NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / New Zealand

Former Irish President dedicated to creating a better world

By by Carroll du Chateau
9 May, 2005 06:58 AM6 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

Former Irish President Mary Robinson wants human rights to be an important issue everywhere, from the home to the boardrooms of the world. Picture / Brett Phibbs
Former Irish President Mary Robinson wants human rights to be an important issue everywhere, from the home to the boardrooms of the world. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Former Irish President Mary Robinson wants human rights to be an important issue everywhere, from the home to the boardrooms of the world. Picture / Brett Phibbs

Mary Robinson is an elegant woman. Her outfit for Auckland is a brown quilted coat and pants, collar worn high, four strands of pearls round a high neck.

There's an antique-looking ring on her finger, the voice is lilting Irish and her dedication to human rights - especially the rights of children - is so strong you can almost pick it up and hold it.

There is little small talk with Robinson. I only learn in passing that the man who shook my hand so firmly and who now hovers behind us as she talks, is her husband, Nick. He too is a distinguished lawyer. When they are not in New York, their family home is in County Mayo, Ireland.

Robinson is reluctant to talk much about her daughter, two sons and two grandchildren. Or last weekend, which she and Nick spent with her brother, Oliver Bourke, who lives with his wife, also a doctor, in Timaru. "We're a private family."

Robinson is here to promote her two passions. First, to bring ethics to globalisation. Second, to help harness the strength of women, find the leaders and bring them together from all over the world. As she says, "I believe women's leadership can make a difference this century ... we can grapple with wider issues and make a difference and I want to be part of that."

She already is. The Council of Women World Leaders, which she helped form in 1996 and which she now chairs, has a powerful list of members including 32 former and current Prime Ministers and presidents and many women Ministers, including those responsible for environment, trade and industry, health. "We encourage networks of women ministers," she says, which particularly helps women in developing countries.

She also works with Awomi, an African women's leaders group, which she helps mentor and is head of the Ethical Globalisation Inititiative in New York.

While it is the leadership issue that has brought Robinson here as part of the YWCA Auckland's programme, it is the inequities of globalisation that makes her hazel eyes shine with passion.

She talks about the hellish lives of children in Africa, the deprivation in Mali after the price of cotton, the main crop, dropped to below levels where they could live from production "because of US subsidies and the dumping of cheap cotton on the world market".

One good thing, she says, is the way the world has become more aware, and keener on getting involved, with other countries' tragedies. "I think it's prompted by the tsumani," she says.

Robinson grew up sandwiched between four brothers and treated as their equal by her doctor parents. It was a start that made her assert her own human rights from the beginning. At 25 she a was a Harvard graduate in law and a member of the Irish senate. By 1990 she was Ireland's first female president. And then, after 20 years in the senate followed by seven years as president - part of a group that transformed Ireland into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world - Robinson decided to move her considerable energies.

"I agonised with my husband, Nick, about whether I would seek another term," she says, but she decided not to.

When the Irish Government put her forward for the post of United Nations commissioner for Human Rights that year, she accepted eagerly. And within her five year term the underfunded, demoralised wing of the UN was turned around.

Probably more life changing for her was the fact that she became a first-hand witness to human rights abuses of the worst kind. It was the time of Rwanda, Chechnya, East Timor and more. She flew into hot spots, becoming aware of the power of actually seeing what was happening - and the importance of getting the message across.

In her UN role she became critical of the United States. "I'd seen the way the US was eroding its standards of human liberties," she says. But what is positive, she told a Canadian journalist, is the way US medical schools send young doctors to developing countries. And they come back, after seeing the deprivation and say "there's a right to food, a right to safe water". These people will be the motor for change.

She is impressed by New Zealand which has made significant gains in the area of human rights at all kinds of levels "which is noted".

The international community is particularly impressed with our efforts to encourage Maori and Pacific Island people to participate in the general prosperity and running of the country.

"I'm so happy to come back to New Zealand," she says. "You have a woman Prime Minister, a woman Governor General - you're a very good example of what I'm particularly interested in."

And what does Mary Robinson want the world to look like when she finally stops imprinting it with her own brand of humanity? "I want what Eleanor Roosevelt wanted," she says. "For human rights to matter in small places close to home. For human rights to matter in the board room, the World Bank ... "

"Every single day at least 30,000 children under five die of diarrhoea, malaria, measles ... "

"Starvation" pipes up Nick.

She smiles and continues: "I've seen it myself. Children dying in the arms of their parents at feeding stations. That's a silent tsunami every day ...

This tall, graceful woman is proud of the progress and increasingly, puts her faith in women to carry the torch. This is "probably the first time [in the history of man] that we can do something about it," she says. "And it's nice to get up in the morning wanting to do something - something you really care about."


The rise and rise of Mary Robinson



* Born in Ballina, County Mayo, Ireland, on May 21, 1944, Mary Robinson received a master of arts degree at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1970. She also earned a barrister-at-law degree from the King's Inns, Dublin, and a master of laws degree from Harvard University.


* At 25 she was appointed Reid professor of constitutional and criminal law at Trinity College, where she also served as lecturer in European community law.


* With her husband, Nicholas, Mrs Robinson founded the Irish Centre for European Law in 1988.


* From 1969 to 1989, she was an independent member of Seanad Eireann, the Upper House of Parliament. She has also served on the Dublin City Council and the International Commission of Jurists.


* In December 1990, Mrs Robinson was inaugurated as the seventh President of Ireland. She was the first head of state to visit famine-stricken Somalia in 1992.


* She was appointed UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 1997 and served until 2002.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Save

    Share this article

Latest from New Zealand

ChristchurchUpdated

Car submerged in Christchurch river, fears people could be inside

07 Jul 08:19 AM
New Zealand

Health NZ board re-established by Government

07 Jul 08:03 AM
New Zealand|crime

'The man I once trusted violently raped me': Man jailed for attacking ex-wife next to sleeping child

07 Jul 08:00 AM

From early mornings to easy living

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Recommended for you
Car submerged in Christchurch river, fears people could be inside
Christchurch

Car submerged in Christchurch river, fears people could be inside

07 Jul 08:19 AM
The moment Erin Patterson knew her fate was sealed
World

The moment Erin Patterson knew her fate was sealed

07 Jul 08:17 AM
Health NZ board re-established by Government
New Zealand

Health NZ board re-established by Government

07 Jul 08:03 AM
'The man I once trusted violently raped me': Man jailed for attacking ex-wife next to sleeping child
New Zealand

'The man I once trusted violently raped me': Man jailed for attacking ex-wife next to sleeping child

07 Jul 08:00 AM
'Do it now, run him over'. Teen who ran over mother's partner twice can finally be named
New Zealand

'Do it now, run him over'. Teen who ran over mother's partner twice can finally be named

07 Jul 07:00 AM

Latest from New Zealand

Car submerged in Christchurch river, fears people could be inside

Car submerged in Christchurch river, fears people could be inside

07 Jul 08:19 AM

A member of the public phoned in about the car at 7.10pm.

Health NZ board re-established by Government

Health NZ board re-established by Government

07 Jul 08:03 AM
'The man I once trusted violently raped me': Man jailed for attacking ex-wife next to sleeping child

'The man I once trusted violently raped me': Man jailed for attacking ex-wife next to sleeping child

07 Jul 08:00 AM
Premium
Tech Insider: UK tells retailers to use NZ’s Auror crime-fighting software

Tech Insider: UK tells retailers to use NZ’s Auror crime-fighting software

07 Jul 07:00 AM
Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky
sponsored

Solar bat monitors uncover secrets of Auckland’s night sky

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP
search by queryly Advanced Search