- You've seen some of the worst atrocities
that humanity's perpetrated against itself
in the last 20 years, 30 years.
Are you despondent about what we're able to do
and what we're able to achieve?
Have we lost trust in each other beyond repair?
- There are 3 conditions that I would use,
or 3 meters that I would use when I visited a country.
I would say to myself, does this country suffer
from structural discrimination?
Is there a particular group, minority,
under enormous pressure?
Are they then deprived of basic social
and legal protections and services on the back of that?
And does this system run on fear?
If you ticked off all 3
then you're in a highly repressive state
that discriminates against much of the population.
If you can answer the questions satisfactorily,
then you're moving up, at least the country
respects most of its citizens and doesn't run on fear.
When you look around the world, there're not many countries
that have pristine records.
Actually I can't think of one.
All states are projects in progress.
They can all also go very awry.
- We don't seem to be just losing trust in national leaders,
we seem to be losing faith in each other.
- Of course.
Karl Lueger did the same.
He argued in defense of the small man.
The man who was lost in the Industrial Revolution.
And it was a transformation akin to what we're seeing now.
And people were losing their jobs.
People were moving into cities.
They were living in miserable parts of cities.
And he aspired to speak on their behalf.
But he was weaponizing their anger,
directing it against a certain population.
Instead of saying that these are structural issues,
we have to look back at the records of previous governments.
We have to see where we've defaulted.
Why wasn't any banker prosecuted in the United States
after the 2008-2009 crisis?
There are some very sound reasons for it.
But if 1.3 million people lost their homes because of it,
they haven't been given a satisfactory answer.
And so they turn then to anyone who seems to be
willing to destroy the system,
or at least hope to resurrect something drawn from the past
which seems to be akin to some halcyon sort of dream.
And it's not that.
My great hope, always, where I found hope
is at grassroots level.
Real leadership, courageous, selfless,
people willing to sacrifice
that first instinct of us human beings,
which is the instinct of self-preservation.
And they were willing to overcome this
for the sake of advancing the rights of people.
Completely the opposite of your typical politician
in many countries. - Right.
- And that's where we have hope.
And that's where I saw humanity at its best.
- I've pulled up some quotes
from around the world about you.
Duterte from the Philippines called you "son of a whore."
- My mother was very upset. - I bet.
- The North Koreans said that you
are a "plot breeding scandal-monger."
The Venezuelans said you are a "resounding failure."
The Chinese think you're disgraceful.
The Russian ambassador dismissed you completely.
- He said I had "a messiah complex"
and I was "mad" or something. - And then he added
that you're "provocative, a kamikaze and unhinged."
Are you any of those things? - I'm probably all of them.
- Right. - No,
I wouldn't say son of a whore.
- The reactions you invoke, universally, around the globe,
it's astonishing. - Yeah.
- Why are they so scared of you?
- Because you go to the heart of government legitimacy.
And see, what we are asking is a very basic question.
You, by dint of your constitution
are given the job of exercising sovereignty
on behalf of your people.
And we will certify whether you're doing a good job or not.
We're actually questioning
whether you're serving your people or not.
By using the human rights measure.
So you have obligations - are you meeting them?
Are you discriminating against your people?
Are you depriving them, or are you not?
And they don't like it.
Because it's actually, as a predecessor of mine said,
when you're in that space,
between a government and its people,
you're in a very sensitive space.
To me, it didn't really matter that they say all of this.
Because on the other hand, I got lots of letters
from civil society, actors,
people that we'd freed from detention,
people that we'd helped recover from torture.
People who had access to better housing
that previously they didn't have.
So it was always, I believe, a net gain for us.
Yes we lose a government,
but we win the respect of the people.
In the end, that's more important.
- After your first term
as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
when that ended, you said, "To be reelected in my job
would be to fail." - Yes.
- What did you lose faith in?
Did you lose faith in humanity, in the UN?
- No. - Or yourself?
- No.
Certainly not myself, although you always, I think,
when you deal with these issues, there is so much pressure,
and expectations are high from the victims
of human rights abuses.
And you do feel, given the enormity,
the magnitude of the challenges facing humanity
that there's so much pressure on you to deliver.
To be reelected, I would've needed the support
of the permanent 5 members of the Security Council.
I know I had upset all 5, I was 5 for 5.
And that the chances of them agreeing to me continuing
was practically zero.
The only way it could've happened is
if they said to me,
"We want you to be quiet on all these different files."
And I agreed, then maybe.
But I wasn't prepared to do that.
- Was it Yugoslavia, the first time you went out
in the field to witness a lot of these things on behalf -
- No it was my first experience with the UN.
And I was 30 years old.
I had finished my military service in Jordan.
And I went as a civilian.
And it was
the definitive, the key moment in my life I think.
- I think I read somewhere that you saw the skull
of a small child as a trophy on the car of a local warlord,
or whoever. - Yeah.
- And I think, as I sit and speak to you now,
I can feel it affects you quite a lot.
Why was that moment so important to you?
And what did you learn in that moment
that you carry through with you till today?
- It's the extremes of violence that exist in conflicts.
That you can target children in a way that still happens,
every day, many parts of the world,
in such a savage way, and sort of celebrate that
by putting the head of the child
on the bonnet of the car,
and then putting a UN helmet over it.
And he drove up next to us.
And we were heading down to Sarajevo from Polje.
This was at the close of 1994.
There were quite a few moments like that,
which is a jarring moment that you realize
that much as we can celebrate what it is that we achieve
as humanity, there's still beasts that lie within us.
- Davos, would you ever speak at it?
- I have spoken at it. - Do you like it?
- I was never comfortable there.
- Why?
- Because I felt a significant number
of the people attending should be in prison.
And to be fêted in the way that they were fêted,
given what they've done to their own people.
No, it always made me feel uncomfortable.
It always made me feel that,
if these people really cared about their own people
then it would be acceptable to see them sort of,
treated and welcomed in an international forum.
In the UN it was the same.
At one stage I said to my colleagues,
there was a particular lunch
that I didn't like to go to, every year,
because they always seemed to put me
next to some war criminal.
And I said, "I just don't want to go."
They said. "No, no, no.
This year we've made sure you're going to be sitting -"
And they sat me next to someone indicted by the
[International Criminal Court] and I -
So I'm never comfortable.
- What does your former employer, the UN,
what position does it hold in trying to rebuild this trust
that people from all over the global south -
I'm from Afghanistan, I was born in Kabul.
We don't have much faith in UN peacekeepers
or ISAF or the international...
goodwill that seems to flow through our nation.
- I've always said the UN is as great
or as pathetic as the rest of the world is.
The UN is just the reflection of the rest of the world.
If the world is in a pathetic state,
the UN is in a pathetic state.
- Is it in a pathetic state?
- It's in a pathetic state.
Why should the UN be seen as anything different?
It's comprised of the 193 governments
that make up the world.
Why should they be any better?
Conversely, if you see a world that's improving
or you see greater respect for human rights,
greater democracy, you'll see a better UN.
It's not going to be better or worse. The UN is us.
- Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein, thank you so much
for talking to the Doha Debates.
- Thank you so much.