Cuestiones de
América
Conversations with History; Institute of
International Studies, UC Berkeley
Q: Where
were you born?
Pierre Sané: I was born in Senegal, which is in West Africa,
50 years ago. Senegal is a former French colony. It is a part of Africa that
has been occupied for 300 years by the French and which became independent in
1960. And it also famous, I suppose, in the United States because that is where
Gorée Island is, which was the major point of departure for the slaves during
the slave trade.
Q: And
did that historical fact enter your consciousness at a young age?
PS:
Yes, certainly. Many schools in Senegal or
in Dakar sent the pupils to visit Gorée Island and to visit the slave
museum. So it is not just through the history book that we come across this
part of the history of the continent, but by being physically exposed to this
period of history through the buildings, through the museum, the pictures, and
the exhibit made by those who are in charge of the museum.
Q: Were
you educated in Senegal?
PS:
I was educated in Senegal [through] high
school, and then after that I went to university in France. I did also graduate
courses in London, at the London School of Economics. And I also took doctoral
courses in Carlton University in Canada.
Q: What
books most influenced you as you were growing up, getting educated?
PS:
Textbooks. I attended high school in
France and therefore French writers influenced me most, writers like Victor
Hugo or Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Balzac. Writers like Emile Zola or Frantz Fanon.
Also the early history of African independence and the war in Algeria.
Q: What
about mentors as a young person? Anyone in particular stand out as influencing
you toward the path that you finally took in human rights work?
PS:
Probably two persons. One is my mother. My
mother is a teacher; she was one of the first teachers in colonial Senegal and
very early on she was involved in the women's movement at the African level.
And her struggle was to ensure that as the African countries were moving
towards liberation and independence, that that be accompanied as well by the
liberation of the African women. And the second one was my uncle, who was very
involved in politics in Senegal and who, at a very early age, was using us to
stamp the cards of the party or to prepare the posters for his meetings,
although we were not attending those meetings. I've been witness many times of
him being arrested by the Senegalese government, sent to jail on several
occasions. But even though in Senegalese politics many political parties after
independence joined the government, he has always been in opposition. He has
always insisted that democracy has more to do with the strength of the
opposition than with consensus on policies.
Transnational Political Movements
Q: It
sounds like political action, concern about human rights, started early.
PS:
Very early. And also during my student age
I was lucky enough to be studying in France during May, 1968, and I was already
involved with the African student movement in France. At that time the student
movement, the African student movement, was pan-Africanist. It was not by
African country but rather all the African students from all of Africa studying
in France were involved in the same movement. And that movement had an
objective of reunification of the African continent. During my student days I
was also very much involved in student politics; but I've never been involved
or interested in party politics and in the political structures. It has always
been in the various movements, the student movements or the development
movement, the pan-African movement, or the human rights movement.
Q: All of
these movements are really transnational -- they have a vision beyond the
nation state.
PS:
Exactly. Be it at the African level or be
it at the human rights level, I've always felt confined within the framework of
the nation state. And I've always seen my commitment as being a commitment to
fellow human beings, irrespective of their nationality, of their religion.
Q: It's
hard for students today to understand what that '68 period was like. What
impressed you most about the sixties political activism?
PS:
I guess mistrust of any kind of authority
which is not grounded in accountability and democracy. 1968 was very
spontaneous. I was in Bordeaux at the south of France, but our agenda was not
dictated by Paris. What we were doing in the streets of Bordeaux was
coordinated by the collective of the students in Bordeaux. So I guess what is
left with me is the belief in spontaneity, the belief in the ability of people,
if you mobilize them, to bring changes. And I think that the '68 movement did
bring changes, even if they were not the changes in terms of political
structures but changes in the culture of societies. Certainly changes in the
culture of the university and the interaction between those who were
administering the university and the students.
Q: What did
you do after you finished your studies? Did you go directly into development
work?
