James Naughtie [08:37]
It's World Human-Rights Day. That always falls on the anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human-Rights in 1948 - a particularly significantly international statement in its day although one that's so often been undermined by events.

Today a group of individuals, some of them religious leaders from different communities around the world are signing a new declaration urging individuals to work in practical ways to fight for justice and equity across faiths and cultures. The importance of it is pretty obvious given what is happening around us.

I spoke this morning to two of those who are involved - both rather prominent figures: The Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks here and in Jordan, Crown Prince el-Hassan bin Talal, uncle of the King of Jordan, brother of the late King.

I began by asking him, the Crown Prince, how you turned peaceful declarations of this sort into action that meant something:

HRH Prince Hassan
The declaration shouldn't be used for pontification but for action. I agree with you when hiding behind one excuse or another, governments tend to violate international humanitarian and human-rights law and bypass the universally accepted norms and principles. It is for that reason that we have been calling in the General Assembly of the United Nations for almost twenty years for a new humanitarian order and in the context of a vision we called for a humanitarian vision based on an ethnic of human solidarity, which means that all the UN organisations, all the multi-lateral organisations should consider giving their support to peoples movements. But as you know the term 'NGO' has become to replace the term 'social movement' which was used in the '70s and the '80s and NGOs today tend to replace political activists but offices have replaced social mobilisation, so we end up with statements rather than actions.

James Naughtie
So Chief Rabbi here in London, what would you like to see happen as a result of initiatives like the one you're taking today?

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks
Well I think what's important about this initiative is it brings leaders from many different faiths and cultures and parts of the world. And what makes it different is that we are asking everyone, not only to think about rights which we claim but responsibilities which make a claim on us. I want this to be taken by the different faith communities to the grass-roots and I hope every one of us in our private and personal and business lives will understand that each of us has a responsibility.

James Naughtie
But you see in your own community in this country people who feel very close to Israel for obvious historic reasons - let's look at the difficulty you've got in saying to people whose relatives are the victims of bombers who come into their communities and kill civilians in pursuit of a political end. When you say to them: Well we much reach across the divide - they say: Well you're not living there. You don't have the problem that we have - and we're back into that intractable awfulness in the Middle East through which nobody's been able to find a path towards something better:

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks
Jim, I think you should know that one of the most powerful groups of peace-makers in Israel at the moment is a group of Israeli and Palestinian bereaved parents who've taken their personal tragedies as an impetus to say 'that's enough - no more', because we are human-beings and we do all have rights.

So I think once you take it down to the individual human level, which is entirely what this is about, you move it from political leaders up there to grass-roots down here.

James Naughtie
Crown Prince Hassan, do you agree that that is something which could offer hope in the Middle East?

HRH Prince Hassan
I believe that the civil liberties organisations - and I give particular tribute to the Israeli civil liberties organisations and their Palestinian counterparts - are being separated sadly by the creation of the wall. The wall psychology, as with the Berlin Wall, may be justified in terms of security terms and protecting human life as we are told by the Israeli Government but I would like to say in terms of the UNESCO Constitution that since war first begins in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace should be built. So I think that as far as peace education is concerned it is tragic that neither in our Arab syllabus nor in the Israeli syllabus is there a focus on teaching by analogy and I learned French history from an English point of view, so you can imagine how objective that was!

In the post-war period so many reconciliation programmes have been developed between European countries and that is the coin that should come into our television broadcasting, into our educational programmes and into meetings between citizens and in particular young people.

James Naughtie
Chief Rabbi, that's an acknowledgement that this is a long process and that even a coming together of the diverse range of people who are signing this declaration today can't break a political logjam just like that, by words:

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks
I think what we're talking about here is exactly long term which begins now. Politicians can change today; ideas and spiritual leaders can change tomorrow.

James Naughtie
Do you think that after the evidence of the last year or two the difficulties, let's say post-9/11 - the goings on in Iraq, in Afghanistan, the war against terror - that this stands any chance of changing in atmosphere in the short term?

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks
Well it does. I just feel that on both sides of major international conflicts ordinary people who have a deep longing for peace and who feel somewhat betrayed by the political leadership - and this is an attempt to speak directly to them and to ask to have solidarity with them.

James Naughtie
Crown Prince, looking at the number of Palestinians that you've got inside the borders of Jordan and in the surrounding countries who no doubt feel very angered by political developments of recent times, can you summon up any hope?

HRH Prince Hassan
The only hope I think is to turn to the people and we the people I think is the name of the medium term and the long term. The problem is that the political elites in this part of the world have neither the capacity nor the desire to develop governance - that is to say to deal directly with people - and this is why I am saying an initiative like today's, to bring together a family founded on certain shared values is so important.

But going back to the wall, I am even more worried because according to the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the UN more than 400,000 Palestinians living to the east of the wall will need to cross to get to their farms, jobs and services which means that approximately 680,000, 30% of the Palestinian population in the West Bank is being directly harmed.

James Naughtie
Chief Rabbi, what do you think about the wall?

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks
I think it's important that we keep talking across it, beneath it and through it. I mean that's what this is all about ...

HRH Prince Hassan
[Hear - hear]

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks
... and let us hope that one day it can come down.

© Copyright Office of the Chief Rabbi 2001 - all rights reserved. Reproduction of this Web site, in whole or in part, in any form or medium without express written permission from the Office of the Chief Rabbi is prohibited.