Nobel laureate Navi Pillay talks justice, power and accountability

You can also listen to this podcast on iono.fm here.

Guests on today’s show:

* Nobel Peace Prize winner and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay talks justice, power and accountability with Jeremy Maggs

* Could El Niño drive up food prices in South Africa? – Mike Townshend, portfolio manager at Foord weighs in …

Below is a transcript of Maggs’s interview with Pillay: 

JEREMY MAGGS: She has spent a lifetime confronting injustice, from the brutality of apartheid to the horrors of genocide and war crimes.

Judge Navi Pillay has served as a judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC), as United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, and as a leading voice for accountability across the world.

Now recognised with the Nobel Peace Prize, she joins us at a time when international law is under extraordinary pressure and the world’s most powerful nations increasingly appear willing to ignore it.

Read: South African human rights lawyer Navi Pillay awarded Nobel peace prize

Judge Pillay, thank you very much. Let me start with this, you’ve devoted your entire professional life to fighting injustice. Does the Nobel Peace Prize feel like a victory to you, or just a reminder, perhaps, of how much remains undone?

NAVI PILLAY: Well, Jeremy, obviously, I didn’t apply for the award. I didn’t realise they were even considering me. I met with the selection board members in The Hague two days ago, and they appeared to have been researching me from January – a whole year – and I didn’t know.

So firstly, I do celebrate this award. But secondly, you are quite right: it’s a reminder of unfinished work and as old as I am, I’ve been saying I’m not going to stop doing human rights work as long as the violations continue.

It is a particularly troubling moment for human rights, but especially for the rule of law, for multilateralism, where states get together and make decisions in the organs that have the power, the Security Council, the General Assembly on, for instance, whether to attack another country.

Read: Navi Pillay’s Nobel peace prize is a vote of confidence in a global legal order under fire

All that’s a threat, but from my point of view, it’s a threat to international justice. That troubles me most as the threatened sanctions against the ICC and thereafter that the Trump administration followed through.

Where in the world would you have a government sanctioning or taking action against judges for the orders they deliver?

So it’s very alarming, and it’s a deeply emotional matter.

If I may continue, Jeremy, the first thing I did when I left Nuremberg and got to The Hague was to go to that court. I was invited by the president to come join them at their full staff meeting.

If you see that, how much that visit alone meant to the staff and how much their emotions and fears of the threat hanging over them was conveyed to me just on their faces.

I went there to show solidarity, to deliver hope that the international community, the entire population of the world, ordinary people, they want justice and accountability.

We will never let the ICC be destroyed.

JEREMY MAGGS: You talk about never giving up hope and have just outlined how you’ve helped build the international system of justice.

How worried are you at this point, at this juncture? The very system that you’ve devoted your life to is now starting to unravel, it would seem.

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NAVI PILLAY: Yes, yes, I and many, many others are worried because the threats are real, and [those making them] can deliver on those threats. They have remote-controlled armed drones. You can be killed in your home without even being aware that you are targeted for killing.

Families are at risk, children are at risk. It’s just reckless killing of civilians. That’s unusual. Of course, we’ve always had conflicts, since World War II, there [have been] conflicts in various parts of the world, but we have never had a third world war.

In fact, Europe, a few years ago, was given the Nobel Prize for Peace simply because [it had] prevented war in Europe since World War II.

So therefore, the threat we now face is real.

It’s being done by leaders in the United States, leaders in Israel, who are defying the international rule of law.

JEREMY MAGGS: Is the suggestion that it’s now a fundamental breakdown of international law?

NAVI PILLAY: I would still call it a threat because of what I saw at the court and the resilience that both the judges, the prosecuting team and the hundreds of staff who were there.

They believe there should be no impunity for these serious crimes, and they will continue to work. Because of that resistance and resilience, combined with civil society, with people, my support comes from ordinary people all over the world.

I gave a number of interviews in The Hague, even three to Japanese television [stations]. So these calls for interviews are coming from very many countries. I’m surprised that they’re all following this.

