War and Peace: The ANZAC spirit and human rights

Message from Professor Gillian Triggs

Professor Gillian Triggs

President

Australian Human Rights Commission

Every year around Anzac Day, Australians and New Zealanders remember those who fought in all wars and conflicts over the last 100 years. As the national human rights institutions of Australia and New Zealand we wanted to mark the anniversary of the start of the First World War by examining the relationship between the Anzac spirit and the evolution of international human rights.

We therefore convened a seminar on the 1st of May 2014 that examined the following questions:

• What was it that New Zealanders and Australians believed they were fighting for during the First World War?
  
   
• Is it merely a romantic myth that the Anzacs fought for individual freedom and liberty against the threat of national aggrandisement and racial superiority? Was it a war of ideas between the individualist democratic enlightened French and English tradition and the German heroic ideal of sacrifice for the common good? In short, did such lofty ideas as liberty really stimulate the Anzac bravery in a conflict that was so many thousands of miles from us?
  
   
• How did the Anzac experiences from 1914-18 shape and articulate the global human rights based regime that we have 100 years later in the 21st Century?

The speakers who presented at this seminar were eminently qualified to provide some answers to these questions, and to take different perspectives in doing so. We are grateful to them for agreeing to publish their papers.

I would also like to thank Professor Joan Beaumont for facilitating an insightful and engaging discussion at the seminar.

I sincerely hope this publication will provide you with an insight into how Australia’s and New Zealand’s war experience shaped the development of the contemporary world order and how 20th Century conflicts framed our nations thinking about rights and freedoms.

Gillian Triggs