-peer learning and a growing body of activists, to leverage religious values as a way of advancing human rights standards.

And in the interests of time, maybe I’ll leave you slightly curious about how that can be done, but there’s a Declaration, there’s a very elaborate peer-to-peer learning toolkit, and it really seeks to spread the expertise and the mobilisation for human rights. So, it’s turned seeking to use religion to diminish other rights, to using religion as an opportunity for advancing all human rights. And I want to say that these ways of trying to get accountability and activism at multiple levels is really central. So, even where we have a distancing of a state from the international community and the Human Rights Council, Russia being a case in point, there would still be those focal points and those – that expertise would still carry on actively within that domestic sphere. Thank you.

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you, Naz, and it’s good to hear some concrete examples, I think, both of how the international framework can trickle down domestically, but also how the human rights movements need to be quite innovative to make sure it reach – reaches different constituencies. So, thank you for those, and we’ll look forward to hearing more in due course.

I’d now like to turn to Bennett, who, as I mentioned, is a leading light in the civic space, but you may not know exactly how civic space fits into this. One of the issues that we’ve come across in this human rights research is the issue of language, and what really resonates with different people, whether human rights has baggage, and what do we mean by civic space? And so, Bennett, it would be really useful if you could put into context why civic space matters in this debate.

Bennett Freeman

Thank you, and thank you, Harriet, I appreciate that, and a pleasure to be on the panel with you and David and Naz. I just have to just say at the outset that I was thunderstruck that David quoted former US Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, who was eclipsed in reputation and fame by his immediate successor, the late, great Madeleine Albright, but the line, “Cultural relativism is the last refuge of repression,” I recall that line. I was his Chief Speech-writer and was with him [laughter], and was with him at the Vienna Human Rights Conference, and I can’t remember, for the life of me, who drafted the line, but if it’s his, and it’s a wonder…

Harriet Moynihan

It was awesome.

Bennett Freeman

…I – one of us, but it’s a wonderful line, and it’s tragically a prescient line. It was prophetic and prescient. This is a grim time to convene a discussion about the future of human rights, given the horrible, tragic present that we’re living in. The bombing of the school in Ukraine a couple of days ago, the massacre of unarmed civilians in Bucha just a few weeks ago, the further suppression of girls and women in Afghanistan announced by the Taliban over the weekend, the deepening, systematic repression of the Uighur people in Western Xinjiang province of China, just one terrible, all-too-tangible example after another, just in recent days and weeks, against the broader historical backdrop that all three of you have alluded to, of democracies becoming increasingly illiberal, authoritarian governments acting with ever greater impunity, partly because some of our greatest democracies have diluted their commitments, if not abdicated their responsibilities. Not least, in the previous four years, my own government, which, I think, has a lot to – not the current administration, but the former one, a lot to answer for, for abdicating leadership in the international community, not least on human rights. And then human rights defenders of all stripes, indigenous community defenders, land and environmental defenders, Human Rights Lawyers, Journalists intimidated, harassed, attacked, killed around the world, in ever growing numbers. A grim situation, indeed, in almost every direction we turn. I just saw come across the news a few hours ago that the Catholic Cardinal of Hong Kong is now among – the latest usual suspect rounded up, as we’ve seen Hong Kong democracy strangled.

But to answer Harriet’s question and to try to strike a less grim and more hopeful note, and I think there’s some reason to do so, there is a greater understanding now, I think, of the absolutely fundamental underpinning of not just human rights, but also democracy, of civic space, of civic engagement. And Harriet was right to start her introduction by referring, now, 74 years back to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and one of the most famous phrases from the Universal Declaration, that, if any of us know any one or two phrases, it was calling on “all organs of society to res – exercise rights, to exercise responsibilities, to protect others’ rights”. And what really has been a marvel to witness in recent years is that even amidst, especially amidst this pounding of civil society, this suppression of human rights defenders, the strangling of democracies, and autocracies hardening, just in recent years, that we see more concerted, more courageous efforts than ever of people fighting for their rights, fighting for civic freedoms.

When we talk about civic freedoms and civic space, we’re talking about the rule of law, but not just the rule of law as defined by a particular state or government or regime. We’re talking about the rule of law underpinned by the basic civic freedoms of freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of association. And here we see courageous defenders, we see small and large and known and unknown NGOs alike around the world, Global South and North alike, fighting for these basic civic freedoms, without which human rights or democracy can flourish.

