I spent three and a half years in the Yugoslav peace negotiations alongside US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Norwegian Foreign Minister Thorvald Stoltenberg, and British Foreign Secretary Lord David Owen. During this time, I became more and more convinced that if we are to prevent situations of this nature—and I do not have the magic wand but am looking way into the future—human rights education is important. I think that the cultural effects of human rights education and international law are important. After all it is on the basis of international laws that the national protection system must be built. So, there is structural work to be done.

But at the same time, I think that sanctions must be there. The fact that former Chilean President Augusto Pinochet had to go through the legal procedures in the United Kingdom and Chile, the fact that former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has to go through the legal procedures elsewhere, and the fact that people in the Democratic Republic of Congo have cases brought against them in Belgium are all very strong ways of enforcing human rights. I think that this is a powerful deterrent.

Therefore, legal mechanisms have to exist as well as political and social action.

To what extent has non-compliance with international human rights law been a problem? Why do countries like Libya follow international legal rulings even though there is no formal mechanism by which to enforce those rulings?

In the international arena, there is a high level of implementation because it is in the self-interest of governments to abide by the basic rules of international law. Of course, when it comes to the vital national interest of the state, there is a pronounced preference for negotiation over judicial arbitration. The stakes in a judicial ruling are just too high. That applies to big countries as well.

For example, there was a case concerning fishing rights in the Gulf of Maine that involved the United States and Canada, and it took a lot of negotiation before the two countries would agree to go before a chamber of the ICJ. To gauge their chances in court, each country wanted to be sure about how the case was going to be handled and who was going to handle it. So there is a fair measure of compliance when it comes to vital national interests, and states usually prefer to negotiate.

Moreover, we are still living in a decentralized international community in which we depend largely on the cooperation of states for compliance. For example, while the UN Security Council can instill some degree of order in situations of war and peace, it can very rarely enforce that order unless the major powers of the world help—and even this level of enforcement has complications of its own.

In the past months, I have researched three things: first, what is it that the United Nations contributes to international security? Second, I have asked questions about the United Nations and the future of international law. I think the future culture of the United Nations should further accentuate the role of international law—not in a preachy manner towards the powerful, but over a period of time to help build up a culture of understanding and loyalty to international law. Finally, I have looked at what I consider to be the key principles of international human rights law.

In the 1970s, one still saw movements such as the World Peace Through Law movement, backed by institutions of international law and professors of international law. Nowadays, however, we have left these movements aside because we have to work at the business of extending and strengthening international law. It comes back to what I said about human rights education: we all believe that we must live in a world under the rule of law, but even the United States in some situations cannot impose and enforce it. So we are still working at what I would call a “culture of legality.”

You had a role in drafting the UN Secretary-General’s 1992 Agenda for Peace. Was the Agenda—which was bold but nonetheless did not stop, for example, the Rwandan genocide from occurring—successful? If you could go back and rewrite the document, what would it look like?

I wrote the first draft, but the final product does not resemble the first draft. I would say I had an incremental approach in the first draft. I sought to have the UN Secretary General go to the UN Security Council once a fortnight to alert himself to potential situations. I do think the Agenda for Peace, as issued, was an important document. It was a document that claimed high ground for the United Nations. It was a visionary and important document. Second, I think that I have always disagreed with the concept of peace enforcement in the Agenda for Peace. In arguing for peace enforcement, the United Nations made claims on which it could not deliver. If you compare where I sought to go with what was eventually produced, the differences are that we must build on what we are capable of—on prevention.

The thing that did remain from my draft was an emphasis on the protection of minorities—this is really the conflict. We are still working on implementing the Agenda in part, but I think it probably over-pitched peace enforcement.

What lessons did you and the organizations of UN peacekeeping learn from the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s? How might those lessons be applied to current situations involving peacekeeping and nation-building?

I want to give you my lessons because whether or not the United Nations has learned lessons is a much broader question. I spent three and a half years engaged in Yugoslav peace negotiations. Also, for one of those years, the UN mediator was simultaneously the Special Representative of the Secretary General in charge of the peace operations. What I learned is that the United Nations can be successful in peace negotiations only if it has the support of the major powers. If the mediators are pushing for peace but the major powers think that they should support one side or the other, it becomes difficult to achieve a peace agreement.