By Zelim Skurbaty, Ph.D., LL.D., The Danish Center for Human Rights
Speech delivered at the Graduation Ceremony for
the Master of Arts Students in Human Righs and Democratization
16 November 2001, Malta University, Valetta
Only for those without hope that hope is given to us
Good afternoon Mr. Rector, members of the University Senate, graduates, teachers, friends,
First of all, I want to thank on behalf of the Danish Center for Human Rights as well as on my own behalf Prof. Roger Michaleff, Rector of the Malta University, the Dean of the Faculty of Laws Prof.
Ian Refalo, the Foundation for International Studies, Mr. Leslie Agius along with Ms Cynthia D’Amato and Ms Therese Cachia, for the honor to be part of this solemn and important ceremony. I feel grateful and privileged at the opportunity to address the graduates as well as the ‘rookies’ of the master of Arts human rights.
The Danish Center for Human Rights attaches great importance to the situation with human rights in the Mediterranean region as well as the ways and means of improving it, the evidence of which could be the fact that the Center houses and closely cooperates with the Head Office of the Euro-Mediterranean Network. We are also fully aware of the great potential of and the great promise the programmes like the Master of Arts in Human Rights and Democratization hold for the future of the Euro-Mediterranean region and which the Malta University carries out with such success and devotion. Let me also express the word of gratitude to the master students of this human rights course, with whom I had the privilege of sharing some ideas and the interaction with whom had proved to be most inspiring and gratifying.Read Johan Galtung’s review of Zelim Skurbaty’s book here
And order the book here
As If People Mattered: Critical Appraisal of ‘People’ and ‘Minorities’
from the Human Right Perspective and Beyond
–
Thank you for asking me to be a part of your celebration – a celebration of an ending and a beginning. To the freshmen, congratulations on your courage to embark on a road less traveled; to the graduates, congratulations on your academic achievements and on the friendships you’ve built while here at the university. Both will continue to enrich your lives through the years.
To the lecturers, congratulations also. You too, feel a sense of accom-plishment and pride in your graduate’s completion of formal human rights schooling. To the faculty, you have every reason to pat yourselves on the back. Who knows what great minds you’ve helped shape these past few years.
In thinking of what to say to you today, I talked to a friend of mine, professor of law in the USA who’s often called upon to address graduating classes, and I asked him for his suggestions. He responded with, “My advice to the master students in human rights who are going out in the world today? . . . Don’t go!”
Well, I decided to be a little more upbeat. In fact, I’ve chosen a Biblical pattern – the Ten Commandments , although they could be called Sutras, Twelve Tables or laws of the Medes and the Persians, and could just as well be found in Koran, Sunna Hindu, Veda, Rig-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Upanishad, Avesta, Zend-Avesta, the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead or Book of Mormon.
And, I’m not trying to play God by putting together a list of dos and don’ts that follow. I just try to manifest outside what has been playing a prominent role in my intellectual journey inside.
First, I want to give you the basis of these rules – the theory, if you will. Then, the rules themselves.
Here’s the theory part: “Total independence is a fiction. We are all interdependent, i.e. no man or nation is an island”; “Fairness is what fairness does: life is not fair and should not be fair just because we exist. .”; “There’s no such thing as ‘free lunch’ and ‘free freedom’, i.e. No human rights pains, no freedom and dignity gains”; “Money and investments as such won’t buy human dignity, prosperity and happiness”; “If talk is cheap, human rights talk is dangerously cheap”; “Victory goes eventually not to the rebellious, but to the committed and intelligent”; “Pride goes before a fall: the world human rights record is a perennially humbling experience”, etc.
What’s the matter, you’ve heard those theories before? Well, never mind. They’re still true. So upon those theories, I’ve built my list of dos and don’ts, learned partly from other people, partly from experience and which I try to hone every passing day.
Commandment 1: Be willing to pay the price.
Today’s preparation determines tomorrow’s achievement. Although our ability to elevate the dignity of men and women around us is unquestionable, only determined and conscious endeavors can produce such effect. No one has cornered the market on career success in the field of human rights. Someone once approached the great violinist Fritz Kreisler and offered this praise after a concert: “I’d give my life to play as beautifully as you do.” The musician responded, “I did.”
Human rights by nature are destined to counteract states and governments when they are cracking down on the rights and liberties of individuals and groups, and one should only expect that such governments will pull every stop, challenge you in most ingenious ways in order to force, cajole or even bribe into conformity or complacency. While dialogue and cooperation with governments remain our – and the UN’s – major instrument, there will be some situations when taking a firm stand on behalf of the deprived an downtrodden will be the order of the day.
You graduates have already invested, and you, the beginners, are going to invest one more year as a down payment in your, perhaps, most important education. Don’t throw that down payment away. If you want to be successful in the human rights field find out what it takes to be the best of the best. Time.. Practice .. Intelligence… Commitment… Sacrifice .. There is a price. Success in promotion human rights is never on sale; it’s just a matter of deciding how much you want to pay.
