Mandeville Lecture

• Mandeville Lecture
  • Mandeville Lecture 2012
  • Bernard Mandeville
  • Bernard Mandeville Foundation
  • Former lectures
    • 11th Mandeville Lecture
    • 12th Mandeville Lecture
    • 13th Mandeville Lecture
      • Introduction
      • On human dignity
      • Honorary ceremony
      • Photo Impression
    • 14th Mandeville Lecture
    • 15th Mandeville Lecture
    • 16th Mandeville Lecture
    • 17th Mandeville Lecture

Ladies and gentlemen,

The Bernard Mandeville Foundation uses this occasion to put the work of Amnesty International, a non-profit organisation, in the spotlight in the person of myself. I feel greatly honoured. The more so because I doubt whether Bernard Mandeville would have fully agreed. After all, Amnesty International can hardly be considered the embodiment of his ‘private vices, public benefits’ notion. On the other hand, one could argue that the Foundation is displaying a certain contrariness towards its name giver with this mark of honour to socially responsible work, since that is what Amnesty International is trying to achieve. I have a suspicion that this is what Mandeville would certainly have appreciated.

The Foundation has honoured illustrious people such as Max van der Stoel, Bernard Kouchner, Ruud Lubbers and Frits Bolkestein. It is an honour to be allowed to join this gallery. This honour is none the worse for the fact that, of late, the Foundation has decidedly received women into the gallery as well; I am thinking of Carla del Ponte and Jaya Arunachalam.

In his 2004 Mandeville Lecture, Frits Bolkestein pointed with approval to the individualism propagated by Bernard Mandeville. Mandeville did this in a time when the very union of a people and its leaders (community spirit) was considered essential to a thriving social order in which people could live in dignity. Today the idea of community spirit, sometimes called communitarianism, is again receiving a lot of attention, especially in Dutch political ideas and actions.

Due to my personal history, pleas for a political order based on union or community spirit always remind me of Suriname. More than 25 years ago, following a military coup, the new rulers introduced new social structures such as people’s committees, district councils and advisory bodies – aimed at ‘promoting a solid national unity’.[i] According to critics of the then military regime, this meant that ‘those parts of the People, which have a fundamentally deviating opinion, initially [italics added] have no other choice than to be silent or conform after all…’.[ii] In the end, it turned out the critics had no choice at all. They were silenced; the victims of the December murders in 1982, among them my husband, Kenneth Gonçalves, president of the Suriname Bar Council, were even silenced forever.

You may understand why I, while I hope I’m not an egoist despite Mandeville, am on the alert, along with him and other individualists, as soon as I hear union, community spirit or solid national unity being preached. To me, the rule of law seems most definitely worth fighting for. We should not squander democracy. Stimulating everyone’s participation in society is important. But I believe that everyone’s equal, free and active participation in a democratic constitutional state will lead to multiformity rather than uniformity. We must be alert for union in the sense of uniformity. I agree with Mandeville on that. Union often betrays more pressure than freedom. We should give free rein to the individual love for freedom, whether you would prefer to call this a virtue or a vice.

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Bernard Mandeville was an eccentric Londoner (maybe it would be more polite here to say: man from Rotterdam) whose ideas where far ahead of his time. Mandeville was not the last eccentric Londoner with an eye for individual freedom. The flamboyant Englishman who inspires me is called Peter Benenson. An unruly lawyer who has founded more than one organisation during his life, often with a view to the direct support and protection of individuals. Amnesty International was probably his biggest success.

A newspaper article about the imprisonment of two Portuguese students who had been drinking a toast to freedom inspired him in 1961 to set up a campaign for the immediate and unconditional release of prisoners who were imprisoned solely because of their opinions or beliefs. Starting out with a feature article in The Observer the campaign soon became a permanent movement. The result was Amnesty International – nowadays a worldwide movement with national sections in fifty countries and smaller national structures in another fourteen countries, more than two million members worldwide and 290,000 members in the Netherlands.

One could say that Peter Benenson invented the prisoner of conscience. More than anybody else he knew how to conjure up an image of people, individuals imprisoned because of their opinions or beliefs. Not because of unlawful or even violent acts they supposedly had committed because of that belief, but because of the very belief itself. If there is one thing which constitutes an attack on individualism, it is a ban on opinions that are not the opinions of the state or society. The protection of freedom of opinion and freedom of speech (these are not similar) has continued to be Amnesty International’s trademark for more than forty years, although through the years this was extended with the fight against torture, the death penalty, ‘disappearances’ and extrajudicial executions.

