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	New UN human rights chief speaks of personal understanding of discrimination by Navanethem Pillay UN Radio   Aug 2008   The newly appointed United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights says she comes to her work with a personal understanding of human rights violations, based on her experience of living in South Africa during the apartheid regime when non-whites such as herself suffered from institutionalized discrimination.   “I think I come with a real understanding of what it’s like to have your human rights violated and to have it violated for a very long time without any justice in sight, and the apartheid struggle taught that,” Navanethem Pillay said today in an interview with UN Radio.   Ms. Pillay, who is due to take up her post in Geneva on 1 September, said that leadership in her home country had been critical in bringing about dramatic change for the better. She went on to cite the establishment of the Human Rights Council, where she said Member States now subscribe to the notion of accountability, monitoring and peer reviews, as an example of dramatic change that had taken place globally in the human rights field. Noting that her predecessor Louise Arbour had established human rights offices in 50 countries, Ms. Pillay said she wanted to take that work forward.   “I see these as progressive trends which would advance the work of the High Commissioner in protecting human rights everywhere.”   She said that nations now took human rights with the seriousness that they deserved, drawing on her experience of serving as a Judge on the International Criminal Court (ICC) since 2003, and before that as both Judge and President on the UN International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), which she joined in 1995.   “My experience as an international judge is where political leadership has been brought to account for complicity in some very grave international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. I was on the panel of judges that sentenced the Prime Minister of Rwanda to life imprisonment for the offense of genocide,” she noted.   “I subscribe to this new system of international criminal justice system which we have only very recently, for the past fifteen years, as a strong signal that impunity will be ended and that anyone, whether a head of state or a militia leader, will be held accountable and punished.”   The High Commissioner acknowledged that she would have to operate in a different manner in her new post from her previous work for criminal tribunals, even though she said there were close links between the two activities.   “The criminal trials have the power to punish, the High Commissioner has to find various approaches of persuasion, of strong talk, or to develop civil society organizations to meet this source of the violations,” she said.
	Peace and justice must go hand in hand by Asha-Rose Migiro, Nicholas Michel   10 August 2008   UN Deputy Secretary-General stresses need to end impunity for war crimes and human rights abuses.   UN Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro has called on lawyers to play a greater role in guaranteeing countries live up to their commitments to protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.   In an address yesterday to the American Bar Association in New York, Ms. Migiro said the fight to bring an end to impunity for such crimes is one of the most important ways of ensuring that the rule of law is put into practice worldwide.   She cited the formation of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a permanent institution aimed at trying those responsible for the worst crimes, and the 2005 pledge by world leaders at the UN on the “responsibility to protect” populations from such crimes as important milestones.   “Now, the need to make this responsibility to protect fully operational represents a major priority and challenge for the United Nations and for our Member States,” Ms. Migiro said.   The Deputy Secretary-General said the emergence of international criminal law and such institutions as the ICC raised the question of how to reconcile the need for peace in a country emerging from conflict with the duty of justice for the victims of that war.   “For the United Nations, justice and peace are complementary requirements. We strongly believe that there can be no lasting peace without justice. The question therefore is not whether justice should be pursued, but rather how best to interlink the two in the light of the specific circumstances, without sacrificing one for another.   “The United Nations has a clear position that it cannot support any amnesty for genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and gross human rights abuses. I hope that you, as legal professionals, will work wherever possible to ensure that justice is not sidelined in the short-term interests of an unsustainable peace.”   25 July 2008   Although maintaining the balance between restoring peace and ending impunity can be sensitive and complex, amnesties for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide are unacceptable, according to the United Nations Legal Counsel.   “In the past it was not infrequent to hear people say ‘look there are situations where we simply have to make a choice: either you want peace or you want justice but you can’t have both together,’ so the dilemma was peace or justice and the assumption was that sometimes it is impossible to have the two. I would submit today that it is no longer acceptable to put the dilemma in these terms,” Nicolas Michel, Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs, told reporters in New York today.   The Under-Secretary-General said that a guiding principle for the UN was the need to create conditions conducive to sustainable peace.   “I’m convinced, and this is now the policy of the UN, that justice is part of these conditions that are conducive to a sustainable peace. In other words, there is almost a slogan, but there is a hard reality behind that – no peace without justice,” he said, speaking at his last press conference before stepping down from his post at the end of August.   “What draws our attention in recent days is that there are situations where the link between restoring peace and ending impunity is sensitive, is complex,” Mr. Michel added.   Citing examples from Sudan, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Burundi, Mr. Michel said the dilemma was how to sequence steps towards peace and steps towards justice, while accepting the need to adjust to specific circumstances on the ground.   “There might be circumstances for instance in which you have to take warlords out of the picture because you can’t achieve any peace with them and so you want to arrest them, but we also have to recognize that there are situations where you need interlocutors, you need them to negotiate a peace agreement – now what happens to them?” he said.   “You know we have good examples from the past of people who have negotiated peace agreements and who ended up behind bars. So the fact that they are part of the negotiations does not necessarily mean that they will not end up before a tribunal, and one of the clear corollaries of the culture of ending impunity is that amnesty for international crimes is not acceptable.”   Mr. Michel also stressed that, despite the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC), and internationally-backed tribunals for Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and the former Yugoslavia, the end of impunity as a “new emerging culture” needed protection.   “This progress is still very fragile and I think that we have to be extremely careful how we handle the very sensitive issues we are faced with because there is no doubt that there is a risk of setbacks and these setbacks will have serious consequences.”
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