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This year's World Report marks Human Rights Watch's 20th anniversary. It reviews developments in 68 countries. I will highlight a few of the trends of the last year. In addition, because this is the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I will look at some of the remarkable developments of the past half century.

How does one celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration in a decade marked by genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda? Progress is obvious in much of Latin America, the former Soviet bloc, southern Africa, and in parts of Asia. But how can we open the champagne bottles when terrible abuses persists in so many countries?

What can be acclaimed in this anniversary year is the emergence of a powerful movement to deter such abuses -- a movement that makes it far more likely that human rights abuse will be identified, written about in the press, criticized, cited as a justification for cutting off aid or trade, and possibly used as evidence in an international criminal trial.

This movement has produced a dramatic transformation in the way that governments treat their citizens and each other.

First of all, for years, dictatorial governments regularly rejected criticism of their human rights records as "interference" in their "internal affairs." Pressure from other governments to end abuse was rare.

Today, human rights are well established as the legitimate concern of all humanity. Governments regularly comment on each other's rights practices and make respect for rights an important factor in their aid relationships. Even China, one of the last holdouts, has accepted the legitimacy of international scrutiny by signing two major rights treaties and, this year, even protesting human rights abuses against ethnic Chinese in Indonesia.

Second, the Universal Declaration has come to protect a far broader range of people. For many years, it was applied primarily for the benefit of political dissidents and opponents. Today, it is widely understood to benefit not only political activists but also women facing discrimination or violence, refugees, civilians caught in conflict, children, common prisoners, gays and lesbians, religious minorities, workers, as well as those seeking economic, social and cultural rights.

Third, driving these developments has been a veritable explosion in the size and strength of the human rights movement. The Helsinki accords of 1975 affirmed "the right of the individual to know and act upon his rights," and helped launch the human rights movement in the Soviet bloc. Also in the 1970s, human rights groups emerged in Asia and Latin America to challenge abuses by authoritarian governments. Today, human rights organizations have established a firm presence in all but the most repressive countries.

Fourth, moving to the current year, the most dramatic change has been a substantial strengthening of the international system for bringing the most heinous human rights criminals to justice. Key developments include the arrest of Chilean General Augusto Pinochet, the enthusiastic adoption of a treaty to establish an International Criminal Court, and the substantial progress made by the war crimes tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Both the Yugoslav and Rwandan tribunals seem to have overcome their early problems. Each has numerous defendants in custody and several trials underway, including yesterday's arrest of Bosnian Serb General Krstic, who is accused of playing a major role in the Srebrenica massacre. The main obstacle to the success of the Yugoslav tribunal remains NATO's unwillingness to arrest former Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic. It is time for NATO to act.

The International Criminal Court, which will provide a forum to prosecute the world's worst human rights offenders, will be weaker than it might have been because of opposition from the United States, China, India and others. But it still will have considerable power to bring to justice those who commit genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes. Today, the biggest challenge is to hold the line in the face of Washington's continuing efforts to undermine the agreement reached in July in Rome.

The ICC will assume jurisdiction only if national courts are unable or unwilling to try the most serious human rights offenders. So, the United States, with its strong justice system, has little to fear. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration has been determined to oppose a court with even a theoretical possibility of prosecuting an American. Its vision of partial justice is, for most of the world, injustice.

The arrest and proposed extradition of Pinochet is a tremendously important step which has broken the ice and may finally make powerful governments willing to break the cycle of impunity that so frequently encourages atrocities. Unfortunately, the Clinton administration, through its prolonged silence followed by its misguided plea for deference to Pinochet's self-granted amnesty, is increasingly seen as opposing justice.

Justice will not disrupt transitions to democracy or make it more difficult to encourage abusive officials to relinquish power. Chile's current president felt so confident in the strength of Chilean democracy that at the height of the Pinochet drama he left the country for nine days on a trade mission. Dictators give up power not because they are born-again democrats but because their domestic and international support has waned. Prosecutions, by delegitimizing tyrants, can hasten that process.

International justice will also not, as some fear, endanger democratic leaders with a few human rights peccadillos to their record. The concept of universal jurisdiction that lies behind the Pinochet prosecution applies only to the most severe human rights offenses - genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

With so much renewed interest in justice for the atrocities of the past, it will only be a matter of time before other tyrants face their day in court. That will be an important step toward preventing such crimes in the future.

Let me turn to our evaluation of U.S. policy on human rights.

The Clinton administration's efforts to promote human rights around the world were subject to large blind spots. Major parts of the globe never made it onto the administration's human rights agenda.

The administration did best with the pariah countries -- Burma, Belarus, Sierra Leone, Sudan. It also performed well on some more pivotal countries, such as Croatia, Malaysia, Algeria, and Indonesia.

In some countries, the administration's record was mixed. It waited far too long as Yugoslav forces battered ethnic Albanian civilians in Kosovo. But then, it brought NATO military pressure to bear until Yugoslav President Milosevic agreed, at least for the time being, to stop the attacks, withdraw some troops, and permit international monitoring. In Bosnia, U.S. troops helped NATO to arrest lesser war crimes suspects but, to our continuing disappointment, not the leaders of the genocide.

