‘Hope Is Action’

Human rights pioneer Mary Robinson shares life lessons at Carter Center event

When Mary Robinson began her term in 1990 as the first female president of Ireland, she didn’t let her gender take a back seat to the office. She wanted to convince people that “I would actually do a better job because I was a woman,” she told an audience at The Carter Center in March.

Robinson went on to blaze trails not only in politics but human rights, women’s rights, and climate advocacy. She offered insight on her remarkable life during a public conversation and Q&A with the Carter Center’s Paige Alexander, CEO, and Nicole Kruse, vice president of development, following a screening at the Center of “Mrs. Robinson,” a new biographical documentary.

Robinson has several ties with the Center, including a long friendship with co-founders President Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter. She also helped lead the Carter Center’s election observation mission to Myanmar in 2015.

But perhaps her strongest connection to the Center is a shared commitment to bolstering human rights around the world. “The universal values of human rights are indispensable,” Robinson said. “They are as valid today as they ever were, and they are more relevant today than they ever were.”

During her tenure as U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, she traveled to many dangerous places — Chechnya, Kosovo, and Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “I always came back energized because I was meeting people on the ground,” Robinson said.

The world celebrated the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights last year and its 50th anniversary while Robinson was high commissioner. The document is as “relevant today as it was in 1948,” she said. “We have learned so much about how, hopefully, to do better in creating more understanding but also embedding it in the cultures of people.”

Despite her belief that “countries go up and countries slide” in their commitment to human rights, she remains optimistic about the future and the young people who will be inheriting the world older generations created.

As a member of the Elders, a group of former world leaders to which President Carter also belonged, Robinson said she has been involved in conversations about climate and energy that span several age groups. “Younger people are insisting at being at the table,” she said. “I’ve had incredible conversations with 13-, 14-, and 15-year-old climate activists.”

The motivation of younger generations will lead to sea change soon, Robinson believes, because they want the world to move faster. “We’re on the cusp of this much healthier clean energy, renewable energy, no-waste circular economy,” she said. Robinson marveled at the difference such innovations will make for people in Africa who have never had electricity.

Although Robinson has spent her career addressing societal ills across the globe, she believes joy and hope can be found anywhere and are essential components for a well-lived life. She once heard her mentor, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, describe himself as a “prisoner of hope.” It made an impression on Robinson. She thought, “what he’s saying is the glass may not be half full. There may be only a tiny bit in the glass. But hope is action. You work with that.”