[caption id="attachment_111391" align="alignright" width="209"] Navi Pillay, center, the United Nations’ top human rights official, meeting in South Sudan with a rebel leader, Riek Machar, right. Credit United Nations Mission in South Sudan, via Associated Press[/caption]
GENEVA — In her final days as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay has neither slowed down nor shied away from controversy.
In mid-July, Ms. Pillay, 72, a South African, released a report setting out the right to privacy under international law and how this right had been violated by the “dangerous habit” of mass surveillance among the intelligence agencies of countries including the United States and Britain.


Days later, at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ms. Pillay called on Israel and on Hamas, the Islamist faction that dominates the Gaza Strip, to account for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity through indiscriminate attacks on civilians. She criticized Israel’s blockade of Gaza and told world powers that they needed to do “far more than they have done” to end the cycle of violence.


 

As members of her staff dig through the resulting avalanche of hate mail from both those who support Israel and those who side with the Palestinians, Ms. Pillay is preparing to meet members of the United Nations Security Council next week to discuss conflict prevention. Her tenure will end on Aug. 31 after six years, the longest term that anyone has served in the job since it was created 20 years ago.
Born into apartheid and reared as the daughter of a Tamil bus driver, Ms. Pillay rose to become the first nonwhite woman to open a law practice in South Africa and the first to be appointed as a judge in the nation’s High Court.


“I leave office with a sense of pride,” Ms. Pillay said in an interview last month in her lakeside Geneva office. In promoting human rights, she said, “I have pushed my mandate to the limit.”


As evidence of the growing influence and authority of her office, foreign policy analysts noted that Ms. Pillay had briefed the Security Council more often in her six years in the job than all six previous high commissioners combined.


But Ms. Pillay said she felt a “touch of despair” that the world had gone backward on human rights, citing the drawn-out conflicts in Syria and other regions and the failure of the international community to end them.


“I, and my predecessors and successors as high commissioner for human rights, can only offer the facts, the law and common sense,” Ms. Pillay told the Human Rights Council last month, “however much we are criticized for it.”


Human rights activists give her high marks for speaking up early and vigorously on Syria as well as on a string of crises in the Middle East, Africa and, most recently, Ukraine. Reports from commissions of inquiry, which Ms. Pillay set up to document atrocities in Syria and North Korea, are seen by many diplomats as authoritative, groundbreaking documents that provide a solid basis for eventually bringing those responsible to justice.


“Her record over all is a very strong one,” Peggy Hicks, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said in an interview from New York. “She has spoken out forcefully and effectively. She has been a powerful presence pushing for the world and the U.N. system to do more on those issues.”



Some of her predecessors showed more deference to governments, noted Michael Ignatieff, a professor specializing in government and human rights at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Ms. Pillay has shown no such inhibitions.
“Now, in 2014, we have an office that is often robustly critical,” Professor Ignatieff, a former member of the Canadian Parliament, said in a telephone interview. “It didn’t begin with her, but it’s been accelerated by her. This is an important development, and she should be praised for that.”


In the process, Ms. Pillay has attracted heavy criticism, most publicly and ferociously by governments whose actions, she insisted, warranted independent international investigation, particularly Israel, Sri Lanka and Syria. Her statements, she said, invariably brought ambassadors to her office to vent their capitals’ anger or disappointment.


Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari, called her a “lunatic,” and the country’s state-run media denounced her as a “Tamil tigress,” implying racial bias and sympathy for separatist Tamil Tiger rebels. Eviatar Manor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told her last month that she, like the Human Rights Council, had “failed dismally” in protecting the human rights of Israelis.


The pressure never worked, Ms. Pillay said, because “I feel strength in the fact it is a mandate created by all members of the U.N. because they felt the need to have an independent voice.”


Still, there has been a price. In the job, she has visited 50 or 60 countries — she has lost count — but some prominent locations never made it onto her itinerary. China invited her to visit but could never find a suitable date. “I should think it’s because they see me as someone who speaks out for victims,” Ms. Pillay said.


