Editorial/Opionion pages of the International Herald Tribune - Thursday, March 6, 1997

By Reed Brody International Herald Tribune

NEW YORK - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan faces one of his first major tests as he moves to name a new high commissioner for human rights, after the resignation last month of Jose Ayala Lasso, whose lackluster performance disappointed human rights advocates.

The United Nations created the high-profile post in 1993 after a worldwide drive by rights groups, led by Amnesty International, culminated in a UN World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna. The high commissioner was charged with taking ''an active role'' in ''preventing the continuation of human rights violations throughout the world.''

Proponents hoped that the high commissioner would use his visibility and resources to become the ''conscience of humanity,'' delivering a swift public response to abuses and ensuring that human rights became part and parcel of all UN activities.

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali, over whose opposition the post was created, undermined these hopes in April 1994 by turning to Mr. Ayala Lasso, a cautious career diplomat who had served Ecuador's former military government as foreign minister, the position to which he now returns. Publicity and the marshaling of shame, activists know, are among the few weapons in the human rights arsenal. But on issues ranging from Russian atrocities in Chechnya to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the first high commissioner relied exclusively on ''quiet diplomacy,'' squandering his unique potential to stigmatize illegal conduct.

He visited scores of countries but almost never reported on what he saw or discussed. At the UN Women's Conference in Beijing in 1995, Chinese authorities hauled away Hong Kong journalists practically under the high commissioner's nose, while undercover agents harassed exiled Tibetan women. Mr. Ayala Lasso looked the other way. Pressed by reporters for a reaction, he ducked the issue.

When it did not require him to openly displease powerful states, he sometimes took important new initiatives. He boldly sent a team of monitors to Rwanda (four of whom were recently killed), and established field offices in Burundi, Zaire and the former Yugoslavia. A new outpost in Colombia means that for the first time the army and the paramilitary death squads there will be subject to on-site international monitoring.

He originally allowed governments to play off his own quiet diplomacy against the public reporting of expert envoys named by the UN Commission on Human Rights, but more recently he would take up the envoys' findings with government officials, albeit privately. His recent restructuring of the UN Center for Human Rights in Geneva could unlock frustrated talent in what has often been a bureaucratic backwater. His web site allows immediate global access to UN reports of abuses.

He proved unable, however, to inject human rights concerns where they really count - on the agenda of top UN officials and the Security Council at UN headquarters in New York, where officials set long-term strategy, respond to crises and deploy peacekeeping operations. This is partly because of his passive approach, partly because his office is isolated in Geneva, and partly because of his choice of a weak New York liaison officer.

Secretary-General Annan, in proposing a new high commissioner to the General Assembly, should also upgrade the rank of the commissioner's New York representative.

The secretary-general has named a respected UN legal official as caretaker while he considers his options. The post is too critical to be left vacant for longor to be part of a business-as-usual reshuffling of UN jobs among in-house careerists or diplomatic wannabes.

The high commissioner's job description calls for a person of ''high moral standing and personal integrity'' with expertise in fields including human rights. As the United Nations prepares to celebrate in 1998 the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Mr. Annan has the opportunity to appoint a true champion of liberty, someone who is not afraid to openly challenge governments when they violate the rights of their citizens.

The writer, a former human rights director of the UN peacekeeping operation in El Salvador, coordinated lobbying for human rights groups at the UN World Conference on Human Rights. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.