In Colombia, the administration openly acknowledged the close working relationship between the army and murderous paramilitary forces. But the new U.S. ambassador has been silent on human rights. And the administration implemented half-heartedly and with no transparency the Leahy Amendment which requires it to withhold assistance from forces involved in abuse until they bring those responsible to justice.

In Cuba, while ostensibly concerned about human rights, the U.S. government pursued an embargo that itself violated the rights to freedom of expression and movement. Moreover, by adopting an all-or-nothing approach to President Fidel Castro's continuing rule, Washington provided little incentive for him to ease repression of civil society.

In China, the administration helped to enhance dialogue about human rights; to convince the government to sign a key human rights treaty; to secure the release of a handful of prisoners; and to gain permission for President Clinton, during his visit to the country, to speak to the public about human rights. It also pushed, albeit unsuccessfully, for more systematic changes. But the administration had no plan, other than waiting for China to change on its own, for helping to move beyond promises and dialogue to systematic change. Washington gave up two powerful sources of leverage--human rights preconditions to President Clinton's much-sought trip to China, and efforts to secure a resolution critical of China before the U.N. Commission on Human Rights--without developing any alternative way to keep the pressure on. We've seen the results of China's empty promises to respect human rights in its arrest this week of Xu Wenli and his allies for trying to form an independent political party.

Vast swaths of the globe were largely exempt from U.S. pressure on human rights. These included most of Central Asia and the Middle East, where oil interests stood in the way of strong human rights advocacy.

In Africa, the United States favored strategic alliances with new leaders to paying attention to their human rights problems. The administration remained publicly silent about severe government abuses in Rwanda and the Congo as well as abuses by the Sudan People's Liberation Army. And President Clinton seemed to lower the bar in assessing Uganda's and Nigeria's lack of democracy.

This inconsistency in U.S. support for human rights, and the frequent subordination of human rights to so many other interests, threatens to weaken what should be a strong voice for the human rights cause.

The Clinton administration also continued to refuse to accept an unconditional ban on anti-personnel landmines. And it continued to obstruct efforts to ban the use of children under 18 years of age as soldiers.

The use of child soldiers -- an estimated 300,000 worldwide -- contributes significantly to the inhumanity of war. The children themselves risk death, physical injury, and deep psychological scars while, because of their lack of maturity, they endanger those who encounter them. The Convention on the Rights of the Child has been ratified by every country in the world except Somalia, which has no functioning government, and the United States. It sets 18 as the age of maturity on most other matters, and there is a broad international consensus that this bright red line should be used to define the appropriate age of soldiers. But because the Pentagon recruits 17-year-olds out of high school, the U.S. government refuses to join a proposed protocol barring the recruitment of anyone younger than 18. Indeed, by blocking a "consensus," the Clinton administration refuses to permit anyone else to adopt the protocol for themselves--even though 17-year-olds constitute just 4 percent of active-duty American recruits, and less than ?of 1 percent of active-duty American soldiers. Washington thus has elevated a matter of incremental recruiting convenience over the humanitarian imperative of curbing this cruel and dangerous aspect of warfare.

The European Union fared somewhat better than the United States in promoting human rights. Of particular note is its policy of explicitly conditioning its aid and trade relationships on respect for human rights. Unfortunately, it was not always consistent in upholding this conditionality. For example, it applied conditionality productively in the cases of Cuba and Burma, but was too quick to give it up in the case of Serbia and Tunisia.

The E.U. also undermined conditionality by signing a trade agreement with Turkmenistan and moving toward ratifying an agreement with Uzbekistan -- two of Central Asia's most repressive regimes. The E.U. adopted an important code of conduct limiting arms sales to abusive governments, but its members still scrambled to sell arms to Turkey.

We also expressed concern that the E.U.'s preference for consensus in its foreign policy might stand in the way of the more active promotion of human rights by some of its members. And we criticized the E.U. for mounting improper barriers to refugees seeking asylum in Europe.

At the United Nations, Kofi Annan has shown a greater commitment to human rights than any other U.N. secretary-general. He has been an outspoken defender of human rights, and made serious efforts to integrate human rights into all U.N. activities. UNICEF made the most progress in this regard, while UNDP and UNHCR lagged.

Mary Robinson, the new High Commissioner for Human Rights, took great strides toward reinvigorating an office that had retreated into the irrelevance of quiet diplomacy under its first occupant. She was at her best on Algeria, Rwanda, and Colombia - outspoken and tough.

But much work remains to transform the high commissioner's office into an effective vehicle for defending human rights. She needs to make her voice heard in debates of relevance to human rights protection at the Security Council and in the Secretariat, and to transform her frequent call for a "rights-based" approach to development from a slogan to a demand with programmatic teeth.

As people around the globe mark the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration, it is clear that the world has been dramatically transformed by the ideas set forth in this simple but visionary document. There indeed is much to celebrate. But also much to do to ensure that we live up to its ideals.

I would welcome your questions.

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