PS:
Yes. My first studies were in business. I
started study in business school. And when I finished study in business school in
Bordeaux, I went to Paris, continued and did a degree. I'm a chartered
accountant by training, that's my first training. It took me ten years, and
when I finished I realized that that's not what I wanted to do. I don't want to
work as an accountant and help companies to maximize their profits on the backs
of the workers. So I actually never worked as a chartered accountant.
When I finished I went back home and I joined an organization called
International Development Research Center, which is a Canadian international
organization that is set up to assist developing countries to build their
scientific capability and, through research undertaken at home, to find
solutions to the problems that they were confronted with, in the field of
public policy, macroeconomics, education, house policies, or in the field of
technology, development of appropriate technologies in the field of agriculture
or industrial development. I worked there for 15 years, and certainly during
that period I came across some of the most dedicated people in Africa. Those
are the scientists and researchers in the universities who are working in very,
very difficult conditions, who could make an excellent living and have the
appropriate conditions in American universities, in European universities, but
who are very committed to the continent and in spite of all the difficulties
are trying to undertake their scientific endeavors in an environment which is
not really conducive to generating innovations, the political environment or
the economic environment.
Q: What
do you think are the roots of their idealism?
PS:
It's difficult to find just one or two. I
suppose each of them would have had a very individual journey that they have
traveled and an individual history. But what I found they had in common was
their commitment to African reunification, and their conviction that Africa,
the way it is divided today, is certainly not viable and constitutes one of the
major obstacles to the development of the continent.
Amnesty International
Q: When did
you assume a leadership role in Amnesty International?
PS:
In October 1992. The position of Secretary
General of Amnesty is not an elected position. The Secretary General is
appointed by the international executive committee, and the executive committee
is composed of members who are elected from the membership around the world. In
1991 they advertised the post and I applied. I felt I had the background for
the qualification required to take charge of the organization at that period of
the development of the organization, which was just after the end of the Cold
War.
Q: Tell
us a little about Amnesty for those in our audience who might not be familiar
with it. What are its goals as a human rights nongovernmental organization?
PS:
Amnesty wants to contribute to the
realization of all the principles contained in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a landmark document
in the history of humankind. In 1948, for the first time in the history of
humankind, nations came together and said through this declaration, we are
proclaiming that all human beings, irrespective of their race, gender, economic
status, have rights that are inalienable and that are inherent and that nobody
can take away. That was the first time. You had declarations before that, like
the French declaration of human rights which did not include women, because
women at that time were not considered to have reason. The American Bill of
Rights did not include slaves because slaves were considered as non-persons. So
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights really is the first one that declares
that all human beings, irrespective of who they are or what they believe in,
have equal rights. And for the first time it listed what all those rights were,
and stated categorically that if we want to achieve a world of peace, a world
of justice, a world of freedom, governments and individuals need to work toward
the realization of the principles contained in the Declaration.
PS:
Amnesty was set up 13 years after [the
Declaration], in 1961, to contribute to the realization of that ideal. And the
organization started by focusing first on the prisoners of conscience, who are
people detained solely because they have ideas or beliefs which are different
from those professed by those in authority. And since then, steadily, it has
expanded its work to cover working for the abolition of torture, for the
abolition of the death penalty, working for the protection of refugees, working
for the defense of human rights in situations of armed conflicts, working to
defend and promote women's rights. Trying to hold all those in power, political
power, economic power, accountable to the citizens of the world, using the
Universal Declaration as the manifesto. And using the subsequent international
treaties that the governments have developed.
Q:
Explain to us what sort of an organization Amnesty International is.
PS:
Amnesty, from the very beginning, was set
up on the principle of international solidarity, meaning that since human
rights are universal, human rights have no borders, and therefore to promote
human rights we need to set up an organization that would be present
everywhere. Today Amnesty has 100 national structures and more that one billion
members. And it is the membership that take action on the human rights issues
that we're concerned with. The membership take action in order to affect the
life of individual victims. So we don't just promote human rights in education,
in schools, in meetings. We do not just try to influence national legislation
and policy. We actually work on individual cases. When there is a prisoner that
we want to release from prison, we prepare a file of that prisoner and we
entrust that file to an Amnesty group in another country. And the mission of
that Amnesty group is to obtain the release of that prisoner. Sometimes that
can take twenty years. That creates bonds between the Amnesty members and the
prisoner and the family of the prisoner, and this human bond is really an
expression of our belief in human rights. When we talk about human rights,
before being a matter for law, before being an issue for experts, we're talking
about ordinary people organizing to affect the lives of other ordinary people.
