At The Heart Of Policy

WORDS: LIV MORGAN

Irene, one of the most powerful women to champion human rights, is retiring after eight and a half years. She looks back on her contribution to the fight against poverty and the fight for Human Rights with fondness. “I have often found that people underestimate me. I am not a big woman, I’m quite small, but I’m not bothered by it because in a way it gives me an advantage. As people have lower expectations of me, it’s easier to succeed,” she confides.

In fact as the first woman to guide the world’s largest human rights organisation, Irene believes she brought a new perspective to Amnesty. “I think being a woman I was able to bring a gender dimension to my leadership. As a woman somehow people were more open to me and I was able to bring some very difficult men in the organisation together and I think being a woman I was able to empathise with women, human rights abuse survivors, in a way in which I couldn’t have done if I’d been a man.”

From a very young age Irene witnessed the atrocities of war in her own country, Bangladesh. Frankly, it’s surprising yet encouraging how she takes the positive from her experiences “Yes on one hand I saw the worst of human character but also on the other hand I saw human courage.”

She recalls one of her earliest memories being of Kolkata. “We had a very nice house which was right next to a slum because that’s the way the cities of Kolkata are built; the rich and the poor are side by side. I was standing on the balcony, peeking through the railings and watching kids in the slum splashing around in the waste water. I didn’t realise that they were basically playing in sewers and I was sitting there in my nice dress wishing I could be like those kids, not realising how lucky I was to be where I was!”

The passion behind Irene’s activism is encapsulated throughout her newly released book; In ‘The Unheard Truth’ she recounts her personal experiences to illustrate why poverty is not a problem of economics but of human rights. “The right to health, housing, education — these are not needs they are rights. By regarding them as rights you actually empower people to gain dignity in that process and to hold Government to account.”

Read more about Irene Khan in the Winter 2009 issue of WMB