Robinson, Mary

Mary Robinson was the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002 and converted the ceremonial office into a bully pulpit for human rights. She also helped make human rights a central focus of the world. From 1990 to 1997, as the first female president of Ireland, Robinson transformed that figurehead post into a forum that brought the excluded Irish—especially women, economic exiles, sexual minorities, the poor, and disabled—to the focus of national policy. She used her high profile as a lightning rod, visiting catastrophically violent sites like Somalia—where she was the first head of state to visit the area after the genocide—Bosnia, and Rwanda, describing with plain words and raw emotion the details to the international press corps.

Born Mary Bourke in County Mayo in 1944, the daughter of two physicians, she was educated at Trinity College, University of Dublin, and Harvard Law School, where she won a fellowship in 1967. In the United States, she was influenced by the antiwar and civil rights movement and came to view the law as a vehicle for social change. As a lawyer, she argued landmark labor and women's cases before both the Irish courts and the European Court. In her roles as senator and then president, Robinson dared to change the antediluvian Irish divorce, contraception, abortion, and equal pay laws and helped facilitate peace with Northern Ireland. Even with her public service career, Robinson balanced a successful marriage and three children while advocating, governing and traveling. Ireland became the “Celtic Tiger,” one of the world's wealthiest countries where former immigrants returned, during her tenure as president.

As the commissioner of Human Rights, Robinson created a more effective and professional staff even though her budget was a mere 2 percent of the UN's operating costs. She protested the lack of money to effect necessary changes and raised voluntary funds from states and foundations. She refused to ignore the suffering of millions and the numerous violations caused by violent political oppression, torture, exclusion, racial discrimination, and religious persecution—even more so when the daily denial of rights flowed from poverty, lack of food, clean water, sanitation, shelter, and education.

Robinson shook up the UN and the powerful alliances and nations like the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for targeting bombs at civilians, and she chastised China for jailing political dissidents and for the erosion of workers rights. Robinson spoke out against growing corporate influence, the erosion of human rights provoked by the war on terror, and the reaction to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York. Her outspoken, [Page 1243]open criticism of the United States prevented her from serving the remaining three years of her full second term. She is currently the President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, a nongovernmental organization she founded, as well as the honorary president of Oxfam International and one of Nelson Mandela's circle of Elders.