Honorary Graduates

Orations and responses

Response by Helen Bamber

10 JULY 1998

Vice-Chancellor, Fellow Graduands, Ladies and Gentlemen:

It is a privilege to accept the honour you have bestowed on me, given by a university renowned for its dedication to the study and protection of human rights.

I have lived through a dark and terrible period of 20th century history.  The carnage of  World War II and the genocide of the Holocaust have left a legacy of suffering that many of those who survived still struggle to overcome 50 years on.

I t was the understanding of the long-term effects of such man-made catastrophes that led to the establishment, at the end of 1985, of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture.  Since then we have treated over 13,500 people from 91 different countries, whose physical and psychological injuries are often complex and in some cases grotesque.

But the Medical Foundation is not there only to treat  the victims. It has a duty, and fulfils such a duty, in documenting and providing carefully assembled firsthand evidence of human rights violations which can be used by all those working for change from the United Nations to the smallest human rights organisation.

I am encouraged by one particular development in the field of human rights law today, namely the current deliberations in Rome at the UN-sponsored Diplomatic Conference for establishing an International Criminal Court.

This is the most significant juridical development in the area of human rights and humanitarian law since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals at the end of the Second World War.  Bringing to justice the perpetrators of genocide and other crimes against humanity could provide a salutary lesson to torturers and tyrants everywhere.

I hope that the delegates will show courage and establish an effective International Criminal Court.  Theirs is a grave and serious responsibility.

Of course, few of us, at any given time, exercise such a high level of responsibility for the protection or promotion of human rights, or for the great ideas and ideals of liberty on which they are based.

Here, at the University of Essex, the most international university in the country, where 125 nationalities are represented in the student body, it is especially appropriate to emphasise the responsibility each of us does have, in the face of human rights abuses, wherever in the world they are committed, to protest against abuses and to uphold international human rights law.

As educated professionals in our particular field, we need to play our part in upholding human rights, no matter how small our part may seem. We each have a voice, and that voice can be used for good or for evil.

Or, it can simply be silent.  I hope, above all, that yours will not be silent.  I hope that you will use your voice emphatically for good.  Believe me, it is the crescendo of all our small voices that may - even in your lifetime - put an end to tyranny.

I salute this University in the name of all those who are working to protect and defend human rights.  I  thank you.