They’ve explained to me that that arises from these concerns about the breakdown of the international rule of order.

JEREMY MAGGS: Judge Pillay, in that respect, then, and you talk about the voices and the concerns of ordinary people. Does it still give you a degree of hope that ordinary people are bringing about the notion that things can still turn around?

NAVI PILLAY: Yes, I do. Maybe because of my experience as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights for six years and going to various countries, seeing both the highest level of government as well as people on the ground and just being informed.

I concluded that it’s not a trajectory going right down to the ground, even from top to down. Some people actually said it’s the end of human rights.

This was during the first term served by President Trump, and many students at American universities asked me to address them. I was told they’re all very depressed.

Read/listen: Navi Pillay’s Nobel: A victory for justice, a headache for Trump

I said to them, I thought it was ups and downs, that’s what happens in human rights protection, ups and downs, because people will never let go of these hard-earned mechanisms to make governments accountable.

JEREMY MAGGS: Do you think international law is genuinely international at this point, or does it still apply more forcefully to weaker countries than more powerful ones?

NAVI PILLAY: We don’t have a perfect system at all, Jeremy. We will have what one can call a universal permanent world court if all the states sign up to the Rome Statute, and they haven’t.

Big countries, in fact, three of the veto-holding states – Russia, China and the United States – are not parties to this court. There are just 125, plus-minus, member countries that have signed up.

So we still do not have a perfect system to ensure that serious violations and to ensure that atrocity crimes are not committed against civilians. I found in my experience, it’s not all the way down, this is a dead end, no, it’s ups and downs.

And why? It’s because of the effort of all the human rights defenders, ordinary people speaking out about it, writing about it. There are huge protests in streets all over for the government to deliver on their promises.

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JEREMY MAGGS: Do you think, Judge Pillay, it’s become more difficult to persuade ordinary people, though, to believe in a system that too many will appear to have obvious double standards?

NAVI PILLAY: There’s all that. Crime still continues, [and] there are double standards. For instance, I mentioned these three powerful states. They can use the veto to protect themselves from investigation or prosecution.

But let’s remind ourselves, the ICC doesn’t exercise supervening jurisdiction over national jurisdictions. So there is misinformation being spread, particularly from the US and Israel, that this is what’s happening.

Whereas the statute is clear, the United States could now, even now, investigate and prosecute soldiers who may have violated the laws of war and crime and committed crimes such as crimes against humanity.

They have, in the past, been the one country that did prosecute its own soldiers. So if they start an investigation or prosecute, the ICC will not step in. Similarly, with every country: if you prosecute and you investigate it.

So really the ICC is there to help, to be an incentive to help states.

I have often said that, under apartheid, we were governed by an immoral law, which was not compatible with the Universal Charter of Human Rights that the UN adopted, and which our own apartheid government supported at the UN.

Yet we had no access to justice in an independent international forum, and I always felt that loss. I wished there was a better moral system than ours.

But now, Jeremy, I am citing the end of apartheid as one of my grounds for hope that that there was collective action by civil society and governments all over the world, plus a change of mind from the US and the UK to support the sanctions imposed by the UN against apartheid South Africa.

So that’s an example of how collective action succeeded.

Therefore, we cannot lose hope. We cannot give way to pressure. We have to continue to strategise and to struggle. But it has to be without violence.

We cannot condone violent protests either.

JEREMY MAGGS: Judge Pillay, your award has not been without its very vocal detractors. The UN commission concluded that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza. What do you say to those who dispute that finding and question the impartiality of your investigation?

NAVI PILLAY: Firstly, they have accused me and the other two commissioners – one from India and one from Australia, with the wonderful team doing all the groundwork – they have accused us of bias and of lying.

The thing is, they didn’t let us into the country, but we got most of our information from inside Israel. There’s huge support there from ordinary people.