Q: A
colleague reminded me the other day that Arthur Koestler, in his critique of
communism, said that communism was interested in the rights of mankind but not
of man. It sounds to me like your organization has worked at that problem in
the sense that you're for the rights of mankind and womankind, but also for a
man or a woman who is actually in prison. So it must be a moving experience for
the people who are working to save the life of someone in a particular country.
Does it help motivate them that it's actually a concrete individual whom they're
working to help?
PS:
It's the greatest motivator. We live in a
world today where we are overwhelmed by human catastrophes, wars, genocide, the
killing of street children, death as the result of man-made famine, etc. But
when you have individual members who, from 5,000 miles, have been successful
after a long period of time in obtaining the release of a prisoner, and they
receive a letter from that prisoner saying thank you for what you've done,
without your support I would have probably died in prison, I think it gives an
enormous sense of pride to the membership and also the conviction that when
people are organized and determined, they can bring changes even if it is 5,000
miles away.
Q: And it
must cut the other way too. It must be quite affecting to the person who is in
prison to learn that people in a far away country are actually working for
their release.
PS:
I've received so many direct testimonies
of former prisoners or people who have been detained and tortured, people who have
been sentenced to death, that we have been able to free or stop from torture or
to save from the gallows and who continue to say that without the action of
Amnesty their fate today would certainly be different. Even the conditions in
the prison change when they start receiving these letters and the letters are
written to the prison officials. Prison officials in a far away country wonder
how this prisoner has so much support internationally and that can lead to the
prison guards being more careful. So it is not just scrutiny over the fate of
that prisoner in the prison but it becomes then the scrutiny of the whole
prison. And it is an international scrutiny, so it helps.
Q: This
work on the part of your organization, in a way, goes in tandem with the revolution
in communications, so that now what you're doing is not only known on the
ground there, in august forums like the UN, but it's also on CNN.
PS:
It is on CNN, it is on the internet. It is
a double edge sword. To a certain extent speed in communication allows us to
mobilize faster international public opinion, but at the same time we have to
be very careful that we check the information and that the information is
accurate. So you have the pressure to use the technology because it allows you
to respond much faster, and it could lead sometimes to mistakes. So we try to
use that, still being careful, but making sure that we use the technology at
our disposal for the benefit of those victims.
Q: Now
tell me a little bit about your job, in addition to being in charge of the
central office. I'd be interested in how you work with governments, how you try
to influence governments, because that must also be an important part of your
agenda.
PS:
Yes. Ultimately it is governments who keep
the keys of the prisons and who decide to close them or who decide to bring to
justice those officers who are responsible for the human rights violations. So
it is those governments that we need to convince. And we try to reason with
them. In our interaction with governments, we remind them that they have
international obligations because they are part of a wider community in the
United Nations where they have, by consensus, developed a set of rules, and
unless, in the world in which we live, governments abide by those rules, it
could be chaos.
PS:
But we don't just try to use reason
because governments have different priorities that sometimes clash with one
another and they have to make choices. So in addition to reasoning and having
this dialog and trying to convince them that it is in their best interests to
respect and promote human rights, we use also the force of moral pressure, the
pressure from public opinion, the pressure from public opinion both at home and
internationally. That we do by exposing the violations that are taking place.
No governments want to be portrayed internationally as a government that is
breaking international rules, as a government that is torturing its own people.
So what we do all the time is to make sure that the information is out there. They
would rather have the information suppressed. We make sure the information is
out there in the general public, and we ask our members then to take action, so
that governments being bombarded by letters coming from all over the world see
that their action actually is out there, that it is known to everybody. And
that it is a shame. It is through this pressure, coming from ordinary people
who at the same time will be lobbying their own government to exercise pressure
as well on the government that we are targeting. So it is this whole campaign
that leads to the results which are sometimes positive.
