Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, December 21, 1993                   TAG: 9404220020
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

UNITED NATIONS

Freedom House, a human-rights organization, recently reported that the number of Earth's citizens living in free societies fell by 300 million in 1993, while the number denied basic freedoms rose by 531 million. For the first time in five years, Freedom House also reported an increase in the number of nations where human rights are violated virtually every day.

All the more reason to commend the United Nations' tentative approval of a new post: high commissioner on human rights.

In its proposed configuration, the job will lack much of the clout that rights advocates had pushed for. The office can't force tyrant governments to honor basic standards of human rights.

But the high commissioner can embarrass them before the U. N. General Assembly and the world's eyes, and, by helping to fashion an early, systematic international response to political abuses, may help prevent some future human-rights crises on the order of a Somalia or a Bosnia or a Haiti - or a Hitler's Germany.

First proposed by Uruguay in 1952, the commissioner's post, too, has been a long time coming.

With proper financial and staff support - and the political support of enough nations - a high commissioner for human rights can serve to elevate the principles of democracy, freedom and decency on a worldwide basis. The new U.N. office may also give the long struggle for human rights a status and degree of attention it has previously lacked.