Making a Difference:
Hannah Wu champions human rights

By Lison Joseph

Even after working for a decade for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Kroc Institute graduate Hannah Wu (’90) keeps asking herself: “Am I making any difference?”

Wu is a specialist in international human rights standards. Her long stint at the UN has dispelled any illusions she had about implementing human rights norms such as right to liberty, freedom from torture, protection from arbitrary arrest. Her work, which has taken her to some of the world’s most troubled places, is difficult and often frustrating. Yet she disagrees with those who consider human rights to be a utopian notion that can never be universally achieved.

The Kroc Institute honored Wu with its 2005 Distinguished Alumni Award. She returned to the institute in October to accept the award, and to address Kroc faculty, advisory council members, and peace studies students, In her lecture, “A Journey to Human Rights,” and in an interview afterward, she talked about the challenges of human rights work.

Responding to apprehensions about the UN being more of a law-making body than an implementing authority, Wu noted that the organization is undergoing a transformation. In the field of human rights its focus is shifting from formulating norms to putting them into practice. “A strategic plan of action charting out the path for implementing human rights norms at the national level has been unveiled during the 2005 UN Summit,” Wu said.

Wu does not depict the UN as flawless or efficient. The UN is one of the largest bureaucratic institutions on the international stage and its decision-making process can be tiresome and painstaking, she said. “Once you are able to put that in the context of the ultimate objectives of what you are doing – protection and empowerment of the most vulnerable sections of population in different parts of the world – you can overcome the frustrations of dealing with the bureaucracy.”

To effectively implement human rights checks and balances, the UN depends on support from member states, she added. “The UN will only be what its members would let it be,” she said.

Wu has worked closely with civil society actors as well as government representatives, and has been among the privileged few to brief the UN Security Council. Her career has taught Wu that better human rights implementation cannot be achieved overnight.

The luxury of her cozy office, with a panoramic view of Lake Geneva, does not lessen her focus on the task at hand: facing the challenges of human rights protection. In fact, the contrast between the comfort of life in Switzerland and the reality of human rights situation worldwide constantly reminds her that there is a mission to be accomplished and that there is no time to be lost.

Wu’s roots are a long way, both in distance and awareness, from Geneva. She still has trouble explaining the complexity of her work to her family in Shenyang, in northern China.

Wu left China to study at Manchester College in Indiana, where she learned about the peace studies program at Notre Dame.

She recalled how her thought processes and beliefs were reshaped during her time at the Kroc Institute. “When I left the institute, it was not just an MA that I took away with me … That extra something that I imbibed during my one year here is an invaluable life experience,” Wu recalled. She particularly appreciates some of her professors for instilling in her a vision of a better world, in which human rights are respected.

After graduating from Notre Dame, Wu went to teach at a high school in Washington DC. In 1991 she took up a year-long internship with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in Geneva and New York, followed by more than a year with the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia. Since joining the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1994, her work has taken her to a number of countries, including Cambodia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, Albania, and Macedonia.

For peace students interested in pursuing a career in the UN, Wu’s advice is to be realistic about the restraints placed upon those who work at an international, bureaucratic organization. “There is no lack of opportunities for those interested in the UN,” she said. “The question is whether you have the patience and the perseverance to make it happen, given all the limitations.”
 

Lison Joseph, a journalist from Kerala, India, is a member of the Kroc Institute M.A. program in Peace studies class of 2007.

2005 Distinguished Alumni Lecture

 

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