The Human Rights Agenda after the Cold War
Q: How
has the end of the Cold War affected human rights work? Has it made it easier
or has it made it harder?
PS: It depends on the region. I believe it has
made it harder. At the end of the Cold War there was a sentiment that we would
now be moving into a new era where governments were not encumbered anymore with
the conflicts, the East - West conflict, they would be working together to
promote the wellbeing of all inhabitants of this planet. Unfortunately, it has
not been the case. Economic interests have taken precedence over the need to
ensure that basic needs of all are satisfied. And that has led to situations in
different parts of the world where pushing for rapid economic modernization,
rapid economic openings, adoption of the markets as the response to the needs
of everybody, has led to a lot of social dislocations, even to conflicts in
many parts of the world. The feeling that people have their culture and their
identity ground into uniformity because of CNN, MTV, MacDonalds, is also
leading to further attachment to blood, to identity, and sometimes expressed in
very violent, violent ways. So this is the context in which we are operating
today, where even though people will not contest that human rights are
universal, sometimes they fall for the manipulation of governments that present
human right concerns expressed from outside as an intervention into domestic
affairs and something that undermines the sovereignty of the country.
Q: So to
crystallize what you're saying, during the Cold War Amnesty International's
agenda in Yugoslavia might have been dealing with the government; but now, in a
situation of breakdown, how you ensure human rights is much more complicated.
There may not be a government at the other end that one can address.
PS:
There are many new, what we call
“non-state actors” that play a significant role on the human right agenda. It
is not anymore just governments violating the rights of people and therefore
our target is just governments. In situations of conflict, like in the former
Yugoslavia, in many countries in Africa, where it is not very clear who is in
possession of authority, we'll have different groups committing abuses, where
people accept that because there is a war; then inevitably women will be raped,
children will be killed, civilians will be targeted. And it is an uphill battle
to insist that even wars have laws, and even in the context of wars you can
hold people accountable, that you don't have the right in war to kill an
unarmed combatant or to target civilian populations. So holding the various
armed groups accountable to the atrocities that they are committing, holding
whatever is left of the government also accountable, is a difficult exercise.
Q: What
is the effect on human rights workers and activists of problems that this new
global environment has created, such as these atrocities? Here we're talking
about, both in a European setting and in an African setting, a scale of
atrocity that hearkens back to World War II. Does that make you want to do
more, or is there a frustration that you and the people in your organization
have to overcome?
PS:
Our members always want to do more, and it
is very difficult, morally, to turn away a victim or a family of a victim, be
it a family of somebody in prison or somebody who has died, or somebody who has
been tortured. The limit really is the resources, the human resources, that we
have. Of course when people are confronted with these atrocities on a daily
basis, and when these atrocities are brought to you by the television in your
own living room, very often the reaction is, well maybe there is nothing one
can do. Maybe there is nothing one should do, these are bound to happen. And
that is what we're trying to fight against, trying to convince people that we
can change things, that we are responsible for our own history and our own
future, and that there is nothing more powerful than the organized citizenry,
especially when it cuts across national borders. That is why we continue to
attach so much importance to the setting up of Amnesty structures and Amnesty
groups throughout the world. We feel that only through action we'll be able to convince
people that it is possible to bring changes. Otherwise we will end up all being
victims.
Q: As a
leader of Amnesty, do you confront in today's world a danger of a lack of
focus, that there's so many claimants for different kinds of rights, whereas in
the earlier phase of your organization one could argue that things were more
focused? Or is that not a problem?