The United States never invited her, despite her asking to visit several times in hopes of taking up “the many issues that trouble us,” she said, specifically drone strikes and targeted killings.


“That does not show the United States in a good light,” Ms. Pillay said. To preserve its authority in the world, she said, America cannot exempt itself, or its allies, from the standards it invokes to chastise other countries.


Such bluntness appears to have cost Ms. Pillay in other ways. She acknowledges the American backing that she received for some of the causes she pursued in the Human Rights Council. But in 2012, when her first, four-year term as commissioner ended, she did not receive a full second term. Diplomats cited by the news media at the time said that American displeasure with her criticism of Israel had been a factor in that decision.


Human rights commissioners are appointed by the United Nations secretary general, subject to approval by the General Assembly, but major powers have a decisive say. Ms. Pillay was offered, and accepted, two more years in the job, faring better than any of her predecessors, none of whom received an extension. But, she said, the half-measure was “not accidental.”



Ms. Pillay said she had been told that certain countries did not want a high commissioner who was too independent. Other governments viewed the work of her office with suspicion. Some feared that she was pushing for broader democratic rights, and others challenged her support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender causes. They all argued that she should avoid creating new rights. “That came up again and again,” she said.
What troubled Ms. Pillay most, she said, was the failure of the United Nations and its member states to allocate the funding for her office to keep up with the workload created by ever-growing demands.


From a handful of staff members in New York 20 years ago, the human rights division has grown into an operation that maintains a presence in 58 countries, she said, yet it receives less than 3 percent of the United Nations’ budget. “No organization can work like that,” she said.


Her agency’s field offices, which monitor events, train officials and help draft laws or constitutions, are “where we translate the rhetoric of human rights into action,” Ms. Pillay said. As an example, she said that Egypt, after an international outcry over recent rulings in its courts, had requested training for its judges. But her office is so strapped for cash, she said, that she has been unable to answer 20 government requests for assistance.


“That’s my biggest disappointment and fear for this office,” Ms. Pillay said, “that lack of resources will cripple the work.”


GENEVA — In her final days as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay has neither slowed down nor shied away from controversy.


In mid-July, Ms. Pillay, 72, a South African, released a report setting out the right to privacy under international law and how this right had been violated by the “dangerous habit” of mass surveillance among the intelligence agencies of countries including the United States and Britain.


Days later, at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Ms. Pillay called on Israel and on Hamas, the Islamist faction that dominates the Gaza Strip, to account for possible war crimes and crimes against humanity through indiscriminate attacks on civilians. She criticized Israel’s blockade of Gaza and told world powers that they needed to do “far more than they have done” to end the cycle of violence.






 
As members of her staff dig through the resulting avalanche of hate mail from both those who support Israel and those who side with the Palestinians, Ms. Pillay is preparing to meet members of the United Nations Security Council next week to discuss conflict prevention. Her tenure will end on Aug. 31 after six years, the longest term that anyone has served in the job since it was created 20 years ago.


Born into apartheid and reared as the daughter of a Tamil bus driver, Ms. Pillay rose to become the first nonwhite woman to open a law practice in South Africa and the first to be appointed as a judge in the nation’s High Court.


“I leave office with a sense of pride,” Ms. Pillay said in an interview last month in her lakeside Geneva office. In promoting human rights, she said, “I have pushed my mandate to the limit.”


As evidence of the growing influence and authority of her office, foreign policy analysts noted that Ms. Pillay had briefed the Security Council more often in her six years in the job than all six previous high commissioners combined.


But Ms. Pillay said she felt a “touch of despair” that the world had gone backward on human rights, citing the drawn-out conflicts in Syria and other regions and the failure of the international community to end them.


“I, and my predecessors and successors as high commissioner for human rights, can only offer the facts, the law and common sense,” Ms. Pillay told the Human Rights Council last month, “however much we are criticized for it.”


