areas we don't often have told by the people who live with them. and a brand new documentary series this is year i'm coming soon on al-jazeera . you can. say about al hussein has been the united nations high commissioner for human rights since twenty fourteen in those four years the attacks on people safety and dignity seem to have reached into all corners of the world need mars campaign to drive hundreds of thousands of ethnic or hinge out of the country the abuse and denial of asylum heaped on migrants fleeing war and economic deprivation the carnage left behind in the civil wars in yemen and in syria as well as in those parts of syria and iraq once controlled by. one would think the calls on countries to do better

would have been welcomed but the high commissioner has been criticized for pointing out where countries have failed to preserve human rights we discuss why human rights are under more pressure than ever and what should be done to protect them when say that hoddle hussein talked to al jazeera. thank you for talking to al-jazeera thank you sir mark we're coming up on the end of your tenure and i wanted to ask you first just to get this out of the way he didn't ask for a second term you didn't think you would get the backing of the permanent five members of the u.n. security council and the thinking is. al hussein is just too vocal zaid speaks his mind too much he's not diplomatic enough why not get the p five on the record and say we needed someone who wasn't going to be so

forward leaning on trying to get the world to respect human rights it's a good question i never really assume when i took this job that i would need to supplicate or need to prostrate myself before governments. because the office itself yes it's a part of the u.n. but it's also part of a broader human rights movement and the job of high commissioner is to be effectively the ambassador of human rights and what does that mean it means that you have human rights law and you have obligations upon states to abide by the law and where they don't do so you have to then defend the victims who either are deprived of their rights or the discriminated against when it comes to their rights or they live in fear and so my job was not to defend governments that can do that

themselves my job was to defend them together with my office very proud to defend to defend the rights of everyone else individuals and in that sense i knew early on that i'm not going to have the backing for of the. permanent members of the security council in actual fact i would be concerned if i was on the outside and i saw that a high commissioner had won support of the p. five because i would suspect that they haven't done their job properly it almost goes without saying that the permanent five enjoy a privileged status here in new york by dint of the use of veto in the security council in geneva they don't just one of forty seven members on the human rights council if the serving on the human rights council and and so we in the

human rights community look at their records in the same way we look at anyone else's records and assumption it's not just an assumption they don't like that. so i knew it was going to be possible you raised eyebrows when you spoke at the refugees conference here a couple of years ago and there said we're here because we as a global community have failed us people are so desperate that they're getting into a kitty ships and paying thousands of songs you know to people who don't have their welfare at heart yes and we're here because we haven't found the will to stop that from happening this is not is that your biggest regret now it's an acknowledgment of failure and that's why we have these contacts and if we were doing everything correctly there's no need for everyone to gather and meet and discuss i mean it has to be placed into perspective this the number of peoples on the move globally. sort

of is in the range of about four maybe four point five percent so ninety five an hour and i ninety five percent and above of people on this planet aren't static i mean they stay within their countries right so all of this hysteria that we see in this planet can be the trending toward the more extreme demagoguery is as a result of the small percentage of people who are actually moving across the planet where does that xenophobia come from we see it here in the west we see it in central europe we see it in parts of southern europe we see it in some parts of india where does that come from well it comes from a recognition by politicians that tactic works whatever the ills in society whatever the miscues by previous government's inability of previous governments or indeed present governments to cope with current circumstances well then you pin

point the blame on a particular community that seems different it seems alien that is vying for jobs and you. turn the hatred on them. this is an old device the sad part of it is that it works and people tend to out of fear adhere to it and the politicians know it but there is a cautionary note is that the cautionary tale to this and that is that the logical extension of it is a sour outcome if you get chauvinist nationalism a bigotry is sort of racist on the current moving and it reaches a certain pitch traditionally when we look at the historical record it's not easy to suddenly dismantle it and what do you tend to find there is that conflict arises out of it because suddenly you're telling

a people that are no longer special that they're no longer somehow or superior to others that we're all in the same rights that we all have those rights and need to be treated equally whether on the basis of gender ethnicity you know whatever the circumstances may be your thoughts on the show about slot coming in as your successor. well i'm fortunate enough to know her personally and i encounter as a friend we worked together when she was head of un women and i couldn't be more delighted i think she has proven her credentials both as a leader within the u.n. and as head of state of her own country and someone who really part of her life was subject to coercive practices and torture. you know you have a political leader of great substance and and.