Commandment 2: Be self-disciplined
Emerson said that our primary need in life is somebody who will make us do what we already can. We’ve all had that somebody at some time or other. A parent. . . . A friend. . . . A teacher.., a tutor.. But from now on, you yourself will have to be that somebody. You will have to have the wherewithal to make yourself do what you’re capable of.
Discipline to put in the necessary hours when you are challenged to produce a human rights report overnight, like our Kosovo human rights team had to do by burning the midnight oil in order to mail and fax our suggestions by early morning, before the beginning of the meetings on the peaceful solutions in the conflict zones . . .
Discipline to stay up to date in the human rights field which expands exponentially with new theories, declarations, resolutions and treaties dumping on our working table every day. . . .
Discipline to prioritize your tasks and use your time well. . . .
Discipline to stay your course, your position, your a task, and
Discipline – please take me seriously on this point – to occasionally let go off the tension, go with the flow of your inner wisdom; discipline to unwind too much discipline; discipline to relax and meditate.
No matter what, commitment and follow-through marks success. Self-discipline is simply control. If you don’t control yourself, someone else will.
If you fail by lack of discipline to be part of the human rights solution, there will be plenty of ill-minded people to make you part of the human wrongs problem.
Commandment 3: Set worthwhile goals
That’s not the same as being disciplined. Discipline is setting your alarm at 6:00 a.m. and making yourself get up when it goes off. Goal-setting is knowing why you set the alarm at 6:00 a.m. in the first place. . . . You cannot catch a black cat in the dark room, especially if the cat is not there¸ according to the Chinese proverb. Can you orient yourself in the room of your career? What did you plan to achieve? How did you plan to achieve it? If you’ve ever done any sailing, you know that finding the wind isn’t always easy. If you don’t have any plans to go any place special, then any wind is the right wind.
Albert Einstein once said that “Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem…to characterize our age”. We have such perfect means of human ingenuity as atomic power, computer and internet, which can actually be used for mass destruction, genocide, terrorism and child pornography. From this perspective, our goals as human rights workers could be to challenge governments to ratify human rights treaties; to fight violations against women, children, minorities and migrants, to establish national human rights institutions and ensure human rights education for all, to make progress towards eradicating poverty, to end racial discrimination.
By setting worthwhile goals we raise our standards, make them attainable and confidently expect to win in advance. Life then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and choice, not chance, begins to determine our destiny. Thus, make informed choices; set worthwhile goals.
Commandment 4: Learn to network and get along well with others
Studies reconfirm over and over again that people do not fail or lose their jobs because they do not have the technical know-how or skills. More frequently, the difficulty is that they can’t get along with other people. This could be very dangerous especially in the human rights field, because the terms of reference of your job will include the necessity to interact with governments, common people, members of different parties, organizations, different creeds.
You may not please all the people all the time, but you can please most of the people most of the time-if in no other way but by being open to their criticism. Weigh it against others’ considerations. People seldom improve when they only have their own yardstick to measure themselves by.
I can assure you I’ve made more improvements in my own life and in my own business as a result of others’ criticism than their praise.
Measure yourself with someone else’s yardstick occasionally. If on your first assignment, your tutor or boss comments that you lose your temper too easily, and your parent or your spouse or girlfriend or boyfriend comments that you lose your temper too easily, and your friend comments you lose your temper too easily, it stands to reason that probably. . . you lose your temper too easily. When you hear such feedback, listen before you deny it. Evaluate it. Weigh it. Do you think changes are in order?
Regardless of criticism, to get along with other people, you have to accept them unconditionally, care about them genuinely and have infinite patience. Patience and “this-too-shall-pass” philosophy, rightly applied, will do more good for your career success and raising the quality of your life than all the promotions and pay-raises taken together. And try to live the Golden Rule to get the gold – however you define it; look at any relationship (and job for that matter) as an opportunity to contribute to first, not to get out first.
We don’t have good relationships in our lives until we make room for them. Until we learn to get outside ourselves and care about what’s happening in another person’s life and in the community at large.
Commandment 5: Be a Dreamer, Think Big, Engineer Utopias, Imagine Co-Existence
We’ve often heard George Bernard Shaw’s distinction of men: “Some men see things as they are and say ‘Why?’ I dream things that never were, and say, ‘Why not?”‘ We need men and women like you entering the workforce in the field of human rights to say “Why not?” We need solutions to many human rights problems and grievances. Dare to dream up some ways to resolve these problems and address these issues. Humanist James Allen says, “You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.” In other words, to succeed beyond your wildest expectations, you have to have some wild expectations.
Imagine! – as John Lennon used to say, keep your head in the clouds and see in your mind’s eye “No Hell Below Us, Above Us Only Sky”, and imagine boldly the future when the whole mankind will be “Living As One”. As one futurologist has said; “in order to predict future, we have to invent it”. So, Keep Inventing the Future, Think Big, Imagine Co-Existence and the Best Possible Scenarios to our Vexatious Problems.
