United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights Mary Robinson announced she was stepping down. Good riddance. Robinson aptly summed up the entire view that marked her term with this outrageous comment,
The buildings that were destroyed on Sept. 11 can be replaced. But if the pillars of the international system are damaged or demolished, they will not be so easy to restore.
Earth to Mary — we don’t care about the buildings, it’s the almost 3,000 human beings that died on Sept. 11 that count. This statement really puts a capstone on Robinson’s approach to human rights.
The spin from human rights groups is that Robinson ran into trouble because she was willing to criticize the United States. Reed Brody Human Rights Watch told the New York Times, “She has paid a price for her willingness to confront publicly big governments like the United States and Russia when they violate human rights.”
Give me a break. Robinson presided over a conference at which Israel was labeled the only racist country in the world. Yeah, that took a lot of moral courage.
Source:
U.N. Rights Enforcer to Step Down. Associated Press, March 18, 2002.