We held oral hearings in Geneva. We heard from doctors and journalists. It took us two years to prepare that report. There is not a single fact that we put out there that was not personally verified by us, together with the entire machinery of the UN, that helped us with satellite footage and so on.

It’s a very comprehensive work. As I said, it took us two years to prepare, and I say to our detractors that this report is written very closely to what a court judgment would look like.

So we invite anybody, since the report is public, read the facts as we’ve set it out. Look at the law. Look at the statements that we set out of the utterances of leaders whom we name as responsible for genocide and make your own decision.

That way, you can resist this false propaganda [that] is trying to discredit a report that will soon be considered by the highest court in the world, the ICC.

JEREMY MAGGS: Judge Pillay, when governments reject those findings that you put out. What practical consequences, then, do you think should follow?

NAVI PILLAY: I think there should be stronger action by other states. There should be a clear statement by other states that they support this report.

Right now, there should be a clear statement from all states condemning this action taken against the ICC. All states that support the ICC, and there are 125, I think now, should strongly express their opposition and take action to ensure that the destruction of the court does not happen.

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So more collective action from governments and they will find the people on the streets are very ready to support them in stronger action against one or two countries trying to destroy the multilateral system, trying to destroy the international rule of law.

JEREMY MAGGS: What would you say directly to political leaders, Judge Pillay, who believe they are above international law?

NAVI PILLAY: I would say: you passed these laws. You passed the Rome Statute. You passed the Convention Against Torture, very many treaties, the conventions on civil and political rights for everyone in the world, and the Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

Who passed these international laws? It was states. Civil society may have made demands and followed up and did lots of the drafting, but it was the decision of governments.

So why don’t they deliver on the obligations that they had undertaken under these various laws? So that would be my strongest criticism.

As High Commissioner, we zeroed in just on matters of concern and offered assistance and help to do that.

I visited 79 countries, so it was, a great deal of work, but an objective assessment of the same problems in every country where governments fail to deliver on the demands of the people.

JEREMY MAGGS: As you told me earlier, you lived through apartheid and helped shape international justice. I wonder when you look at our country today, are you proud of what you’ve become, of what we’ve become, or disappointed perhaps by the opportunities that we’ve squandered?

NAVI PILLAY: I agree that we have had many opportunities. They’re not just opportunities, they are legal provisions, a wonderful Constitution that the whole world respects.

But there has been no delivery on the ground and great unhappiness. We truly are deeply concerned when a major part of the population is poverty-stricken and unemployed. So great disappointment.

It can be done because we do have the institutions in place. We just need proper people to ensure that they carry out their jobs properly.

This is why, Jeremy, I first was surprised that I got the award because I thought I was just doing my job as the people expect me to. We need more of that, people taking responsibility for their jobs.

Corruption has reached huge levels, we’re all highly disturbed about that.

But I firmly believe all that can be turned around because we have what the UN calls tools to make the change, to make the transformation happen.

So very good structures, very poor delivery.

I can understand why we South Africans are unhappy and why we are constantly in the news for terrible crimes, especially sexual crimes against women.

JEREMY MAGGS: Navi Pillay, let me ask you one final question, because I do appreciate the time you’ve given us. After everything you’ve witnessed, the cruelty, the suffering, the extraordinary courage of victims at times – have you ever come close to losing faith in humanity?

NAVI PILLAY: I’m human, Jeremy, so you do have huge disappointment, your heart sinking.

For instance, I still think what have I achieved as High Commissioner when the reality on the ground is that the world is so clearly divided between the very rich and powerful and the poor, and so I live troubled by that situation, the larger picture in the world.

I intend to continue. I do believe Africa has suffered as a result of colonisation, and there has to be discussions on reparations, for instance.

So we have much to be concerned about, but not just to sink in despair, but to take action wherever we can.

This award is truly significant because they awarded it for justice and accountability. That’s how I see it.

JEREMY MAGGS: Judge Navi Pillay, thank you very much for talking to me today.

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