Arbour: Departing Rights Official Raised Volume on Issues

From The New York Times

GENEVA — She has been doing a job with a mandate that many would call impossible: to safeguard human rights around the globe. Yet as Louise Arbour steps down after four years as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, she is not entirely pessimistic.

True, she has no illusions that human rights abuses are on the wane. She also says plainly that the 47 members of the United Nations Human Rights Council often use it as a forum for pushing national or regional interests rather than defending people against assorted horrors.

Nonetheless, Ms. Arbour, 61, a former Supreme Court judge in Canada and, before that, the chief prosecutor of the United Nations tribunals for war crimes in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, said she saw some progress.