really strong willed so i couldn't be delighted and i've been looking forward to your transition from meter to her when we discuss north korea or d p r k it's all about killing young nuclear ambitions there seems to be absolutely no public discussion or urgency about its appalling human rights record. what pressure can you bring in your final weeks on the job to remind people this isn't about just north korea's military but the millions of people who have suffered under three leaders i would dispute that it's been forgotten i mean perhaps in the context of the the immediate discussions that. seem to be taking place it's not being mentioned but i don't think it's it's easy for anyone to think that given the severity of the human rights violations

detailed in the caribbean commission's report but also by our office and that work is continuing and ongoing there is a fear that if the negotiations were to mature that somehow these issues would be downgraded and that's that's a fear we have for the respect to many. conflicts that begin to wind down and during the conflict there's a strong record for accountability that the perpetrators would be punished and as we work our way through the peace agreements and then and people say not now not now and we leave it to you know a few years when it's cool down a bit what we find though is that later it becomes even more difficult and you can all the victims need to feel that they're at the center of these negotiations that their pain is being a tenure it's an end if you don't do that then it becomes problematic so we'll watch the d.p. r. k. file closely and i'm sure my successor successor will and if we see that it's been

it's basically been pushed off the table certainly we're going to be speaking about it and we speak about it quite regularly do you fear that even though he has the legal right to do so that kim jong il could be addressing the general assembly in september but i don't know i mean that i don't know him and you asked me a question and i haven't really given much thought about. i mean the position that does it create the wrong impression that he's been well very bad well i think i think i mean clearly there were two would raise a lot of eyebrows and i mean the position of the u.n. as i understand it is that if you're indicted by an international court for. the atrocity crimes crimes against humanity war crimes crimes and. the crime of genocide then it should be really be impermissible for you to turn up in new york. but if there hasn't been

a charge like that it's it's it's the evidence is still being collected although there's very strong indications that the more severe human rights conditions exist . certainly there would be a lot of criticism of the un. high commissioner or an ex high commissioner wouldn't you're comfortable with when you talk about technicalities that's certainly been the case in recent developments in the democratic republic of the congo. out of prison is filed his papers to run for president he was convicted of war crimes in the central african republic what happened here how did we get to this point. well i haven't read the judgment of the. appellate judgment of the i.c.c. certain one way i don't want to go into it because i need to read to judge from right and then on the stand and certainly there were those within the international

criminal law community who had their own feelings about the decision. but i would need to read myself and then form an opinion surge would be premature for me just to say anything about it but you can understand of course there are communities in the city there are but maybe limited there and even within that there are seeing who would see it as an odd. decision by the appellate body. on the other hand you know that's right legal systems in the world across the world we have decisions by courts that often arises the reaction strong reactions it's not to say the system has served but the system gives an interpretation which seems could seem to be at odds with the jurisprudence that was generated history i need to look at the actual details before commenting on that but isn't this a case that we're not talking about a sovereign governments justice system we're talking about something that was set

up and agreed to by your own which national community and that. all of the talk when he was convicted a decade ago and one of its validity of it acquiring a real sense of dealing with these sorts of atrocities may now have been undermined where do you it is that if this is an aberration if this is an aberrant the citizen the the you know it will reset itself from we've seen this before in terms of other other decisions taken by international courts or tribunals the question is is that an aberration or not and i have to read the decision. and clearly the you know the judges felt that they had had come up with a decision which they. you know warranted the acquittal of jump. and and i do need to see the decision before coming to the edge would be really

improper for me to say something and then you lost me another question in the studio and i had to turn or what i actually said in terms of the reason i'm put forward so i do need to see that syria yes there seems to be a growing consensus that bashar assad is winning the war has he gotten away with war crimes. but i you know the at the moment we have an accountability mechanism it's collating evidence that's going to continuing to collect evidence. the evidence has also been directed toward it from the commission of inquiry that still operates and. one would believe that there would be a strong push for accountability for truth telling that too many victims too many people have suffered in this cruel war to just let it pass to have it somehow

forgotten and i would believe that there will be a time of reckoning for the president for its senior leadership and for others who are thought to have committed the most ghastly crimes and it's there where does that reckoning happen well it's the security council well no it's a reckoning before the victims before a court i mean we saw at the end of last year a number of things happened. where those who had perpetrated crimes many years ago must have thought they got away with it and for a while they did but then in the end right come now the choice is convicted by the international criminal tribunal for the formula. they were to form a argentine offices who were convicted for their role in the dirty wars the so-called dirty war many years ago there was a salvadorian colonel who was extradited from the u.s.