PS:
It is a problem. It is a problem,
obviously, whenever you enlarge the scope of your action that there will be a
risk of dilution and there is risk, even, of confusion among people. But the
fact is that the human rights movement has grown tremendously. More and more in
the human rights movement, broadly defined (defined on the basis of the various
rights contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which you find
in every country), all the areas are covered. The dilemma for an organization
like Amnesty -- which is the largest human rights organization, which is not
just called upon to act by the victims and by their families, but which is also
lobbied by other human rights groups, other interest groups, to take action --
is, what is it that we keep out? And what is it that it is legitimate to keep
out? Now fortunately, with the number of members that we have and the number of
countries where we are present, we're able to cover many issues by specializing
groups. So a group can continue to be focused, while at the international level
we can offer an array of issues that can be covered in a focused way by groups
or even by national sections.
Human Rights in the United States
Q: How do
you identify a new twist on the agenda? For example, you are now launching a
campaign on human rights in the United States. How did that decision come about
and what are its implications for what you'll be doing in the near future?
PS:
As Secretary General I'm responsible for
the strategy of the organization and for ensuring that the organization
continues to be relevant, relevant to the victims but also relevant to the
human rights movement. The human rights movement throughout the world is really
looking at Amnesty to develop its own agenda; it's taking its lead from
Amnesty, because Amnesty is one of the oldest and is the largest human rights
organization.
It is the severity of the human rights violations in a country that
trigger our reaction. But not just the severity. It is the severity but also
what we analyze as the risk of further deterioration, because of complacency or
because of lack of information, or because other actors on the international
scene are not taking action in order to stop that. We also look at windows of
opportunity. Is it the right time to do it, if we do it now before the
electoral campaigns start? Or when is it the right time to do it in order to
influence the agenda? We thought it was important to undertake this campaign,
especially in the fiftieth year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
to remind the United States government that it has obligations to the
international community and that it has to abide by the rules that it has
helped write within the context of the UN.
There are many, many people in this country who suffer from human right
violations, be it victims of police brutality, be it the number of people in
the prisons, be it the illegal immigrants who are victims of brutality or
arbitrariness, be it those who are executed (the use of the death penalty
continues to be a major concern for us). And on top of this, keep in mind that
for many countries and a large number of people, the United States is a model.
We want to make sure that when they look at this model they look at the other
side of the coin as well. And if they are to replicate this model, they need to
take measures to make sure that the human rights issues that are inherent to
the way this model is developing are addressed as they are moving in the same
direction.
Q: Why do
you think that several of the protocols have not been ratified by the United
States -- the one on children, the one on discrimination against women? What accounts
for those areas where the U.S. is so retrograde in human rights where, on the
one hand it's done so much for universal human rights, and on the other hand it
hasn't been realized very fully in our own country?
PS:
I have the feeling it is a case where the
right hand is not talking to the left hand. Eleanor Roosevelt was the chair of
the human rights commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, and many elements of Franklin Roosevelt's speech on the Four Freedoms
found their way into the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. So the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights was very much influenced by the ideals of
Americans during the war [World War II], in the period up to the war, and in
the desire to build a world after the war that would ensure that we don't see a
repetition of the atrocities.
Since then, the United States, through the State Department, through its
mission to the United Nations, etc., has been very active in the development of
all these tenets. Once these treaties are agreed by the international community
they are brought home for ratification. They go into the Congress or the Senate
and people who are very disconnected from this process and who continue to be
convinced the standards and the guarantees offered by the U.S. constitution are
the best in the world. But the international standards of decency have evolved
and today they offer, in many instances, more protection than those that are
offered to people living in the United States.
The second reason, I guess, is that people in the position to ratify
these conventions are not ready to accept that international law takes
precedence over domestic law.
Public Education
Q: As I
listen to you describe this work in the American case, I hear you saying that
what you have as a resource is the consciousness of your members about an
injustice, but often a lack of self-consciousness or maybe a blindness by the
people who are violating human rights. So, since you don't have an army at your
disposal, the link must be to public education, educating people, raising their
consciousness. What's the key to doing that? Is it just the information?
PS:
It's information, education, action. The
information is important because if we don't know what's going on it's very
difficult to take action. And that is why our research work is so meticulous,
to really unearth the information, come up with the cases, ensure that those
cases are accurate, and disseminate that information as widely as possible.