David was dead-on, in my view, of warning about the – of the conflation of democracy and human rights, and this is a tension that I’ve worried and struggled with over the years, both in and out of the US Government, and I worry sometimes that our democracy-forward agenda now doesn’t put sufficient weight on the human rights side of the equation. Democracy is necessary, but it’s not sufficient to protect human rights. Civic freedom, civic engagement is absolutely indispensable, so, we are seeing some encouraging wins, even victories, or at least progress.

In just the United States, I’m sure many of you are aware that in recent months, even recent weeks, there’s a – I wouldn’t call it a resurgence, because it’s coming from such a low level, but a modest surge of work of organising trade unions, which have been – struggled legally and politically in the United States for the last several decades; efforts now at Amazon and Starbucks. But workers struggling for rights around the world. I think of the garment workers in Cambodia. I think of a major victory achieved just a couple of months ago, of the end of massive, state-imposed forced labour in Uzbekistan, going back decades to the early Stalinist forced collectivisation period.

So, we do have some grounds for hope, some embers here of the glow in the dark, that I think can give us some hope. I would also just mention, and we could talk about this more, if Harriet takes us in this direction, about the increasingly important role of business. And we’ve all noticed the extraordinary outpouring of the commitments of actions by Western business, so, we have to be precise here, exiting Russia in the wake of the invasion, and no doubt, for a mix of motivations. Many tied to the sanctions regimes coming from the US, the UK, and the EU, various national home-country governments of these multinational corporations, some for pure reputational issues, some would say, for PR reasons, public relations.

But I would say there’s been some degree of ethical consideration as well. I don’t want to exaggerate or overemphasise it, but I do think that we’re now moving irreversibly – have moved irreversibly in a new era, where all organs of society are – have roles and responsibilities to play. States have been largely failing, through the international community on their own, not entirely, but largely, in recent years, but civil society is struggling, and is winning some of these fights, but is hanging in there in country after country. And business is beginning to step up, not just, in terms of diminishing risk to human rights through their operations and their supply chains, but actually stepping up as advocates.

Some of you may have noticed that there was a historic, unprecedented intervention of corporate America and Wall Street in the US Presidential Election, to support peaceful transfer of power. How horrifying to think that it was even necessary, and yet encouraging that in that dark moment for American democracy, that the business community stood up. So, all organs of society have their responsibilities, and if I could think of any reason to be hopeful now in this dark hour for human rights around the world, it’s to look at all organs of society, trying to play mutually reinforcing, complementary roles, never perfectly orderly, who will never be fully successful, but different actors playing their part. And I think the future of human rights is going to depend on the different actors working across sectors, across geographies, South and North, public and private, to try to support human rights and support the fundamental civil – civic freedoms upon which human rights depend.

Harriet Moynihan

Agree with that, and I think what’s coming through, what I’m hearing from all of you, is that human rights is a tapestry with lots of different threads. It’s not just a top-down, governments, international organisations affair. We’ve also got very important leaders, through business, through civil society, and from the bottom up, but they also need to work together, they can’t be acting in their silos.

Now, I have many questions, but, as Robin said, this is an event also for you to ask questions, and for you to engage. So I’m going to turn now to our audience, both our in-person audience and our online audience, and just a reminder to our online audience, do use the Q&A chat function. I will be keeping a close eye on that and trying to bring in you as well.

We’re going to start with a question in the room; the gentleman over here, thank you. If you could state your name and affiliation, that would be great.

Ronan Tynan

Ronan Tynan, I’m a filmmaker. I’ve just completed a documentary called ‘Bringing Assad to Justice’, about accountability in Syria, a documentary, if you like, about horror, unimaginable horror, but at the same time, remarkable hope. How, when Syrians were vetoed from having their country referred to the International Criminal Court by Russia, they resorted, if you like, back to the ground and helped sought to exploit universal jurisdiction in Europe.

