From:
"HURIDOCS" <info@huridocs.org>
Subject:
Katarina Tomasevski (1953-2006), by Hans Thoolen
Date:
2006-11-17 11:33
KATARINA TOMASEVSKI (1953 - 2006):
THE ONE-WOMAN MOBILE HUMAN RIGHTS INSTITUTE
A complete obituary I cannot write for Katarina. She was too prolific and
too productive for that. Besides, we worked closely for only a few years, in
the first half of the 80s, during the first years of the Netherlands
Institute for Human Rights (SIM) in Utrecht and the setting up of the
HURIDOCS network[1]. After that we met on many occasions, usually in the
context of international meetings, talked incessantly about - not
surprisingly - the human rights planet and the strange but interesting
people that inhabit that world. Although it was by then
exponentially-growing, Katarina managed to treat it like a village and tried
to know everybody by name.
She breezed in from disintegrating Yugoslavia, with mixed Croatian-Polish
ancestry, speaking fast in at least three or four languages and with strong
convictions in the area of human rights. She came to the second regional
conference of HURIDOCS in Strasburg, where the constitution was adopted in
1982 and played a very constructive role in that development. There she met
- among many others - Martin Ennals with whom she shared this key feature of
first committing yourself and then engaging others[2].
As the Director of the newly established Netherlands Institute of Human
Rights, I did not find it hard to see the potential of this young,
knowledgeable woman and when it turned out that she could not go back to her
own university, it was quickly arranged that she would work in and with SIM
on a variety of research topics. So, in 1984 Katarina ended up living in
Utrecht (when not on the move!), employed as a consultant or on a part-time
basis by the Law faculty or on the basis of whatever other contract
construction we were able to invent. Katarina was not difficult when it came
to administrative arrangements, but on substance, methodology and
independence of research, she could frankly be a pain in the neck (and the
World Bank and several other institutions will find my choice of words on
the weak side)!
However, results she got and with a speed that made others either envious or
suspicious. She went to work on SIM's "right to food project", on indicators
of human rights violations, on methodology for counting victims (with focus
on Central America), and taking the lead in exploring the 'justiciability'
of economic, social and cultural rights. All this while generously guiding
the young staff of SIM and assisting in the additional burden of being the
Secretariat of the HURIDOCS network[3].
From Utrecht she moved to the USA, Norway, Canada, Geneva (advising WHO on
human rights and AIDS), finally 'settling' (if that word meant anything to
her) in Copenhagen, working with the Danish Institute for Human Rights, the
Raoul Wallenberg Institute (just across the water) and many others.
Teaching, mentoring, researching, publishing and becoming one of the most
energetic Rapporteurs of the UN Commission on Human Rights, on the topic so
close to her heart: the right to education. Concerning her scholarly and
substantive contribution to human rights, there are others who can and will
write more authoritatively[4]. For me suffices the image of the utterly
dedicated, always engaged woman who on her own was worth an institute.
Hans Thoolen, Chairman Martin Ennals Foundation
Jakarta, 11 November 2006
_____
[1] Human Rights Information and Documentation Systems, International -
www.huridocs.org
[2] Katarina was already involved with Defence for Children International,
and may have met Martin there
[3] Many years later, in 1992, in Crete, she was one of the few people
everybody trusted to write the conference report of the largest network
gathering of HURIDOCS.
[4] www.tomasevski.net
