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The United Nations - which had about 190 members at the last count - is composed of governments. It is inter-governmental. This leads to the first paradox. Governments are sitting in an organisation that decides how to uphold or put an end to governments' abuse of power. Governments decide whether they should spend taxes on education or health or on armies or the military. It becomes abundantly clear that the UN is unable as an organisation to monitor and safeguard human rights since it is governments themselves that are invariably the violators of those rights.

How does the UN address the issue of human rights? There is the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, which has a Commission on Human Rights on which fifty-three governments are represented. The world is divided into regions with each region having a number of seats. Africa, for example, has twelve. The Human Rights Commissioners discuss and vote, as governments. This is the reason for the appointment of special rapporteurs. By the very nature of the beast, governments are often paralysed when it comes to human rights issues. They think like governments and are incapable of monitoring themselves or putting the brakes on their own excesses. They also have what they consider are justifiable pragmatic, economical and security reasons for not intervening when the governments of other countries violate human rights. 1980 was a particular case in point. UN members found themselves helpless to deal with the dreadful violation of human rights in the Argentine where thousands of people were being brutally murdered by the military regime. The USA was supporting the government of Argentina, as were Russia and France, each with its own agenda for doing so. The UN was helpless. As a way out they appointed Human Rights rapporteurs.

We rapporteurs are not part of the UN and we are not paid by the UN. We are external structures without payment. Why? So that nobody can fire us or even threaten to have us dismissed. Human Rights work is a process. You cannot expect successes to be attained easily or at once. You have to make a commitment - there is a great deal to do and very few people to do it. My husband who is a psychiatrist says that all people who work for human rights are certifiably insane, and being a psychiatrist, he should know. What weapons do human rights workers have? None. All they have is the ability to mobilise shame. It provides a glimmer of light, and it is better to light a single candle than to maintain darkness. What human rights workers have to do is - speak truth to power.

During the struggle for democracy in Argentina the UN Department of Human Rights was expelled from New York to Geneva, from the hub of international and diplomatic activity to a quiet backwater. Why? Because human rights issues are unpopular in the USA and with the world conglomerates. In New York we were too much up the noses of big business and the capitalists. They preferred to have us where they couldn't see us. But - we do have our successes - small they may be - but they are successes. The right to education has successfully been built into the statutes of Brazil and Uganda, for instance. Huge obstacles remain but we are encouraged by those countries that take a step forward towards ensuring the dignity and rights of those within their borders.

As I said, our method is to speak truth to power. It is power that is not only able to violate human rights, but is also able to effect change. It is governments that we urge to protect human rights and to accept, for instance, that people have a right to education. Speaking truth to governments is where we start, but of course it is not sufficient. The World Bank and the IMF have too much influence, and they never make the mistake of using plain English. You have to learn the jargon. When they say dialogue, they mean disagreement. Worse than that. They mean verbal warfare. I have been in verbal warfare with both the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation. The World Bank has compromised the right to education. It no longer sees it as an entitlement. Now it talks not about the right to education but about the right to access to education. In straight talk that means you have to buy your education; in many countries that's the only way you can gain access to it. As for teachers, the World Bank regards them with horror. They drain education budgets. So, says the World Bank, let's cut down on teachers' salaries. When there are no teachers, nothing happens. There can be no education. I am delighted to hear that South Africans are saying "no" to having education as something that can be traded. But here is another paradox. Here we have a conflict in the law itself. Under South African law, education is both a right and a tradable service.

One of my duties as special rapporteur is to write reports on the state of education in various countries and whether the right to education is being upheld. In my report on education in the United States I said that the right to education was not being upheld. Why did I say this about a country that is supposed to be a bastion of freedom? Well, I always snoop around before I produce such a report. So in the United States I went to the Deep South, to Mississippi, to see how education functioned. Hearings were being held in the senate on teacher salaries. I was interested in the white/black, male/female, dynamic. What I discovered was that white, middle-aged males dominated the Senate. In the gallery, however, four fifths of the onlookers were women. That gave me a clear sense of the political dynamic. I found that most of the cotton fields were white owned, while many blacks lived in squatter settlements. White children were largely going to private schools, while most black children were going to state schools. So everywhere there were clear differences in terms of race and gender. When you point such things out in your report it makes you vastly unpopular - but every time the truth is revealed, it becomes another stepping stone towards achieving the rights to which every human being is entitled.