But I must ask the panel this question, because it – we’ve had screenings now in a number of countries, from Washington DC to Istanbul, Copenhagen, and it’s remarkable, since the invasion of Ukraine, that the discussion on this documentary, all about Syria, all about the crimes that are now in their 12th year, people were compelled to talk about Ukraine, because you see it in the documentary, and then you go home and you see the same crimes on television.

It’s a classic example how we have not addressed impunity, and with great respect to a distinguished panel, I was surprised that none of you, which I will say, I, with all my experience, I consider the most crucial issue today, ending impunity. And I would really ask the panel about that, for real ideas, because surely the biggest test of the human rights system is how we respond to mass atrocity crimes, and we certainly are still not doing that in Syria, in the 12th year.

Torture prisons and massacres are still instruments of governance, and Russian Commanders who committed crimes in Syria are now committing them in Ukraine. You could nearly see it as one crime scene, so, I really would welcome some comment about impunity. Thank you very much.

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you so much, and I think we’ll take a couple of others, bearing in mind the time as well. I think the gentleman on the front row here would be good. Thank you.

Arthur Corvin Powells

Hello, everybody, thank you very much. My name is Arthur Corvin Powells. I’m an entrepreneur, but currently busy with the war in Ukraine. I’m a Founder of Project Ukraine, so we’re trying to, you know, think of the reconstruction, and really concerned with the private sector and post-war corruption. But today I’m here to ask you this. You know, with any large structure, with time, as it grows, it becomes a little stagnant, not as dynamic. You can see it in business all the time, and, you know, with, for example, the UN itself, we have two members of the Security Council, one torturing Uighurs, as you said, the other at war with Ukraine. It’s not quite working out, perhaps. Is there a way to imbue these structures with more dynamism? You know, they have to change, just like start-ups have to overtake larger companies. We don’t want to shop at Sears any more, we shop at Amazon, and yet we shop at the UN all the time, and here we are. Thank you very much.

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you. I think we’ll take one more question, and I think I’m going to go right over there to the gentleman who’s waving his hand at the moment. I will come to our online audience, but we’re going to start with three from the live audience. Thank you.

Chris Doyle

Thank you. Chris Doyle from the Council for Arab-British Understanding. I had the great privilege of knowing Joe for a number of years, and I remember, you know, when I first met him and he offered support for our programme dealing with Israel-Palestine and doing some due diligence, and I asked Chris Patten what he made of him as former Governor of Hong Kong, and he said, “Joe was always on the side of angels,” which was about as good as – an affidavit as you could get.

But I wanted to ask the panel, and you particularly mentioned the issue of Ukraine, is there not a danger at the moment that with Ukraine, that in the developing world there really is a perception now, which is hardening, that this is a European war, a Western war where international law and human rights have mattered? We’ve seen calls for accountability, but this isn’t happening in the conflicts in other areas of the world, where perhaps it doesn’t suit Western interests. Do we not have to address that?

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you, three wide-ranging questions. Ben, I think I might come to you, I heard you nodding and, I think, we might start with you. Can I ask all of you to be pretty brief in your responses, ‘cause I’ve got a lot of interesting questions coming in online as well, I’d love to get to those. But, Bennett, any immediate thoughts on whichever of those…?

Bennett Freeman

I think all three incredibly trenchant questions, so, just on impunity, impunity is indeed the issue, and, you know, I think we all, kind of, danced around it, without hitting it on the head explicitly. So, thank you for hitting it on the head, and, you know, it became clear, in recent years, that with the – some of the great democracies turning illiberal, abdicating responsibilities for human rights and civic freedoms at home and abroad, but especially through the UN system, that impunity went unanswered. And we saw this, for example, and I’ll just say it, ‘cause it involves the government of my country, in how the previous US administration coddled Saudi Arabia in the wake of the murder of the Journalist, Jamal Khashoggi. I mean, that’s one of many, many examples, but a horrific one.

You refer to Syria; there’s no accountability for the horrifying impunity there. Ukraine will be the test, but we have to do more than just Ukraine. We have to have a functioning international system of rights and justice, that you’ll, no doubt, Naz, will talk more about, that will answer the impunity.

