Published: 18 November 2022
Last updated: 5 March 2024
The former High Court judge reflected on human rights violations in North Korea, the role of the UN and Ukraine in the annual Colin Tatz Oration, presented by The Jewish Independent.
United Nations inquiries into human rights abuses must be guided by “a proper and honest approach to the interpretation of law”, and not just instincts for fairness, former High Court judge Michael Kirby said in an address in Sydney on Monday night.
Speaking on the topic of "Is the UN’s definition of genocide relevant today?" Justice Kirby said “many of the complaints against the United Nations are that the Commissions of Inquiry and the Special Rapporteurs in the past have been basically motivated by political instincts of justice and fairness, looked at globally.
“We’ll only build the rule of law in the international community on a proper and honest approach to the interpretation of law,” he told a sold-out audience of 200 at Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion, in the third annual Colin Tatz Oration, presented by The Jewish Independent.
Justice Kirby became publicly involved with questions of genocide when he was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in May 2013, to lead a commission of inquiry into human rights abuses in North Korea – an experience he has briefly compared to sitting on the Nuremberg Trials. The question arose as to whether the North Korean regime was guilty of genocide or “only” crimes against humanity.
Justice Kirby said he could not have put his name to a report which said that North Korea had committed genocide. The Commission of Inquiry that he chaired found that crimes against humanity were committed, but not genocide, because the violations were political in character.
The definition of genocide adopted by the UN in 1948 is limited to acts of violence performed by the state to kill large numbers of people because of their nationality, ethnicity, national identity or religion, and its application and interpretation in modern conflicts remains relevant.
In a Q&A session after his address, Justice Kirby was asked whether he considered that the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the indiscriminate killing of its civilians as part of a strategy of trying to erase the Ukrainian state fits the UN definition of genocide.
He was wary of offering a direct answer. “There are lots of things in the UN Charter that need to be considered in the case of the Ukraine and Russian dispute.
“The right of self-determination of peoples, which has a lot of unfulfilled work to do, may be relevant to Ukraine because we are ultimately going to have to solve what you do where there is a border that doesn't reflect the ethnicity and nationality and race of different people or their language.
"We are ultimately going to have to solve what you do where there is a border that doesn't reflect the ethnicity and nationality and race of different people or their language."
“It should not be all that difficult to have referenda, not the referendum that Russia conducted [in parts of Ukraine it annexed] but a proper, impartial, free and fair election or referendum.
“This is a problem right throughout the world,” Justice Kirby said.
The Jewish Independent’s annual Colin Tatz Oration celebrates the life and legacy of scholar and activist Colin Tatz AO (1934-2019), the former director of the Australian Institute for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Professor Tatz devoted his working life to researching and combatting racism and discrimination and wrote hundreds of books and peer-reviewed articles on race politics, genocide, the Holocaust, antisemitism, and racism in sport.
Professor Tatz was one of The Jewish Independent’s founding contributing writers and editorial advisors. After his death in 2019, an annual address was established in his name by The Jewish Independent and the Tatz family.
This year’s third annual Colin Tatz oration was open to the public for the first time following previous years’ Covid-restricted events. Journalist Stan Grant was the inaugural speaker at the 2020 Colin Tatz Oration and in 2021, then-shadow minister for Women and Education, and now-Minister for the Environment, Tanya Plibersek, gave the oration.
Photo: Justice Kirby delivering the Colin Tatz Oration in Sydney on Monday, November 14
All photos by Giselle Haber
