Former Irish President dedicated to creating a better world

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.