One of the glimmers, though, that was positive, at least, in the international system, just in recent weeks, was the fact that the UN Human Rights Council at least had the modest wit and guts to dismiss Russia from it, at least we got that far. I could discuss some of the issues. I think I’ll leave it to the other panellists, but that, the impunity question, you know, actually, David, you might want to talk – you know, we were talking before the panel about this North-South divide, and we were both marvelling at that brief, eloquent speech that, you’re more familiar with the language than I am, of the Kenyan Ambassador to the UN, that’s a bit of a riposte to the notion that this is a South-North fight.

Harriet Moynihan

Indeed. Naz, can I come to you?

Dr Nazila Ghanea

Yes, I totally agree with you that we were addressing it, but in different terms, and I’m grateful that you articulated in that way, so, you know, “prevention, accountability” are all related. But let me move onto, you know – we ignored Syria and now we have Ukraine, why did we mobilise more? I think it’s a very good question. If, David, you’re responding to it, that would be great, but what I really want to see is, now that we’ve acted on Ukraine, we have a benchmark that we hold the international community to regarding the future, regardless of where it is in the world. So, that might be skirting around the disappointment that we mobilise more in relation to some crises than others, that we criticised the Human Rights Commission and we set up a whole new body called the Human Rights Council to get rid of finger-pointing and dealing with things in unequal ways, yet we repeat it through these new mechanisms. But now we have the benchmark, we need to hold the international community to that, and I was interested that actually all of us, talking about primarily a legal system that primarily refers to the state, all of us were putting our hope in non-state actors.

Harriet Moynihan

Yes, indeed. Now, David, you’ve been referenced by Bennett, you don’t have to pick up on the speech. We’d definitely like to hear your views on any of the three questions put.

David Griffiths

Thank you, yes, important questions, and just a couple of points. I mean, accountability, of course, is at the heart of what human rights is about, and it’s the most difficult thing to deliver, and the system has not found a formula for delivering it in its decades. So far, the experience of the ICC, I think, is a salutary one, and African states are understandably very fed up at the way that the ICC has operated thus far. And of course, it is a court that continues to exist without the support of the – or the participation of the major powers, and the US, sort of, ducking away from accountability in Afghanistan, is a real problem.

But when I was talking about Sri Lanka, I was trying to get at the idea that actually, you know, if you don’t deal with accountability, the problems are not going to go away, and Syria is the same kind of story. I mean, of course, the past decade-plus has been a uniquely horrific story for the people of Syria, but I spent some time in Damascus, three months or so, in 2001, and you know, the memories were very fresh then of the – living under the abusive regime of Hafez al-Assad, and there was never any accountability for that. And until you break the cycle of accountability, there is always the potential for abuses to spiral and deepen and so forth, and I think, you know, one of the lessons that comes out of Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka, a country which has no real, major Great Power interests, if the system should be able to deliver for any country, it ought to be a small country like Sri Lanka. And yet, it can’t, it hasn’t been able to, and I think the lesson there is that accountability ultimately has to be delivered domestically, and it is the role of the international system to create space and momentum and perhaps to provide skills and expertise for that.

I also wanted to pick up on your question about, why isn’t there more dynamism in human rights? I think you could write a PhD on the topic. I would just want to say, I think there is plenty of dynamism and it’s just not necessarily in the UN system. Human rights is about visceral stuff that matters to people and how they live their lives, and the struggles that they go through day after day, and when you see mass protests on the streets, and when you see uprisings and movements gathering pace around the world, even if they’re not talking about – in human rights terms, they are so often about human rights. And the challenge of the multilateral system, which we’ve been talking about, is how to take its cue from that, and the energy that comes from that, and the opportunity for actions that come out of that. But I think there’s tremendous dynamism.

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you. I’m now going to turn to a few online questions. I’m conscious of time, but they’re very, very good. We have a question from Rosemary Foot, which talks about “the fact that still so much of the non-derogable agenda, the, sort of, core agenda on which states cannot derogate, needs to remain prominent, so, is really this the time to move on to climate issues, big tech, as David suggests? So, how ambitious can we really be, when there’s so many problems within the existing system to look at?”

Gabrielle asks, “Could you comment on the future of the UN Security Council’s role in addressing human rights concerns?” Naz, we welcome your thoughts on that. And then Elijah points out about the human rights – “whether human rights should be contextualised to suit the culture of a people,” getting at the, sort of, tension between universality and cultural relativity that I think’s coming through already in some of our comments. There’s also a question on China. I’m going to put those to you three. I’d like you to be even more brief, and I think there was one final question that I wanted to take from the lady in the scarf, who is just in the middle here in the audience, and then we’re going to give the panel a chance to answer any of those. Could we have your question, please? I know you’ve been waiting for a while. Thank you for your patience.

