INTERVIEW: Mother, human rights champion, wife, women's advocate, grandmother, environmental campaigner: former president Mary Robinson jokes that she's a 'has-been' but her energy and commitment define her as a 'can-do'
IF IT WASN'T for the fact that she's such an enthralling speaker, a person could get jet- lag just listening to Mary Robinson. Her speech in Dublin earlier this week, at a conference about women, peace and conflict, was peppered with references to recent conversations she'd had in Gaza, Jordan, Rotterdam and New York, and meetings she would soon be attending in Liberia, Darfur and Paris.
Hers is a truly global vision, and she weaves these stories into a coherent and inspiring narrative. But it is simply amazing that the woman gets about so much, not to mention the fact that she always manages to look and sound so sharp and smart. "I've always had a fair capacity for sleep, and I can sleep anywhere, " she says. "It used to annoy my children in the car. I seem to be able to fool my body so that wherever I wake up, it accepts that it is whatever time it is there." All the same, she admits that this way of life "takes its toll".
Impeccably dressed, as usual, pearls on a black polo neck, a soft turquoise jacket, she looks tired, and some of the women in the hotel ballroom where she speaks murmur with fretful solicitude that she has got thin. A few are of the generation of Mná na hÉireann that rocked the system by electing Robinson president in 1990. Many are far too young, and know her as the legendary international human rights activist she has become. Some of the black and Asian people present have come for the conference - others live here now.
She comes straight from the podium to give our interview. I ask her how much travelling she actually does. "Too much," she says. "The carbon footprint . . ." She shakes her head. "I try to do more by video link now." She did that when newly elected Zimbabwean women asked her to come and discuss their success. "They got 14 per cent of the seats, despite the violence," she says. "It would have eaten into my family holidays, and a certain large bearded gentleman put his foot down." She smiles. That would be Nick, her husband of 38 years. Their three children, Tessa, William and Aubrey, are grown up now. Tessa has two children and lives in Dublin. William lives in Spain. He has one child and his wife is expecting another. Aubrey lives in Dublin. The Robinsons live in New York - though it would not be surprising to be told that, when - if - Mary Robinson sits down in an armchair in front of the television, she reaches for her seatbelt.
I ask her where she's been this month. She pulls a crumpled sheaf of pages out of her handbag. "I have my life here spread out in front of me," she says, smoothing it out on the table. "November. I was in Jordan, meeting women leaders in Amman, and then I went on to the Palestinian territories and Israel to meet women's groups. Then there was Brussels . . . I was talking about post-Kyoto planning.
"Then London, and then, believe it or not, Dubai, for a session of the World Economic Forum, on conflict. After that, I went to Rotterdam for a Club of Madrid lunch with other former presidents and prime ministers," she says. She jokes that this organisation is made up of "has-beens like myself".
From The Netherlands she went to Egypt. "I was in Alexandria to present an award for "excellence in Africa" to the former president of Botswana. The ceremony was in the library, a most magnificent building. Then I flew here." She arrived "quite late" on Sunday night, she says. It turns out she got in to a packed Dublin airport at about 11pm. At 8am on Monday, she took part in a meeting of the organisers of the conference, the Irish Joint Consortium on Gender Based Violence, to which she is special advisor. This was followed by a press briefing and a photo call, and then by her speech. After the interview, she's off to a lunch to mark the 20th anniversary of the Centre for European Law at Trinity. "Nick and I helped to found it," she says. Later on, she'll "speak briefly" to the Institute of European Affairs.
On Tuesday she would fly to Ottawa, Wednesday, Washington, and then back to New York. "I'll sleep in my own bed," she says with a happy sigh. And after that? But she's tired of this. "Lots of places," she says, putting the papers away. She chairs and directs and advises so many different bodies and leads so many initiatives. Doesn't she ever get confused? "I stay on message," she says, firmly. "I wear a lot of hats but I am lucky in that I have an ability to focus and to think laterally." At least her husband can now travel with her sometimes - he wasn't allowed to while she was the UN high commissioner for human rights, and she did find that hard. He came with her to Rotterdam, " and got to go and visit our grandchild in Spain afterwards", she says. "But often my travels are to difficult places and it just wouldn't be appropriate."
Staying on message takes determination. Having heard her speak with great tenderness about her grandchildren at a summer school earlier this year about the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Movement, I am keen to ask her more. She is perturbed. She wants to talk about the subject of the conference, the usefulness of UN security council resolution 1325.