to spain to face potential charges on account of a ledge didn't involve mature the killing of a jesuit priest in el salvador in one thousand eight hundred nine in other words there activists lawyers journalists the world over who are collecting evidence preparing evidence and and people may who have been complicit in the commission of war crimes and certainly if they were the sort of intellectual officer may. at some stage here comfort above that they may have got away with it and that they had been doing in any case something they believed was heroic and patriotic and perhaps it began to dawn on them later that maybe not so that maybe these are crimes against humanity and war crimes and and then time caught up with them so you know it's yes there's a third to demand the need by certainly victims groups to see someone who they believe has created so much suffering you know are held to account in

a court of law but it sometimes takes longer and sometimes painfully long time to get there but eventually i would hope in a context like syria that there will be justice for the victims of israel palestine the passage of the nation state law in jerusalem. is it understandable is it problematic and i said before and publicly it's clear it's that it's discriminatory and i don't see how else you could package an argument which makes sense to me. that's it any objective observation of all of this and that's how we see it as an office that seems to be discriminatory and all so what happens if you're an israeli and you're not also jewish or not you know you know it's a class right and you know obviously you fear that the law would be discriminating against you and it's clear i mean there is and there's been

a reaction by various leaders of the druze community in the arab israeli community of course that's made its views known as well now and it's. you you know. in human rights terms again. to achieve any sort of stability tranquility three conditions need to attend one is that you don't discriminate about against people in your own country on the basis of race ethnicity color gender and so forth too but you don't deprive parts of your. community subject to those discriminations from the large us of the state and keep them sort of without protection social protections three but you don't have people who live in fear in your country. and you have to remove that sense of fear and

instill within them a respect for institutions of trust in institutions where basically they feel they will be treated fairly and if they feel they should be treated fairly then the little basis for then maintaining a sort of fearful state and so when you don't do those things then your course you you create tensions within society in fear that it's played on not everyone is sad to see you go oh i'm sure a lot of happy but no the israeli ambassador danny dano and sent out a statement saying this and i quote during his tenure the h r c became a theater of the absurd human rights council with hypocrisy and double standards rampant among its proceedings and reports. well look at the ambassador i don't know the ambassador to be honest i mean he's never come to geneva i find it sort of quite strange that he talks of human rights and i assume that he knows very little

about it. i am not the president of the human rights council so for one it's a sort of conflate the two is it's nonsense but he said some of the things about me i mean i don't take him seriously because again he's not a human rights person i've known many israeli ambassadors worked with them and they seem to be in a serious about these issues. he's never come to geneva we've never discussed these issues. i don't take much or touch much importance to and said the well being of women activists in saudi arabia. have they been forgotten but i don't know if they've been forgotten are certainly our offices talked about we're talking about them yes and we are concerned i mean any time when you have a number of activists arrested we worry about whether it be an arbitrary arrest on direction or policy at the direction of promise and so i'm sure my office

opened up the channels and we want to understand what led to this exactly why has it set up and we would naturally want to see earliest possible releases and certainly if their charges they should be released immediately and even if there were charges we need to understand what exactly they've been charged with are there other places around the world that you don't think get enough attention because of how their citizens are fairing or are not fairing. i've had some people in to talk about the situation nicaragua as one example yeah i mean again if it's whether we in our office are missing things i tend to think generally when we do a good job i mean the maybe certain things that we don't see mediately and then we were alerted to by a specific n.g.o.s specific group that will say you know you need to look at this

because it's really becoming dangerous and we weren't we were certainly do that nicaragua as a country i'm very worried about because as a conductor sweeps and there are arresting detaining. young activists who are associated with the protests we need to be assured that these people are not being harmed and very concerned about the possibility of disappearances and forced disappearances and potentially. of course torture that and all of this we need to understand what is going on so i'm i'm talking to others i have been in touch with people in this country and we talk to the europeans need to talk to the oas and i.c.c. but we need to or keep a very close eye on nicaragua because i very much fear for the stability of the state if the current government's policies are. continued and there is no

accountability for what we saw was and it was horrific violence mainly by state actors and by the current ministry. forces involved here stepping away at a rather contentious moment you know for the world you know what do you do now i need to. i need to spend time with my my family i have been away from them for four years. so i have to reintroduce myself to them. a little bit of a rest and then i'll pick up a gun on the i'll sign something not too distant from the work that i've been doing just for so people have not heard the last of you i don't think so i better things but i may need to rest before i pick it up. who do you see. coming behind you who is in the next generation of human rights advocates sit room the

young people who lead protest movements who are courageous are willing to give everything all and who are very reasoned they understand the dangers they understand what could potentially happen to them and yet they would still do it that is really leadership from me and much more so than many politicians from masquerade as needed and i'm very concerned about you know protocol issues whether the first speaker in a particular conference they were then titled rejects and susan i don't know what. i find many of them not just frauds rated the not the not serious the serious people all the human rights defenders. who are stake everything on account of principle and i think there is an incredible need to ship their own song and many of them are not really known but they're out there and they're the hope of

humanity. to say high commissioner for human rights thanks so much for talking to us on al-jazeera thank you so much you can. see. it's a story of survival. it's a story about how people lived to live in such a remote. pretty sure to the way. you can cheat and how that instinct help them recover from the financial crash i did continue this long as i can stand . this is a story about iceland. on al-jazeera. we understand the different stories. and the similarities of cultures across the world so no matter how you take it al-jazeera will bring you the news and current

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