Sue Wright

Yes, Sue Wright, I’m Professor at University of Portsmouth. It’s a very concrete question. I’d like to ask how the human rights community is involved in collecting evidence for war crimes in Ukraine? I know that after Bosnia it was very haphazard, how the witness statements, etc., were collected, and that was very – it harmed the prosecution, so, have things improved? That seems to me a thing that the legal community, the human rights community could do, a very concrete thing, to point impunity and for accountability. So, what are we doing there?

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you. David, can I turn to you? As I say, probably only a couple of minutes each, so that we can stick to time, on any of the questions that you’ve just heard.

David Griffiths

Thank you. I don’t – I wouldn’t dare to disagree with Rosemary Foot, with her tremendous eminence and expertise in this area, and indeed, I agree that there is so much unfinished business within human rights. I think part of what I was talking about really was about really recognising the context that we’re in, that human rights abuses, human rights violations occur in the context of the climate crisis, in relati – they’re deeply steeped in the impact, the effects of inequality. And of course, big tech is raising huge questions about what it means to be human, and how our human societies function, that I think it is so incumbent upon human rights to engage with and to try and provide answers to. So, I’m not suggesting a turning-away from the unfinished business, but really a, sort of, thinking, in terms of how those issues are shaping the world that we’re really in, and how to apply human rights principles to them.

On the question of China, there’s a hell of a lot to say, and I’m not sure we’ve really got time. It was just a question about…

Harriet Moynihan

Just a brief notice, I’m an absolute stickler for timing, and I’ve been told to just calm down, and that we can extend until ten past seven.

David Griffiths

Okay.

Harriet Moynihan

So, if you all bear with us, we will, because there’s such – so much to be discussed, we’ll give David a little more time.

Dr Nazila Ghanea

Okay, there’s…

Harriet Moynihan

Will we have the China question?

Dr Nazila Ghanea

I think we should.

David Griffiths

We’ll have the China question, yeah.

Harriet Moynihan

Well, the China question is actually quite specific, so, I think we’ll keep it general, in terms of what you think about, you know, the role of China in human rights generally, if you want to comment, any of you, on that as well.

David Griffiths

Okay, sure.

Harriet Moynihan

Yeah.

David Griffiths

And because that might spark others, I would first like to come to the lady’s very technical question. I mean, I think none of us are doing this, and forgive me if I’m wrong, but I think, having worked recently for a number of years in Amnesty International, I’ve seen a huge advance in the technical capabilities of the human rights NGO community to do this work, and not just in terms of field visits and gathering evidence on the ground, but also remote sensing capabilities and the ability to use all kinds of clever technical ways of tracking and fighting back, actually, in real time against the narrative, that is, the disinformation that is often a feature of conflict as well. So that evidence gathering, I think that’s a high priority for the human rights community, and I think it’s getting better at it.

On the question of China, I mean, I’m no Sinologist, and I’m also aware that – but, sorry, I should say, I’m also aware that having worked in human rights NGOs for quite a few years, many human rights organisations have, still have a tendency to see China as just another country, a country where abuses occur, which need to be monitored and campaigned upon, and so forth. But actually, I think, you know, the world that we’re in, we have to look at China as presenting a systemic challenge on human rights, and China’s worked hard for its influence. It’s played the game, it’s played the game very well, over a long period of time. And I think there are different views among Sinologists as to China’s longer-term intensions, whether, as one person I interviewed a few weeks ago said, whether to make the world safe for autocracy, or to make the world no longer safe for democracy. Is it about jamming up the human rights system, in other words, or remaking it in a dangerous new way?

But in any case, I think we’re clear that China has a clear agenda to stunt the human rights system, particularly to try and challenge country mechanisms and country-specific work and to, sort of, transform it into a more bland system of state-to-state interaction, with phrases like “people-centred approach, mutually beneficial co-operation, shared future,” and so forth, concepts that – they’re very slippery and, sort of, hard to hang your hat on.

