John Shattuck is the outgoing assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor. He has been nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic. This interview was conducted at his office on September 28, 1998, by USIA Contributing Editor Rick Marshall.

Question: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be 50 years old in December. Many organizations are preparing to commemorate the event. How would you view this past half century in terms of human rights?

Shattuck: I think the period of the last half century has been a huge paradox in many respects. It's been the time when the groundwork for an international rule of law has been laid. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations were the collective global effort to say "never again" to the kind of abuses witnessed during World War II and the Holocaust. They have given voice to millions of people around the world who would otherwise have their efforts to achieve freedom and to establish basic human rights dissipated because no one would pay attention.

On the other hand, over this past half century we have seen continuing crises of basic and fundamental liberties. During the Cold War, for example, Stalinist forces moved in to crush the aspirations for liberty in Eastern Europe -- of course, they had already done so in the Soviet Union. Many of the same phenomena occurred in parts of Asia, particularly in China.

At the same time, our own country struggled with the terrible legacy of slavery and the legacy of having done much to destroy basic indigenous cultures of Native Americans. These were the other side of the paradox.

Now in the United States, what we've seen during this period is a tremendous, powerful domestic movement to put behind us -- or at least to develop remedies for -- the terrible abuses of civil rights and civil liberties that occurred in slavery and in the period after that. And we've also seen some progress in recognition of the importance of indigenous rights, and great progress on giving voice and rights to other disenfranchised groups -- particularly women -- but also other groups and national minorities in this great American melting pot.

But we have a long way to go and are continuing on that road.

In many ways, the symbol of human rights progress, above all in this period, was the development of a multiracial democracy in South Africa out of the ruins and devastation of apartheid. So there are victories that have been achieved during this period, though there have been many continuing and horrendous abuses.

Most recently, of course, we've seen the emergence of terrible conflicts that have led to genocide such as in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. These are a constant reminder that no matter how good rights may be on paper, cynical leaders can stimulate conflict and destroy whole countries and huge civilian populations through their manipulations.

Q: What kind of role has the human rights movement played in the history
of this half century?

Shattuck: The human rights movement has achieved greater and greater legitimacy over these 50 years. It's a movement that reflects the growing positive forces of globalization and the desire of all human beings to lead their own lives in freedom and relative peace. So when the world comes together and adopts a document like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then projects it over these five decades, that's a very powerful legitimizing force. I think it did have a role in the Helsinki Process in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

I think it's having a role today among those struggling for human rights in China, Indonesia, Burma and Nigeria, places where very strong authoritarian regimes have succeeded in suppressing human rights. In the end, the pressures are great to change those systems. I think the human rights aspirations and the legitimacy given by the Universal Declaration have an impact. There is a relationship between what actually happens in a country and what the international community recognizes as legitimate.

A major event that occurred at the beginning of this administration was the World Conference on Human Rights, the Vienna Conference. There for the first time the countries of the world actually went beyond the words of the Universal Declaration and adopted a position that human rights are a legitimate subject for international diplomacy and discussion. That was very important. You even had countries like China reluctantly sign on to that, along with many other countries that were taking a position that internal matters could not be looked at from a human rights standpoint.

I also think that what we've seen in the last five years for the first time are international coalitions coming together exclusively to address human rights crises. That was the case in Haiti, and it was the case, very belatedly, in Bosnia. Normally, international coalitions, particularly those that have a military component, come together for reasons of national self-interest. In this case, with the United Nations behind them and for almost no other reason than the terrible human rights abuses, they were put together.

The biggest disappointment I've had in these years is that the terrible crisis in Rwanda did not achieve the kind of international consensus for direct action in time to save the estimated 500,000 or more who were killed in the Rwanda genocide. But I think the precedents have been set with Haiti, with Bosnia. I think with the growing international resolve around Kosovo, that there can be practical steps taken by the international community to deal with the worst human rights abuses.

This has got a very long way to go before it becomes a truly effective international system with an enforcement process, however.

Q: Where you do think human rights will be in another 50 years?

Shattuck: I think there are many trends here which are competing. If the good can overcome the bad, then this system of international protection of human rights can be significantly advanced. But that will mean much greater acceptance of the principle that internal developments inside a country that severely impact on the human rights of citizens are a matter of legitimate international concern. Right now that proposition is not as widely accepted as it should be.

It will mean that the trend toward increasing ethnic and religious conflict will have to be checked by international systems for preventing those conflicts in advance -- by a combination of diplomatic and sometimes military means as well as by developing civil societies. So far, we have not put together a very effective preventive system for stopping these religious and ethnic conflicts before they really get out of hand.

I think the global economic system will have to be accompanied by growing respect for basic international labor rights, worker rights and protection of vulnerable populations from being exploited -- women, child labor. The United States has taken the lead in trying to make sure that those protections come into being, but there are a lot of countries resisting that.

I also think that our own country will have to continue to take steps to recognize the international system that is so important for the protection of human rights, such as ratifying the various treaties. The United States has been very actively involved in drafting them, and we were there at the creation of the Universal Declaration. It is now incumbent upon us to step up to the plate and fully endorse the international human rights legal system.

We will have to develop better international systems of justice, too. We've made a start by, for the first time, developing war crimes tribunals for cases of genocide and crimes against humanity in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. But we need to take steps now to develop an effective international justice system along the lines that have been debated over recent years around the International Criminal Court. There was a lot of disagreement about details, but in the end, we need a system that can get at the terrible abusers that exist in many other countries outside of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

These are all the kinds of things that are on the agenda for the next 50 years. And it will take that long to really work on them. They're all things that won't happen overnight. I would hope that by the 100th anniversary celebration some or maybe even all of these systems will have developed much further than they are today.

Issues of Democracy
USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 3, No. 3, October 1998