"I've already taken part in an RTÉ documentary in which I talk maybe even a bit too much about my family," she says, and blushes. "I am a very private person." Then she launches into a long, eloquent speech, without stopping, and without meeting my eye, about why resolution 1325, and the more recently passed resolution 1820 are so important. Both reiterate the links between gender based violence, human rights violations and international peace and security, she explains. Taken together, they could be used to have the perpetrators of violence and discrimination held to account. They should also give women afflicted by violence in war a voice in the peacemaking process.
"It is wonderful to have something you can unequivocally endorse, " she says, with pride, of the consortium, an unlikely but idealistic and effective initiative which includes NGOs, the defence forces, and Irish Aid, the government's international aid and development wing. "This represents the best of what Ireland can do. It gives me enormous pleasure to be associated with it."
In her speech, she praises the Government for its innovative twinning of Ireland and Liberia, an initiative, she says, other countries are now also considering. Opening the conference, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin, offers her a "warm tribute" for having suggested the twinning in the first place.
She has joked that being the sole girl, with two older brothers and two younger, provided her first lessons in fighting for human rights. She was impressed by the nuns and lawyers in her family, opted for the latter as a career, and spent years championing what it seemed would always be the lost causes - chiefly the rights of women to have control over their fertility and their lives.
In the early days of her presidency she was inspired by the network of women's groups which managed to flourish in the North during the Troubles. While she had a reputation in Dublin for being a bit stiff, she was known in Belfast as a visitor who liked to go into the kitchen for a chat. She talks about meeting Palestinian and Israeli women today who have similarly, without ignoring the brutal realities dividing them, "forged a shared narrative".
It was while she was president also, in 1992, that she visited Somalia - then, as now, in the throes of terrible civil conflict. On her return, she broke down and wept as she spoke of her shame about "what the world must take responsibility for". She's been passionately involved with Africa ever since, famously insisting that extreme poverty is the worst human rights abuse on the planet.
"As a mother and a grandmother I identify with the pain and frustration women feel who are leaders in their own communities but whose voices are not being listened to. The rights they tell me they need are water and freedom from violence. Women leaders with access to the corridors of power should be there for their sisters in deep poverty and conflict. If I am there and listening, I can advocate strongly in their voices."
There's a confidence and ease to Mary Robinson now, which she acknowledges. "When you hold official positions you have to hold a certain reserve," she says. While she pushed the limits in former jobs, she's happy that now she can speak her mind more freely. Realising Rights, the organisation she founded in 2002 is, she says, very small, and its role is to act as "a provoker . . . an awkward voice".
She's enjoying being one of Nelson Mandela's "elders". She says she's reached a stage in her life when "I feel entitled to be bossy and to challenge people." Ireland should support President-elect Obama by taking in some of the Guantánamo prisoners, she says. There should be "new thinking" about the grounds for granting asylum, taking into account female genital mutilation and other acts of violence against women.
I've read that she says she's good at holidays and loves to be ridiculous, but when I ask her about this she mentions "good friends in nice parts of the world with sunshine" and then tells a story about a visit to an irrigation project in Rwanda. It ends with her seizing an Irish professor of human rights and making him do an "Irish rain dance" with her. Photographs were taken, she says, joking that she will have to seek and destroy them. If only we could get them first. Asked whether there are any "informal" photographs, her office supplies variations on a theme: Robinson (a) sitting down, (b) in shirtsleeves (c) smiling.
She's going through a "hardworking transition" at present, she says, preparing to return to Ireland in two years' time, "for good". She'll be 65 then, but she won't, she insists, be retiring. "I want to give something back to Ireland," she says. "The west is my favourite place in the world. I love Pontoon and my home town of Ballina. I see a lot of good changes there - the people who have come in, for example. I interrupted my holiday last year to meet the Mayo intercultural association and when I came into the room there were people from Nigeria and Somalia and Asia singing a song from Burma."
She intends to do something to "cultivate idealism" among the young, she says, citing Obama's mobilisation of "the hip hop generation". She also wants to spend more time with her grandchildren, having spent much of last summer at her home, a 19th century fishing lodge with extensive lands on the shores of Lough Conn, "being a full-time granny".
"I know how lucky I am to have my family and my personal life," she says. But having a new generation in the family has also sharpened her sense of urgency as a campaigner. "Our world is hurtling towards destruction," she says. "The latest reliable scientific evidence suggests we have at most two decades before we reach tipping point and irreversible climate change. We need to think about climate justice. "Africa is responsible for less than 4 per cent of carbon emissions but is already deeply affected. By 2015 we may have 100 million environmental refugees fleeing desertification or flooding. My grandchildren will be in their fifties by then. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning."