HUMAN RIGHTS IN AN INTERDEPENDENT WORLD
FIRST IIAS ASIA AMBASSADORS' LUNCH

By Paul van der Velde

On 24 October 1994, the first IIAS Ambassadors' lunch was held
in Leiden on the initiative of the director of the IIAS,
W.A.L. Stokhof. It was his idea to bring together the
ambassadors to the Netherlands of Asian countries to create a
platform for an Asia-European exchange of ideas. The former
Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands, Professor P.
Kooijmans was invited to deliver a speech.
Professor Kooijmans tackled a sensitive issue in the
relationship between East and West: human rights in an
interdependent world. Kooijmans believes that the key to
arriving at a generally accepted notion of human rights must
be sought in the way human rights are achieved nowadays using
such tools as joint declarations, agreements, and so forth,
which are accepted by countries both in the wets and in the
east.
The lecture of Prof. Kooijmans has been published as the third
volume in the IIAS lecture series.