Stefan Schlegel, you are the first director of the newly founded SHRI. A big task?

First and foremost, it is a beautiful and exciting task ... and one with potentially far-reaching implications. We are only taking the first steps, and early steps always leave particularly deep tracks. With luck and commitment, the SHRI can become a strong voice for human rights in Switzerland – but with less luck and less commitment, a wallflower with too few/not enough resources and too little/not enough visibility.

What brought you to human rights?

I can still remember the first time I heard about human rights. It must have been in 4th grade. We were covering the different world religions and their sacred texts at school. Interestingly, "humanism" was also included in the selection of religions, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was presented as its "sacred text". The teacher read from it. Both – introducing humanism as a religion and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a sacred text – are, of course, somewhat weird, seen from a distance. But back then, it electrified me. I immediately found it plausible that you can improve the fate of people by giving them rights and protecting them by creating spheres of freedom within which they can flourish.

Why are you still active in this field today?

For me, human rights have never lost plausibility as a means to contribute to a better world. I have indeed encountered many political and intellectual currents that ridicule law in general and human rights in particular and dismiss them as flower wreaths that are placed on the chains of humanity, as naive utopia, as an expression of bourgeois small-mindedness or as Eurocentric moralism. But I always found that if politics and the law do not pursue the goal of protecting and enhancing the dignity and freedom of individual people as their  ultimate end, what other end should they pursue? What other end could be legitimate?

Have human rights also affected your life?

For me, as for most people who are lucky enough to be born in safe, free conditions, human rights have been an essential but barely visible foundation. They are a prerequisite for my safety and freedom, but this would only become obvious once they were no longer there. Still, human rights were the reason why I became a lawyer and then a legal scholar. Over time, I have learned how limited the influence of human rights can be and how routinely and casually they are violated if they conflict with the interests of the powerful. On the other hand, the more I have attended to them, the more I have come to know examples where, on a small scale and for very different groups of people, Human Rights could make a real contribution to gradually improving the situation of a given community, where Human Rights gradually upgraded the protection of their dignity. For example, they have led to children being able to express their opinions and needing to be heard in procedures affecting them (even if there are still gaps in Switzerland). Or that people who have legally been in Switzerland for a long time can no longer be deported if they lose their right of residence. In this respect, I consider my scientific and human rights commitment a small contribution to making the world a little better, freer and less painful.

Why do we need the SHRI?

It seems to me that here in Switzerland, it is often assumed that human rights would apply anyhow. Or at least we believe that there may still be some shortcomings, and once overcome, then human rights would apply in full. This is a very static view. But: "Human rights are not a gift, they are a task," as Walter Kälin is wont to say. He was the first director of the SHRI's predecessor organisation, the Swiss Centre of Competence in Human Rights. This means that you do not just have human rights simply because they were once recorded in a legal document, but you have to constantly maintain them, constantly regain them.

What can the SHRI do here?

The achievements of the current human rights situation can be imagined as a garden. Without constant care and nurture, it would quickly become overgrown again. In addition to the courts, civil society and the media, the SHRI is now one of the gardeners who cultivate these achievements. In my view, however, the SHRI should do more than just maintain the human rights status quo. This should only be the first of three steps. In a second step, it can help ensure that human rights can be applied to newly emerging problems.

What new problems are you thinking of?

Imagine the people who wrote the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or the European Convention on Human Rights in the late 1940s. These people understood and recorded human rights in the context of the Second World War. They could not foresee many of the questions we face today: What do human rights mean in the context of climate change? What role do they play in regulating artificial intelligence or simply the use of social media? The goal of human rights remains the same: the dignity and freedom of the person. But the technological, ecological, economic and social context in which human rights must make an impact is fundamentally changing.

What can the SHRI do in this respect?

The SHRI can pick up on such developments early, design answers and discuss them with the responsible decision-makers. It can also build bridges: as a state-sponsored but independent organisation, it can mediate between state and society and build a bridge between international human rights debates and domestic discussions.

You mentioned a third point ...

Thirdly, human rights embody an optimism for the possibility of progress and a promise of progress. They aspire to apply to all people, including those on the margins of society, whose voice is hardly heard and who are the first to be forgotten. The gradual approximation to this goal requires permanent work. The SHRI's task is to aid the gradual expansion of the scope of human rights in Switzerland even to those whose rights are still particularly precarious today.

Does knowledge of human rights also need to improve for this process of progress that you are hoping for to happen?

Yes. Human rights are not merely a legal tool but also a cultural phenomenon. Many political concerns can be formulated either in a language of human rights or in an alternative language, for example, in the language of environmental protection or the fight against inequality. For a while, human rights were the standard language; preferably, all political concerns were formulated in the language of human rights. Human rights were accordingly popular. However, this has been changing. For example, environmental concerns tend to be developed from the perspective of the environment itself (or even from the perspective of a river or a glacier) and less explicitly as the rights of people who rely on these environmental resources. If the language of human rights becomes less widespread, knowledge of human rights could also decrease in the future. But for me, the current level of knowledge about human rights is not the decisive factor. Even a good level of knowledge must be relentlessly maintained. The SHRI’s task will be contributing to the knowledge regeneration of and concern for human rights, generation after generation.

What can we do to stand up for human rights?

There are many ways to stand up for human rights. This is not difficult, and everyone can contribute – no matter how little or how much influence they have or think they have. Many tiny contributions ensure noticeable progress over time. This starts with a conscious consumer behaviour, where you pay attention to the impact on the environment and the working conditions behind a product. In an association, you can advocate for particular rights or champion the rights of specific groups together with others, for example, for the rights of people with disabilities or the rights of women or people deprived of their liberty. And you can publicly support human rights with letters to the editor, on social media, or by using public spaces.

To me, of a particular importance is to be brave enough to break the silence – be that at a family celebration, during a coffee break with co-workers or on the street, when a person or a group of people is spoken of as if they were worth less than the rest of us, as if we could ignore their fate, as if their suffering counted less than ours.

What do you want for the SHRI?

I hope that the SHRI can be a seismograph and a metronome for human rights in Switzerland, that it points out critical developments concerning human rights at an early stage, that it provides concrete assistance to deal with these developments and that it always makes new attempts for more people in Switzerland to be better protected in their rights.