Second is the education. That is, comparing those cases, the human
rights situation, to what the international human rights standards say. And in
the process of education also inform people that they have obligations. We all
have obligations. It's not just governments, it's not just companies, but it is
also individuals. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls on
individuals and all organs of society to take action to improve this world. So
for us, human rights education is not just about educating people about their
rights but also telling them that the best way to have your rights protected is
if you work towards the protection of the rights of others.
A third element is action, so people are informed or they know that they
have obligations. We offer them opportunities of action, and the opportunities
of action that we offer are not complicated. We are not asking them to join an
army to go and free the prisoners. We are telling them, you can write a letter,
a simple letter. Anybody can do that. Writing a simple letter can indeed open
prison doors, because that letter will be one among thousands of other letters
coming from all over the world that drop by drop will work at the conscience of
those who are committing these abuses. So this is our whole approach to the
work of our membership.
Q: I'm
curious about the future of your organization and its recruitment. Looking at
students today, they're not going to have the experiences that you describe,
the struggle for national independence in Africa, your work with your mother
and your uncle in achieving rights in Senegal in 1969. What are your thoughts
about how young people will acquire the consciousness that you're talking
about? I am talking here about students in the developed world who are living
in an affluent culture.
PS:
Obviously each national section of Amnesty
will have to come up with the answers to those questions and an adequate
strategy to reach out to the younger generation. In the U.S. we have a very
strong student membership. We would like to see it grow, but I think that if
you take the whole of the U.S., Amnesty is one of the organizations that will
be present in each and every campus.
I think, in terms of our recruitment, we will probably have to adjust
our message again so that it can be appealing for the younger members. My
generation, who lived through '68, which is a very internationalist generation,
was attracted primarily by this whole concept of international solidarity.
Maybe for the younger generation it is not as compelling. Maybe the younger
generation is more inward-looking into their own culture. They are so exposed
with a uniform culture and a uniform product, that they tend to go back to
their roots and to ethnic groups, ethnic identity, etc. So we can see how we
can ride on that wave, not necessarily going against it, because it may be good
for them if it allows them to reaffirm their identity and their personality.
What is it then that we can offer to them if that is the trend in the
1990s? We can certainly offer to them, for instance in a campus like this with
a very large sector of the student body which is Chinese American, we can offer
to them to work on China, on their countries of origin, and from here
contribute to improving the human rights situation in those countries. Many
students today are interested in how they will make a living after they finish
university. Certainly we can offer them a perspective regarding the
responsibility of companies when it comes to human rights protection. So that
when they go into the companies, they will be vigilant in terms of their own
rights as workers, and also in terms of the reputation of the firm when it
comes to human rights and human wrongs.
Q: What,
looking back on your career in human rights, has been your greatest
disappointment and what has been your greatest satisfaction?
PS:
Well, disappointment ... I would say
whenever we do not succeed in sparing the life of somebody who has been
sentenced to death. The example is the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian
environmental activist and human rights campaigner who was sentenced to death
by the military junta in Nigeria. We mobilized our whole membership in the
whole world and I was convinced that they would not execute him because of this
level of mobilization. But I think I underestimated the ruthlessness of General
Sani Abacha. He did execute Ken Saro-Wiwa.
Achievement, I would say it is the repositioning of Amnesty as an
integral part of the broad human right movement. I think a few years ago
Amnesty was, in many countries, considered as being separate, isolated from the
human rights movement. And that has changed enormously. Amnesty is really, both
at the national level and at the international level, perceived as being a
central element of the human rights movement. And we want to contribute to
building that human rights movement. What we want, really, is to build a global
movement that is the global third sector that brings citizens from all over the
world together in taking charge of their lives and of the destiny of this
planet.
Q: Mr.
Sané, thank you very much for joining us and for discussing with us your life
and your work. And thank you very much for joining us for this Conversation
with History.
* III Foro Social
Mundial; Mesa: Orden mundial democrático, lucha contra la guerra y por
la paz.
Cuestiones
de América Nº 13, Febrero - Marzo de 2003
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