But the other thing to say about China is, I think, you know, so much of the discourse in the US and the West views China as, you know, this great, mysterious threat, and language barriers are so important, and lack of cultural literacy is so important. But I think just understanding China and understanding the different currents that exist within China is a really important challenge, as well. And understanding that China has constraints, that some of its concepts and language haven’t landed, that its attempt to push through the Colonialism Resolution, which was passed in the Human Rights Council last year, met with a fair bit of resistance from African states, who are not really prepared to let this one go to China, and want to own that agenda. So, I think, you know, that level of nuance is also really important.

Sorry, I’ve said far too much.

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you, David, and, Naz, over to you.

Dr Nazila Ghanea

I’m going to read Professor Foot’s question slightly differently, or approach it slightly differently, and say that, well, climate change is also linked to child rights and the future of engaging the young in human rights. Technology and big data, etc., is about inequality, about discrimination, and it’s about freedom of expression. So, I’m all for reading these human rights and really seeing them as interrelated and indivisible. It’s not just a mantra from the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights, the Vienna Declaration of Programme and Action. I think it’s really key that we see these rights stand or fall together, and I see again and again in different arenas how they’re dependent on one another. So, I see them as a new phenomenon, that actually take us back to core rights that we’ve already articulated and understood previously.

In terms of evidence collection, maybe you should ask the gentleman at the front, but access has not been lost with Ukraine. So, I would imagine that it’s easier than some of our other historical examples, and also the – if I just look at our former students and current students and the OSC experience in the broader region, I would imagine that that will be very much active, but I don’t have up-to-date information on that.

And the Security Council, it depends on the reform of the Security Council, a topic that has been, you know, academically and legally and in policy terms, discussed for at least 30 years, but now has a fresh urgency, yet unfortunately, because of its challenging the West and it’s closer to the European home, and become of prominence. So, it depends, but the co-ordination and the greater integration of Geneva for human rights, and of Security Council and New York for diplomacy, I mean, that is again a perennial problem, but now we have a fresh urgency to address.

Harriet Moynihan

Bennett.

Bennett Freeman

I’ll resist the temptation to comment on China, despite having just come from Brussels this afternoon, where I spent the last two-and-a-half days in meetings of the Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uighur Region, so, China’s very much on my mind and all of our minds. But I want to pick up on the question that touched on climate change, and go back to something that David said in his terrific framing at the outset of the panel, and that is that one can argue persuasively that there’s no more fundamental human rights issue facing people and planet than the climate crisis. One can also argue persuasively that inequality is about as fundamental a human rights issue as there is.

I embrace both arguments, but with a serious caveat. The climate piece is unarguable, I mean, the – we may lose the planet but, you know, the disproportionate impacts of climate change on poor communities, poor – in rich and poor countries alike, the migration and conflict, if not directly caused, exacerbated by climate, the life chances ruined, the suffering induced by wilful or inadvertent, entrenched inequality. I mean, these are systemic abuses of human rights, I completely accept and embrace that, I believe that fiercely.

But the point I just want to make here is that I worry sometimes that some in the human rights community, including some of our very greatest, most venerable, influential human rights NGOs, have lost a little bit of what I believe, at least, for what it’s worth, should continue to be an absolutely core focus on civil and political rights, at a time when civil and political rights have come under intensifying attack around the world, the last decade, both in democracies, as well as in authoritarian states that act with ever greater impunity. But these issues are all joined up. Without the basic civic freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, how can land and environmental defenders protect indigenous communities, resist rapacious deforestation that accelerates the climate crisis, just to – without freedom of association, how can workers, trade unionists, those trying to organise unions make progress? So, the issues are all joined up, but I just hope that Amnesty International, for one, among others, but maybe most prominently Amnesty, that was founded in 1961 with a core mission of civil and political rights, sticks to that core focus, even as it embraces necessarily, justifiably, a wider agenda.

So, my point, just to wrap up my own views again, for what they’re worth, is, thank God we have finally been integrating sustainability and inequality into the human rights agenda. But as we do so, let’s not dilute the core focus at the same time on civil and political rights, and let’s understand how fundamental the protection and defence and ultimately the strengthening of civil and political rights are to these intersecting agendas that we have to address, of inequality and sustainability [applause].