Another reason for our unpopularity is to be found in governments themselves. On the face of it, a country can look very good and very successful - and the way governments talk about their countries one would think they were wonderful - but the real country does not correspond with the picture the government paints. My job is to confront governments through their ambassadors and tell them that we know the truth behind the pretty picture - and that something must be done or they will be named, blamed and shamed. For example, I confronted the ambassador of an African country about his government's killing of three presidents of the national teacher association, and asked for an immediate response. There are huge violations of education rights going on worldwide. There are governments that refuse to provide education for the children of refugees or asylum-seekers, claiming that these children do not have citizenship and are therefore not entitled to education. But these children do have the right to education. A child has little or no control of where s/he finds himself or herself. Wherever it is, the child has the inalienable right to education and it is up to the country where the child finds itself to provide it. Yet these rights are being denied. And teachers who fight for children's rights are being killed - 800 teachers worldwide, at the last count, simply for being teachers.

In Ethiopia the former president of the teachers' union was in jail for five years on falsified evidence. He has just been freed. A struggle has been going on for five years in that country for the control of education. A previous president of the union was killed. The one before that was accused of terrorism and thrown into prison where he died. Needless to say the present incumbent feels very vulnerable. It is true that we rapporteurs and those in my department look at things from a negative perspective but that is because we are looking for abuses. The trouble is that there are huge numbers of abuses, and, sadly, there are limits on what we can do and how much we can achieve.

I arrived in South Africa on Sunday and immediately began reading the papers to get a grip on things. I cut out an advertisement - here it is - my exhibit A. It is a Department of Education public announcement - on a burning issue - school fees. This is something in your country that really concerns me. It is built into your constitution that all children have the right to education. The first problem is that so far nobody in South Africa has been able to tell me whether non-citizens have the right to education or not. This is a murky and dangerous issue.

People use exclusive and inclusive language in the same breath. Citizenship education is a violation of human rights. It excludes children who do not have citizenship. We start talking about our children and their children and we end up with Nobody's children. This is horrendously discriminatory.

Then there is the issue of school fees per se. I read in this newspaper advertisement that no child can be turned away from a state school if the parents cannot afford to pay the fees. The Department of Education claims that no child is denied education because in practice it should not happen. That is a normative and dangerous statement. This advertisement assumes something that is bureaucratically complicated. It says that parents are eligible for exemption from school fees. But how does a parent acquire that exemption? Forms have to be filled in and have to be backed by birth certificates, marriage certificates, the death certificate of your grandfather, a green form, a yellow form, a purple form, signed before a notary, stamped, witnessed - you know what am trying to say. You have to be literate, efficient, articulate and able to handle the bureaucratic system to stand any chance of achieving this exemption - but most impoverished parents have little or no education, and are often illiterate. It is the reason they so desperately want education for their children. But they are being discriminated against and are being deprived of their human rights and their children are being deprived of their rights, because of the parent's poverty. This advertisement assumes that all people have the self-confidence, the know-how and the wherewithal to telephone one of the education administrators and say, "My child has the right to go to school free of charge." This is impossible to expect in a country where for generations people had no rights. How can you now expect them to be so self-confident that they can stand up and declare, "I have the right"?

My most serious complaint against South Africa is that it has not eliminated school fees. If Uganda, which is a much poorer country, can afford it, why not South Africa? Where is the money that could be used to provide education? Look at where the money is going. What is the human rights impact of the current economic policy? What are its gender impact and its racial impact? The second thing is that education cannot be treated only as a financial issue. It should also be seen as a means of eliminating institutionalised racism. One has to see education as an instrument to eradicate poverty, which is largely along racial lines. The government needs to realise that the free provision of quality education to the poor is the most effective anti-racist programme it can embark on. And then, by establishing physical links between education and employment, it will motivate pupils and drive employment. A fragmented approach, dealing with education as apart from employment, will get you what they have in French-speaking African countries - hatred of school. The right to education must be linked with other human rights needs – the eradication of poverty and the eradication of discrimination.

We outsiders tend to see things in a different way - two years ago South Africa invaded Lesotho. Why was this necessary? Why was money spent on it? What does South Africa do in terms of its thriving weapons industry? You have education money there. I hope that this forum will bring out some of these tensions. Be more honest. Be more realistic. Let us recognise what we can and cannot do.