"A right violated in one part of the world is felt everywhere": Immanuel Kant's maxim, coined after the French Revolution, seems an apt benchmark with which to assess Mrs Mary Robinson's term as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
That ethical universalism has been the distinguishing feature of her commitment to the theory and practice of this demanding job.
Mrs Robinson's announcement yesterday that she is to stand down from the position when her term ends later this year is not unexpected, but will be regretted by many who have admired her record in office. In her statement she said she had intended to be an awkward incumbent and quoted advice from the UN Secretary General, Mr Kofi Annan: "Stay an outsider within the UN". She took time to come to terms with the diplomatic and bureaucratic constraints of the job and with the necessarily long time frame it takes within the UN system to achieve progress on human rights issues. In any case ethical activism and state sovereignty are inherently difficult bedfellows within this environment.
Such uncertainties contributed to Mrs Robinson's decision one year ago to stand down before her term was finished. It took strong pressure from Mr Annan, sympathetic governments, NGOs and individual critics to persuade Mrs Robinson to change her mind on that occasion. She was convinced by their arguments that more time was necessary to see through policies already put in train and to raise international awareness about the relevance and applicability of human rights.
Mrs Robinson has used the intervening period effectively to consolidate her agenda and spread the message that human rights empower individuals and societies, have universal relevance in an era of globalisation and must be extended to embrace economic and social entitlements in a starkly divided and increasingly unequal world. She organised the world conference against xenophobia and racism at Durban last year and played a crucial role in seeing it adopt a landmark (albeit an imperfect) text, despite being boycotted by the United States and Israel. She has clashed with governments in China, Russia, Algeria and Cambodia over her determination to insist on applying human rights norms.
In many respects Mrs Robinson's message has become more controversial and more necessary following the attacks on New York and Washington last September 11th. While joining in the universal condemnation of such mass terrorism, she warned governments against allowing military and security counter-measures to supersede their human rights commitments and the relationship between justice and political order. That has made her unpopular, especially with the Bush administration and its ideological allies. But is that not an inherently valuable part of her role as an "outsider" within the UN?