Commandment 6: Take risks; don’t be afraid to fail: The Only Way Out of It is Through It!
Obstacles are those things you see when you take your eyes off your goals. So, face your fear eye-ball to eye-ball and the death of fear is certain. Because, believe me, if you ever get so cockeyed sure of something that you never see obstacles, you had better question whether the task is worth doing at all.
So taking risks means evaluating the obstacles and determining that the chance for payoff is worth the risk.
The world is full of people who follow wherever the path leads; but we need people in the human rights field who is ready to strike out where there is no path and then leave a trail.
Commandment 7: Stretch Your Mind, Stay informed
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, “Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” I hope that’s true – that after your years here, your mind has been stretched so that you will never be satisfied to stop learning about what’s going on around you.
Use every resource available to learn how international legal order and international human rights operate. One of the biggest realizations in going through human rights schooling is that knowledge is “out there” – even if you haven’t learned it all. You just have to have the “want to” to retrieve it and use it. You don’t have to know everything about every human right or wrong in order to be a real human rights champion. You just have to have the drive and the enthusiasm to find out and apply it.
Someone has said of us knowledge-workers, “Wealth was once measured in gold. Now it’s measured in what we know.” This is the age of the Power Shift where power is defined as updated knowledge acted upon. So expose yourself to different ideas, stretch your mind, stay alert, stay informed.
Commandment 8: Be flexible although ethical
Choose your battles carefully and know when to compromise and when to stick to your convictions. What you once knew to be human right and human wrong . . . is still right and wrong. Think about some alternatives when confronted with wrongs and after weighing them against potential risks and advantages, take a bold action. Right, once determined as being as such, is worth to be acted upon – for the sake of truth and those people who can benefit from it. IT IS ONLY FOR THOSE WITHOUT HOPE THAT HOPE IS GIVEN TO US.
Commandment 9: Do not take yourself too seriously, Have some fun.
You want to know how to have some fun every day of your life? Confucius said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” For the most part, he was right. Add to that the ability to laugh at yourself and see funny sides of many seemingly insurmountable situations. The moment you can allow yourself to laugh at funny aspects of life is the moment of your empowerment, a statement of your sanity and ability to deal with any situation in the most effective way.
And when you find that your job has its days of drudgery, learn to play at something else. Keep other interests and other friends in your life. To be serious about human rights, you need to cultivate your ability to look at things in the context of the great scheme of things, the ability to laugh and have fun. And remember: nothing should or have to exist just because you prefer it to be your way. Accept reality first the way it exists – often by recognizing and smiling at it – in order to set your mind to improve on it.
Commandment 10: Define success in your own terms
Someone has aptly observed, “Many people spend their lives climbing the ladder of success only to find, when they get to the top, the ladder is leaning against the wrong wall.” Where is your ‘wall of success?” As a matter of a general definition, success is, of course, a matter of luck – ask any failure.
I want to read you several definitions of success I’ve collected through the years. Listen to them. Pick one you like:
-“Success is a journey, not a destination” -“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It’s a direction, not a destination.”
-“Winning isn’t everything – it’s the only thing,” according to Coach Vince Lombardi.
-“Success is having something to be enthusiastic about.”
-“Success has always been easy to measure. It is the distance between one’s origins and one’s final achievement,” according to author Michael Korda.
-“There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
And with this one I’ll focus on success in a reverse way-here’s how John Charles Salak defines failure:
“Failures are divided into two classes: those who thought and never did, . . . and those who did and never thought.”
Whatever definition of success you choose, remember that success is not part of you, but a part from you: your value as a human being has nothing whatever to do with your being successful or not.
I want to leave you on the notes of wisdom taken from three different people who have been sharing the same belief in the potential of a human being to make peace, not war:
The Jamaican reggae musician Bob Marley (1945-81) commented on his album Rastaman Vibration (1976) in the following way:.
Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war … and until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation, until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes, me seh war. And until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race, there is war. And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, rule of international morality, will remain but a fleeting illusion to be pursued, but never attained … now everywhere is war.
But where reside the impulses leading people to war? According to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, famous Russian dissident and Nobel Prize winner in literature:
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil
Deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and
destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of
every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
But do we need to cut our hearts? Are there better ways to reach harmony within ourselves and the world?
Here is the answer given by a 19th Century American Native Religious Leader Black Elk:
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes from within the souls of men when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is first known that true peace which is within the souls of men.
So when you get out there in the world – and you see the expectations and the problems, the challenges and the temptations, the discouragements and the opportunities – and you forget your professors’ lectures, just try to remember the Wakan-Tanka of the Universe Outside and your Heart Inside You. The rest will take care of itself.
My personal and the Danish Center for Human Rights’congratulations to each of you.
I wish you success as you improve the world within and the world – out there…
