The chronicle interview.

• Position: Secretary General of Amnesty International Irene Zubaida Khan - Interview

IRENE ZUBAIDA KHAN joined Amnesty International as its Secretary General in its 40th anniversary year, as it began a process of renewal to address the complex nature of contemporary human rights violations. As the first woman, first Asian and first Muslim to guide the world's largest human rights organization, she has expanded its perspective, putting people at the heart of policy. Since then, Ms. Khan has drawn attention to the plight of asylum seekers in detention, met with victims of massacres and led a campaign to end discrimination against those suffering from mental disabilities. She has also initiated consultations with women activists to design a global campaign by Amnesty International against violence on women.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Ms. Khan served as Senior Executive Officer at the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991 to 1995, having joined in 1980. In 1998, she headed the UNHCR Centre for Research and Documentation and, in 1999, led UNHCR in The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and later that year was appointed Deputy Director of International Protection.

Giovanni Campi, Juliana Ribeiro and Horst Rutsch of the UN Chronicle spoke with Ms. Khan in New York on 5 October 2004.

On human rights being a dangerous idea

Human rights represent a very powerful strategy for peace and security, for equity and justice in the world. This is why this issue is gaining root in the hearts and minds of people. At the same time, Governments are struggling to find a way in which to reflect it in the context of their own governance systems. If they are dictatorships, they see it as a threat; if they are democracies, they are ready to sign on to it. When a crisis comes, human rights are perceived as a nuisance, whereas for the people, they are a very powerful idea. Ordinary people like the women in Darfur do not call it human rights, they call it justice, but they're talking about the same thing. There is a disconnection between the people and the Government that we need to bring together. And this is a huge challenge for us--a dangerous idea and an endangered idea. My own sense is that at the end of the day people will win, human rights will survive, but they are currently going through a very severe battering.

On the conflicting sets of values in human rights

The failure of human rights advocacy is that it has not been able to popularize that message of justice. Human rights have been seen as an elitist issue discussed among intellectuals. How do we make it as simple as possible for the world? I don't think people can understand it very easily. The tension is between security and human rights. But the question that needs to be asked is, Whose security are we talking about? When you talk about security problems today, for example the war against terrorism, it very often affects everyone. When a bomb blows up on a train station in Madrid, the poor as well as the rich are affected by it.

However, there is a sense here that the security and human rights debate seems to be slanted in favour of the powerful and the privileged, and they are pushing it to the top of the agenda. People have been suffering from violence everywhere for years. The women in Darfur are as much in danger [of becoming victims of violence] as we are from bomb blasts here, but only recently has attention been given to Darfur. The conflict in southern Sudan continued to escalate for twenty years, the people in the Congo are not...