Current Affairs: There have been several biographies of Mary Robinson. This is a compilation of her views on human rights and the responsibilities of the UN Commission, with nearly 100 speeches and an excellent index, we have a formidable tome, writes Bill McSweeney.
The year 1990 - it's a forgotten world. A brainy woman out of her setting, awkward, hitting all the wrong notes in the cosy establishment of the day, assertive and feminist to boot, media-clueless - how did she make it to the Áras in the first place and then end up where she is today? With perhaps only two of her contemporaries - Garret FitzGerald and Conor Cruise O'Brien - Mary Robinson belongs to a rare category of Irish luminaries: the "public intellectual".
There is a populist strain in our culture which is antithetical to the blending of the academic and the political, the marriage of boffin and evangelist, which defines the intellectual who enters and tries to influence the wider market of political ideas and public opinion. Not many can do it without diminishing one side or other of their chosen path. Only a trinity of Irish still alive have managed it on an international scale, and Robinson - just gone 60 - is the baby of the three.
There have been several biographies of the former president and one day, no doubt, she will give her own account of a life lived in controversy. Meanwhile, we have this compilation of her views on human rights and the responsibilities of the UN Commission to monitor the record of member nations and expose their actions if necessary.
Kevin Boyle, professor of law at the University of Essex, served as senior adviser to Robinson during her final year of office in 2002, and was well placed to organise the material and comment on her pronouncements during her five years as UN high commissioner. With nearly 100 speeches gathered here under headings that promise more clarity than they deliver, and with an excellent 30-page index to sieve through the finer detail, we have a formidable tome.
Boyle tells us that the texts chosen for inclusion were those that reflect Robinson's "passionate insistence that international human rights standards must be taken seriously by all". There is little doubt that Mary Robinson was chosen by the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan (who writes a foreword to the book) precisely because he saw in her the leader who would shake the commission out of its institutional lethargy. He saw her as someone who would campaign with passion for human rights rather than manage their implementation or breach within the consensus of the developed world.
The book opens with the justly applauded Romanes Lecture given in Oxford two months into her appointment and viewed at the time as a declaration of intent on her part and that of Annan - to rebuild the foundations on which human rights had hitherto rested in the UN and to integrate a human rights dimension into every corner of the global organisation. She took the opportunity not to mince words. The 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1998 should not be an occasion for celebration so much as recognition of "a failure of implementation that shames us all". Along the way, she said, "many in the United Nations have lost the plot and allowed their work to answer to other imperatives".
And so on through this chronicle of a courageous woman who came to international prominence when she transformed the office of Irish presidency and who moved from there, as if by natural progression, into the role of global gadfly. Where there were feathers to be ruffled in the cause of human rights, she ruffled them - in China, Russia, Israel and, with foolhardy insouciance for its impact on her career, in the US. What would she do if the great powers made her secretary general?
Fat chance. Mrs Robinson has accepted that she pays the price of speaking out for civil liberties. She has become an irritant to the body politic, an "awkward voice" as she put it in a different context. Reflecting on the impact of September 11th on her work months after the event, she delivered a carefully balanced judgment of the atrocity committed in the name of Allah and the erosion of human liberties in the West's response to it. "It is of particular concern", she said, "that the post-September 11th environment is reinforcing a fortress mentality within Europe. As controls are tightened, there is a coarsening of debate and of language used in speaking of asylum seekers and immigrants".
The editor has done his job of presenting a coherent message throughout and offering bite-size comments to contextualise the material. But it goes without saying that this is not a light read, but a book of record. Some appendices on the role of High Commissioner and a list of the principal legal instruments developed over the past half century for the protection of individual and group rights will increase its usefulness to students and scholars.
When Brian Lenihan and Padraig Flynn unwittingly launched the career of our youngest public intellectual some 15 years ago, they little realised the sense in which they were present at the creation. Though not due solely to the presidency of Robinson, modern Ireland was launched at the time and in the spirit of her rebellion against social and ecclesiastical patriarchy in the Ireland of 1990. The candle in the Park and the cry of "Mná na hÉireann" were innocent but potent symbols of a battle she fought with enthusiasm and evident satisfaction. Life at the top of the UN Commission was never so innocent - and probably not so rewarding.
Her struggle for human rights reflected in the speeches in this book are testimony to the lonely road and the hard slog. It will stand as a proud record of a life lived on the awkward side.
Bill McSweeney teaches international politics at the Irish School of Ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin
A Voice for Human Rights: Mary Robinson. Edited by Kevin Boyle, University of Pennsylvania Press, 427pp. NPG