In 2005 Peter Benenson died at the age of 83. At the time, the organisation he founded was in the middle of a change process which would lead to ‘those other human rights’ being included in its scope as well.

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‘Those other rights’ are the economic, social and cultural human rights - sometimes associated with population groups rather than individuals. For decades, the contrast between (in short) social rights and civil and political rights has been heavily accentuated in the literature and in the practices of governments, for example in their foreign policies. While the one would claim priority for social rights, the other was of the opinion that, without civil and political rights, social rights had no chance of realisation.

How to interpret this contrast and the priority debate? I will not summarise the literature on this subject. Even if I could, here is not the place now. Nevertheless, let me take you back in history for the question on the relation between civil and political rights on the one hand, and social rights on the other. Not to find out what the founding fathers and the founding mother, Eleanor Roosevelt, would literally have meant with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – for this is the document in which both types of rights converge in modern history—but to look at the 'founding moment’. Maybe I should say the ‘founding period’, because it is a period rather than a moment that determined the creation of the Universal Declaration.

The formal moment of acceptance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is the United Nations General Assembly of 10 December 1948. But I think that for the defining period we will have to go back to the middle of the Second World War.

In a few days, on 4 June, it will be 65 years since Reinhard Heydrich died. He was the chief of the Reichssicherheitshauptambt and in that capacity he was the architect of the persecution and extermination of the Jews which was the Second World War’s dark companion from the beginning until the bitter end. A little over a week before he had been the victim of an assault. Heydrich was responsible for the organisational, practical and financial preparations for an ‘all-embracing solution of the Jewish issue in the German sphere of influence in Europe’.[iii] To this end, Heydrich had summoned the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, which later became notorious. The political decision about the extermination of the Jews in Europe had already been taken earlier; now in a villa on the Wannsee its execution was discussed. The official conference report states the numbers of Jews to be exterminated per European country: 2,284,000 in Poland, 160,800 in the Netherlands and 5 million in the former Soviet Union. Prosecutors in Nuerenberg later called it ‘perhaps the most scandalous document in modern history’.

Heydrich did not suddenly start the systematic killing of German and European Jews in 1942. It was preceded by a programme of many years, carried out with a still disputed level of improvisation. It ended in mass murder, but it was preceded by concentration of people in ghettos and transit camps, followed by deportation. But that was not the beginning either. It started with social exclusion: political exclusion, economic exclusion (‘do not buy from Jews’), social exclusion (‘Jews not allowed’) and cultural exclusion.

In the Netherlands, the Kultuurkamer was an example of cultural exclusion. Artists and authors could only practise their professions if they were members of the Kultuurkamer. However, Jews and those married to Jews were not allowed to become members. ‘The new regulation, which we have now arrived at, implies that the cultural worker will become a part of the people again‘, according to one of the better known statements of the chairman of the Kultuurkamer, philosopher Tobie Goedewaagen. There it is: corporatism, community spirit, solid national unity – all to be found in the Kultuurkamer and, in a broader sense, in the National Socialist philosophy.

In 1999 the American professor of political philosophy Johannes Moorsink wrote a detailed history of the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.[iv] He demonstrates how numerous parts of the Declaration should be interpreted as a direct reaction to the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War. Not just as a reaction to the systematic extermination of this population group, but also to the forms of persecution which accompanied it and often preceded it. It is an interpretation of the Declaration which is becoming rarer these days, maybe because fewer people are using the Second World War as a moral reference point, even though it can tell us a lot, especially on the full scope of the term human rights.

For those who do not take the Second World War into account, the Universal Declaration will easily seem a two-faced document. In the first articles, the authors have formulated real rights – civil and political rights such as the right to life and the freedom from torture, slavery and arbitrary imprisonment. After the real rights, we suddenly see utopian ideas: the right to marry, the right to own property, the right to social security, the right to work, the right to rest and leisure, education and participation in cultural life.

Reading the Universal Declaration in light of the persecution of the Jews, you will, however, not see a two-faced document, but a coherent answer to ‘the most scandalous document in modern history’, the report of the Wannsee Conference and what preceded it.

Against political exclusion the Universal Declaration states the right to political participation (Article 21); against economic exclusion the right to own property (Article 17) and the right to an adequate standard of living (Article 25); against social exclusion the right to marry without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion (Article 16); against cultural exclusion and corporatist Kultuurkamers the right to freely participate in the cultural life of the community (Article 27). Finally, against the systematic extermination of the European Jews and arbitrary killings the right to life (Article 3). All these rights apply to everyone, without discrimination (Article 2).

In the Declaration, civil and political rights do not compete for priority with economic, social and cultural rights, but all rights are applied equally to protect human dignity. Individual human dignity.

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The coherent interpretation of the Universal Declaration which I set against the two-faced interpretation also allows us to understand the so-called indivisibility of human rights – an axiom for both ministers and human rights activists. It does not, I believe, mean that the enjoyment of all human rights is required to be able to exercise just one human right. Neither does indivisibility mean in the first place that the violation of one right necessarily constitutes a violation of all rights. Indivisibility in the first instance means that exercising or enjoying all human rights is essential to living in human dignity.

Nelson Mandela, on the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration, said:
”As I sit in Qunu, my village, and grow as ancient as its hills, I will continue to entertain the hope that there has emerged a cadre of leaders in my own country and region, on my continent and in the world, which will not allow that any should be denied their freedom as we were; … that any should be condemned to go as hungry as we were; that any should be stripped of their human dignity as we were.[v]

Mandela brackets together denial of freedom and condemnation to hunger as violation of human dignity. When I had the pleasure of addressing him in the name of Amnesty International in South Africa last year, on the presentation of the Ambassador of Conscience Award, he emphasized these words by saying:
“Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is people who have made poverty and tolerated poverty, and it is people who will overcome it. Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice. It is the protection of fundamental human rights. Everyone everywhere has the right to live with dignity, free from fear and oppression, free from hunger and thirst, and free to express themselves and associate at will. … While poverty persists, there is no true freedom. Amnesty International is right to stand up against the rights violations that drive and deepen poverty.”[vi]

According to Nelson Mandela, that wise South African, the movement founded by Peter Benenson, that self-willed Londoner, is correct in adding those other rights, the social rights, to its agenda. After all, living in human dignity means a life in which all human rights are realised. This can be progressive realisation, but it does apply to all human rights. That is how I would like to read the indivisibility of human rights.

Violations of social rights too make individual victims, are attributable to demonstrably responsible perpetrators, and have remedies. In some European states Roma children do not receive education or they receive education separately, while the means for equal education are available. In Zimbabwe in times of scarcity, food distribution was organised along political lines. In the Occupied Territories, Israel is guilty of demolishing houses as a collective sanction banned according to international law. These are just a few examples of violations of the right to education, the right to food and the right to housing which could have been prevented or remedied.

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Human dignity – that is what human rights are ultimately about. No matter how exactly we should understand this dignity, individual freedom is central to it. This individual freedom does not only assume a government who refrains from prosecuting its citizens or restricting their freedoms. Individual freedom also assumes a safe environment in which freedoms can be exercised and rights can be enjoyed.

Over the past few years, human rights organisations have shown greater awareness of the necessity of a safe environment. As a result, they have come to show more appreciation for the state as a protector ­of human rights and human dignity and not just as a threat to these rights and this dignity. The body politic, after all, is an important tool in creating and maintaining safe environments.

Don’t get me wrong: in many places in this world the state still poses a threat to human rights. Last week Amnesty International presented its Report 2007. Regrettably, just like every year, this book again brims with human rights violations committed by states.

Take the violence used against the political opposition in Zimbabwe. Take the crimes against humanity in the Sudanese region of Darfur. Don’t forget the Chinese re-education camps. These days, European governments and businesses would rather think them away, but these camps will still be there next year when the Olympic Games are held in Beijing. Amnesty International continues to target these and similar forms of government-made human rights violations. And Amnesty will continue to call other states to account with respect to their joint responsibility, for example as arms suppliers, for what is happening in Sudan and elsewhere.

But I also know the story of a Russian journalist who one evening sees a man hit a woman at a street corner. He doesn’t wait to report this at a nearby police station. They take the matter in hand right away. And so fast, for a police officer returning to the station after just a few minutes tells the journalist: ‘no problem, the man wasn’t beating a woman, he was beating his wife’.[vii]

This is an example in which the state is not the primary perpetrator, yet fails to create a safe environment in which the citizen can exercise his or her freedoms and rights. Violence against women is a huge problem worldwide. For example, criminal action is taken in only a fraction of rape cases involving women. In even fewer cases, the perpetrators are actually convicted. As a result of legal, political, economic and social inequality of women, serious physical violence against women can continue to go unpunished in many places in the world. If equal rights for everyone constitutes the promise of the Universal Declaration, then nearly all governments still have a lot to do when it comes to their female citizens.

The fight against violence against women requires an active government, not just a government who sees to it that its own system is free of such violence. The banning of violence against women requires a government who creates social safety for its female citizens.

Similarly, freedom from discrimination asks more from a government system than just not showing discrimination. Protection of human dignity requires that governments not only respect the prohibition of discrimination, but protect citizens against discrimination by others and create conditions which allow people to exercise their rights, free from discrimination. Recent research from Amnesty International Netherlands shows that in the Netherlands it is mainly the rapport between national and local authorities which leaves something to be desired when it comes to fighting discrimination.

In short, the true promotion of human dignity requires a government which actually protects this dignity outside the boundaries of its own system as well and which does not abandon its citizens, both male and female, at their own and each other’s mercy. The true promotion of human dignity even requires states which look beyond their own boundaries, not just to spot future threats in time, but especially to identify opportunities to help others.

However, the promotion of human dignity is not just the government’s responsibility. It is a task for everyone. In a globalising world with more and more important roles for non-state actors, both in national and international arenas, Amnesty International also tackles these parties about what they can do for the protection and promotion of human rights. Financial institutions, ICT companies, the arms industry, the clothes industry, companies in the oil and gas sectors – all companies in all sectors can contribute to the protection and promotion of human rights. By supporting or facilitating workers’ representations, when governments fail to do this or sabotage it. By setting up good chain agreements to prevent child labour and forced labour. Or, in the case of internet providers, by not providing governments with information that may lead to the arrest of human rights activists or political opponents.

I regret that in the last few years, while the UN Human Rights Standards for Business were being developed, the Dutch business community chose to adopt an expectant, even an evasive position. The argument is that voluntariness should suffice. In practice, this turns out not to be true. Companies that essentially pursue decent practices easily yield as well when other, competitive companies don’t. Binding rules are the only safeguard against such a negative spiral.

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When governments and other leaders fail to create a safe environment in which people can actually enjoy their rights and freedoms, fear automatically will pervade it. And fear is a bad environment for human dignity, individualism and multiformity. Fear makes people long for community spirit, solid national unity and uniformity. In an evironment filled with fear burkas, veils and headscarves become threats, while they should be the free choice of women – women protected by the government and respected by religious leaders, even if they opt for not wearing the burka, veil or headscarf.

In a fear-pervaded environment there is no room for foreigners and others. Even the place of those who keep two passports will eventually be disputed. Double nationality, double loyalty, multiple identity: there is no room for it as soon as fear has overtaken.

I am a woman, of Surinamese descent, a lawyer, a working women, a mother and I have other limitations as well. I was born Dutch, Surinamese citizenship simply fell into my lap because of Surinamese independence. As a political refugee, I was given Dutch citizenship. I respect queen, flag and country. And yet I will always love and long for my motherland. I do not know the words of the Dutch national anthem and do not intend to learn them. When I hear the alternative Surinamese anthem “Mi kondre tru mi lobi you”, I am moved to tears. I share this multiple identity and loyalty with millions of migrants and refugees. But, I think, also with each of you who will not let themselves be defined one-dimensionally by race, sex or nationality.

Human rights protect the boundless dignity of us all. In the public sector, in society and in our private lives. In our own country and beyond. Human dignity is not bound to a border or nationality. Everywhere the individual deserves respect, protection and a safe environment in which he or she can make individual choices. This requires good policy from active governments and inspiring leadership, everywhere in the world.

Eventually, this requires a moral universalism, in which everyone counts, linked to respect for legitimate differences which leave or create room for multiformity and individualism. Call it cosmopolitism if you like. Either way, it is the opposite of a line of thinking that strives for uniformity and solid national unity.

With a light-hearted play on Mandeville I see the world as a buzzing beehive of several thousands of millions of individuals who – from selfishness, from virtue and from vice – develop activities. And who act in healthy rivalry and with great energy, but without pushing each other out of the safe space in which everyone’s rights are protected and promoted. Maybe this imbues my plea with a mental legacy that is not very radical. I comfort myself with the idea that Mandeville, too, was aware of this. For he said: ‘The common fate of measure is that it doesn’t bring you friends and neither does it calm your enemies.’[viii] So be it.

Thank you for your attention.