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you, Bennett.

Dr Nazila Ghanea

Can I do a half a second?

Harriet Moynihan

Please do.

Dr Nazila Ghanea

And say, also you can argue from economic, social, cultural rights, that without economic, social, cultural rights, we can’t have…

Bennett Freeman

Of course.

Dr Nazila Ghanea

…the civil, political rights, but not to take away at all from what you were saying.

Bennett Freeman

Yes, of course. My own work has been largely on corporate accountability and human rights, so, I’m deeply embedded myself in the economic, social and cultural rights world, but to me, it’s – we have to do it together.

Harriet Moynihan

As I say, they are intersectional, and sometimes…

Bennett Freeman

Yeah.

Harriet Moynihan

…it’s not helpful to, sort of, divide them up too much.

Now, we have one final question that’s come in online, David, for you, and I would like to end on this, because this project that we’re doing at Chatham House is a long-runner, it’s going on for the next year, and we’re going to culminate in a big conference on the future of human rights next year, which I hope you’ll all come to. And so, in that vein, I think David is continuing to research, and this might be something that you’ll be thinking about.

David powerfully described the global challenges facing the entire human rights framework, and this is from Francesca Klug, no less. “In that context, I concur with the significance he attached to yesterday’s announcements by the UK Government of the replacement of the Human Rights Act with a measure whose main purpose is to distance the UK from the universal principles and standards of the ECHR. We know that a similar approach has been taken by Hungary and Poland, and formerly by Russia. Would David agree that one of the major challenges to the survival of human rights is therefore the end of the post-1989 apparent human rights consensus within Europe, and among some other democratic states, which were once proud to champion the international human rights framework?”

So, David, top-of-the-head comments welcome, but also perhaps something for us all to think about as we continue our research on our project.

David Griffiths

Thank you. Well, my first comment is, Professor Klug, I’d love to interview you [laughter] as part of my research, so, thank you for the question. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s – there’s no going back. We are – we’re in a new – we’re moving forward, and things are changing, and I think, you know, one of the things I really wanted to highlight, in my intervention at the beginning, was the need for a really integrated global agenda on human rights. And when we start – and I’m going to put a little bit of dist – of differentiation between what I’m saying and your point just now, Bennett, about the idea of a core. I don’t believe there is – often when people speak of a core of human rights, they think civil and political rights, but I think it’s time we reclaimed the idea of a core of human rights differently, that actually, the core of human rights is about the integration and the relationship between civil and political rights, and economic and social rights.

Bennett Freeman

I agree.

David Griffiths

There you go, I tried to put a bit of water between us, but I failed.

Bennett Freeman

I agree with that.

David Griffiths

So, you know, I think that the question is really where – how can we see a diversity of sources of renewal for human rights in the future? And I don’t know if you’re going to give us time for a last comment, perhaps I could make mine now.

Harriet Moynihan

If you could make your final comment, I don’t want to keep us from drinks too long, but it will be good to have one big reflection from you.

David Griffiths

I wanted to just say in closing that – and I realise that’s a very, very partial answer to a very complex and important question, which I would like to continue thinking about, but I would – wanted to mention in closing that on the weekend, as it happens, I visited the British Museum and went to a couple of the numerous rooms that Sir Joseph Hotung had supported financially, and one of them is this beautiful ceramics room. If you haven’t visited, I urge you to visit it, and as I was there, of course, I was thinking ahead to my – to this panel, and this memorial event, and thinking actually, what a wonderful picture that ceramic room is of what human rights could look like. This harmonious blending together of many different traditions in the most beautiful way. And I think that that’s, kind of, a visual picture of what I would hope for, for human rights in the future.

Harriet Moynihan

Thank you, David, that’s a lovely note to end on and, I think, a fitting tribute to Sir Joseph, who I hope would have enjoyed this event. We certainly heard a lot about that theme of interconnectivity, and thank you so much to the panel for the excellent insights. Thank you to the audience, I’m sorry we haven’t been able to get all your questions, but hopefully we can have a chance to talk further this evening at drinks, which are going to be served up in the Neill Malcolm Room shortly. Thank you too, to our online audience for coming and we look forward to welcoming you all again to Chatham House soon [applause].