Human rights activists give her high marks for speaking up early and vigorously on Syria as well as on a string of crises in the Middle East, Africa and, most recently, Ukraine. Reports from commissions of inquiry, which Ms. Pillay set up to document atrocities in Syria and North Korea, are seen by many diplomats as authoritative, groundbreaking documents that provide a solid basis for eventually bringing those responsible to justice.


“Her record over all is a very strong one,” Peggy Hicks, advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said in an interview from New York. “She has spoken out forcefully and effectively. She has been a powerful presence pushing for the world and the U.N. system to do more on those issues.”



Some of her predecessors showed more deference to governments, noted Michael Ignatieff, a professor specializing in government and human rights at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Ms. Pillay has shown no such inhibitions.
“Now, in 2014, we have an office that is often robustly critical,” Professor Ignatieff, a former member of the Canadian Parliament, said in a telephone interview. “It didn’t begin with her, but it’s been accelerated by her. This is an important development, and she should be praised for that.”


In the process, Ms. Pillay has attracted heavy criticism, most publicly and ferociously by governments whose actions, she insisted, warranted independent international investigation, particularly Israel, Sri Lanka and Syria. Her statements, she said, invariably brought ambassadors to her office to vent their capitals’ anger or disappointment.


Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Bashar al-Jaafari, called her a “lunatic,” and the country’s state-run media denounced her as a “Tamil tigress,” implying racial bias and sympathy for separatist Tamil Tiger rebels. Eviatar Manor, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, told her last month that she, like the Human Rights Council, had “failed dismally” in protecting the human rights of Israelis.


The pressure never worked, Ms. Pillay said, because “I feel strength in the fact it is a mandate created by all members of the U.N. because they felt the need to have an independent voice.”


Still, there has been a price. In the job, she has visited 50 or 60 countries — she has lost count — but some prominent locations never made it onto her itinerary. China invited her to visit but could never find a suitable date. “I should think it’s because they see me as someone who speaks out for victims,” Ms. Pillay said.


The United States never invited her, despite her asking to visit several times in hopes of taking up “the many issues that trouble us,” she said, specifically drone strikes and targeted killings.


“That does not show the United States in a good light,” Ms. Pillay said. To preserve its authority in the world, she said, America cannot exempt itself, or its allies, from the standards it invokes to chastise other countries.


Such bluntness appears to have cost Ms. Pillay in other ways. She acknowledges the American backing that she received for some of the causes she pursued in the Human Rights Council. But in 2012, when her first, four-year term as commissioner ended, she did not receive a full second term. Diplomats cited by the news media at the time said that American displeasure with her criticism of Israel had been a factor in that decision.


Human rights commissioners are appointed by the United Nations secretary general, subject to approval by the General Assembly, but major powers have a decisive say. Ms. Pillay was offered, and accepted, two more years in the job, faring better than any of her predecessors, none of whom received an extension. But, she said, the half-measure was “not accidental.”



Ms. Pillay said she had been told that certain countries did not want a high commissioner who was too independent. Other governments viewed the work of her office with suspicion. Some feared that she was pushing for broader democratic rights, and others challenged her support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender causes. They all argued that she should avoid creating new rights. “That came up again and again,” she said.
What troubled Ms. Pillay most, she said, was the failure of the United Nations and its member states to allocate the funding for her office to keep up with the workload created by ever-growing demands.


From a handful of staff members in New York 20 years ago, the human rights division has grown into an operation that maintains a presence in 58 countries, she said, yet it receives less than 3 percent of the United Nations’ budget. “No organization can work like that,” she said.


Her agency’s field offices, which monitor events, train officials and help draft laws or constitutions, are “where we translate the rhetoric of human rights into action,” Ms. Pillay said. As an example, she said that Egypt, after an international outcry over recent rulings in its courts, had requested training for its judges. But her office is so strapped for cash, she said, that she has been unable to answer 20 government requests for assistance.


“That’s my biggest disappointment and fear for this office,” Ms. Pillay said, “that lack of resources will cripple the work.”


By The New York Times





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