CHAPTER 10 THE HUMAN RIGHTS DIPLOMACY OF THE UN SECRETARYGENERAL B G. R Introduction is essay on human rights diplomacy by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General will focus on the future, while bearing in mind experiences of the past. It will argue that each Secretary-General should set his or her sights on selected human rights objectives and deploy diplomacy for the achievement of those objectives. In identify- ing these objectives the Secretary-General should keep in mind the mandates of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Council and will not seek to duplicate their eorts. Yet, the Secretary-General should make a personal choice of areas on which he or she wishes to place a personal stamp and should call human rights diplomacy in aid for this purpose. As we see it, policy and diplomacy, while closely related, are not identical. A Secretary- General might indicate policy choices. Human rights diplomacy, how- ever, is marshalled for the achievement of selected policy initiatives. Before oering a selection of goals for the deployment of human rights diplomacy, we rst take a look at experiences of the past. A Historical Perspective While one could refer to strands of human rights diplomacy or policy by previous Secretaries-General it would probably be accurate to say that no UN Secretary-General to date has had a human rights diplo- macy as such.1 e incumbent, Mr Ban Ki-moon has so far not yet 1 See, generally, B. G. Ramcharan, Humanitarian Good Oces in International Law. e Good Oces of the UN Secretary-General in the Field of Human Rights (e Hague: Martinus Nijho, 1983), ch.I; D. P. Forsythe, ‘e UN Secretary-General and Human Rights: e Question of Leadership in a Changing Context’ in B. Rivilin and 174 bertrand g. ramcharan developed one either. Secretary-General Trygve Lie professed his alle- giance to the ‘free world’ and, in his proposed action programme, which never took off, included the promotion of human rights. He, like his successors until Secretary-General Pérez de Cuéllar, did engage in humanitarian good offices to help some individuals or groups in need. According to John Humphrey, the first Director of the UN Division of Human Rights and prominent drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold wanted the human rights programme kept at ‘minimum flying speed’.2 Hammarsk- jold is credited with being the father of preventive diplomacy, but he saw it mainly in the political and security fields, rather than in the area of human rights. Hammarskjold left no lasting imprint on human rights—but he did attach high priority to development, which has since been declared a human right by the UN General Assembly. Secretary-General U Thant was a great humanitarian and it was he who called for attention to man-made humanitarian crises and who established the UN Disaster Relief Office, which is nowadays part of the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Secretary- General U Thant engaged in significant humanitarian good offices, which he recorded in his memoir, “View from the UN”.3 U Thant was a professed believer in preventive diplomacy. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim was a cautious Secretary-General for whom human rights were not a priority. He did, however, con- tinue the exercise of humanitarian good offices and acknowledged the impor tance of preventive diplomacy, again in the political and security areas. Secretary-General Pérez de Cuéllar was an even colder fish when it came to human rights issues, but he did engage in humanitarian good offices and also professed belief in preventive diplomacy. His “Perspectives on the Work of the United Nations in the 1990s”, an enclosure to the draft UN medium-term plan issued in 1987,4 L. Gordenker (eds.), The Challenging Role of the UN Secretary-General (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1993), pp.211-32; J. D. Livermore and B. G. Ramcharan, ‘Purposes and Principles. The Secretary-General’s Role in Human Rights’, in ibid., pp.213–48; and B. G. Ramcharan, Preventive Diplomacy at the UN (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008), ch.4. 2 See J. Humphrey, Human Rights and the United Nations: A Great Adventure (New York: Transnational Publishers, 1984). 3 S. U Thant, View from the UN (Newton Abbot: David and Charles, 1978). 4 Some Perspectives on the Work of the United Nations in the 1990s, enclosure to Programme Planning - Preparation of the Next Medium-Term Plan, Note by the Secretary-General, UN Doc A/42/512 (2 September 1987)..