ABSTRACT
Or consider the opening lines from Alan Riding’s report on the world human rights conference that was held in Vienna at the height of the current Balkan War:
In an atmosphere strangely removed from reality, the first World Conference on Human Rights in 25 years opens here [Vienna] on Monday with a broad mandate to discuss human rights in the world-as long as it avoids naming any government known for abuses. Under the rules adopted
for the two-week conference, the fate of civilians caught in wars, in, say, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Angola and Liberia will probably never be mentioned. Nor is any discussion expected of political prisoners in, say, China or Cuba. Instead, 5,000 delegates from 111 countries will debate human rights in the abstract.
