- At the risk of sounding panfletary, I think the (mostly normative) elements that could begin making our work yield more potentially sustainable and equitable outcomes are the following: (presented in no particular order).
- We need to de-professionalize our work. This will mean seeking, re-valuing and incorporating popular knowledge and know-how into actions we help to plan. Beneficiaries are to define what changes we will be looking for and let these guide the drawing of action plans. Action plans are thus to be negotiated and finalized in the field, not in our offices.
- In the process, Third World colleagues and local civil society organizations must take a more visible lead in human rights (HR) work (even at the cost of making some possible mistakes).
- All relevant knowledge has to be shared with the beneficiaries openly and upfront for them to fully participate in the decision-making process from the very start. We need to move away from the project-oriented approach and move to processes of popular enrichment and empowerment (‘consciousness raising’ of Paulo Freire). Needed expertise now has to be drawn not from academicians, not even from professional practitioners, but much more from the ‘everyday-sufferers-of-the-effects-of-the-prevalent-inequitable-system’. Development education has to be carried out from the beneficiaries’ perspective with their choice of contents and priorities.
- All this means we have to shed many of our own biased values and be more open to the beneficiaries’ values. Our analyses need to incorporate more the structural causes of HR violations so as to see them as part of the ‘big picture’ (including those changes brought about by Globalization). Such analyses will force us to tackle not only the multidisciplinary aspects, but the complex social and political issues preventing people from realizing their rights to the fullest (mostly related to control processes in society). We will have to confront face-on (and expose) the forces that oppose greater equity and full respect of HR so as to neutralize them (from the local level to the international arena). This means that we will have to adopt a dialectical approach as a more effective means to lead us to the needed structural changes at the base of the major contradictions shaping and responsible of the present situation.
- We will also have to;
– intensify our efforts at using the internet to build networks of like-minded colleagues that can consolidate a strong worldwide, solidary HR movement.
– become more active and vocal open critics of the type of (often tinkering) bilateral and multilateral aid that is perpetuating old non-empowering/non-equitable approaches.
– actively help forcing institutional changes in bilateral and multilateral aid agencies (the UN system included) to make them more democratic and transparent, as well as once and for all, more focused on HR issues.
– embark in a significant overhaul of the curricula of development professionals that will prepare a new generation of more sustainable development- and HR-oriented colleagues.
- All the above (being desperately incomplete and a bit caricaturesque) sounds quite grandiose (and even romantic) and is packed with heavy-sounding, politically-charged action verbs.
But the processes that can lead to sustainability and equity can (and should) start with small direct actions that we can help bring about more easily. Actions at grassroots level can take many forms, but should always reach a point in the discussion –excuse the repetition– where who is losing and who is winning (and why) is thoroughly analyzed. At higher levels, most of us have more experience on how to start discussions leading to change. We just have to commit ourselves in a more militant way to get and/or keep the process going and, above all, challenge the status-quo that would give a ‘proverbial Martian’ landing on planet earth the impression that nobody cares about what is not happening and should.
We are in for an exciting new era. We need all the courage we can muster. Wouldn’t you rather become a protagonist than a bystander?
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org