-Human rights are timeless and are the expressions of fundamental entitlements of human beings.
-Unless poor people are accorded their rights, their lives will inevitably be short, desperate and unfree. (P. Farmer).
1. No one suggests that greater attention to human rights (HR) will move issues of marginal strategic interest for the rich countries to the center of the global agenda. The question is: Can the HR framework move forward when the rich see no immediate threat to their economic interests? (Mary Robinson)
2. Take, for example, the problem of worldwide hunger: There are no scientific mysteries about how to end hunger as a HR violation; people need food, education, and fair opportunities to do productive work. The challenge is to devise ways to assure that everyone always has these things.
3. There have been many plans for responding to the hunger problem, but they have consistently only worked around the edges of the problem, not to end it. In this context, chronically malnourished children or hungry slum dwellers have claims not only against their own country, but claims against the entire world. [Note: Slums are not places, they are people…].
4. Not only moral considerations, but also a fair and more proactive interpretation of existing HR laws*, covenants and principles are a must for such plans to succeed; they ultimately have to be woven into a global strategy and eventually into a global plan of action with ‘real teeth’.
(George Kent) ¬¬¬¬
*: Keep in mind that justice and the respect for HR are social processes, not merely legal processes; they are arrived-at through formal, as well as informal mechanisms. Most often, poor claim-holders have valid claims on less poor and much more powerful duty-bearers. The human rights-based framework offers protection from abuse of power, and can be used to challenge power, reject impunity, expose corruption and ensure access to justice much more effectively than any other development approach. (Urban Jonsson)
5. The problem often overlooked is that only where awareness AND interests coincide can effective international responses be possible; so, being aware is not enough!
6. The unfinished task thus is to work out the nature and the depth of global obligations and to come up with a set of ensuing concerted global actions. (G. Kent)
7. Clearly, the HR framework cannot provide all the answers or make difficult choices easier. But what other framework offers any such guidance?
Let’s face it: The HR framework is the closest thing we have to a shared value system for the world! (Mary Robinson)
8. If all was well on this planet, HR work might be considered as just another harmless pastime like collecting stamps. But not all is well…
9. HR violations do not simply show-up-in-our-daily-work. HR violations are the result of a collapse of the social contract between the haves and the have-nots. Therefore, fundamental change is not possible without conflict with the powers-that-be; and that requires using both legal and extra-legal means. (And, as we have said before, the respect for other cultures must not have priority over the universality of HR).
10. On closer scrutiny, we face at least two situations in which HR are being violated by states: Situations in which we find specific, isolated violations, and situations characterized by a pattern of systematic violations (or permanent violations of scale).
11. So, each society will have to establish specific procedures and institutions that correspond not only to its specific situation and needs, but that will comply with the standards defined by international HR treaties and agreements.
12. But, as also said before, wider recognition/awareness of HR principles in each society does not easily translate into the required political reforms.
13. A part of it is due to the fact that many of our colleagues disagree about what the flaws of the present, HR-violating system are and put forward a confusing array of alternative reform ideas.
14. Another part is due to the current international practice of recognizing any person or group holding effective de-facto power in a country that, not only violates people’s rights, but also uses state revenues to fund the internal repression of legitimate and vocal claim-holders. This is particularly worrisome. The effects of this accepted international practice on the world’s poor are devastating.
15. No ruler (legitimate and democratically representative or not) has the moral standing to waive the inalienable HR of his/her subjects. Period!
16. The central claim here is that any institutional order is unjust if its imposition produces an avoidable massive HR deficit. The current international institutional order is severely unjust by this standard (because poverty-related harms are causally related to the current global institutional order).
17. To this effect, for instance, it is undeniable that existing trade barriers contribute substantially to the under-fulfillment of HR worldwide. Moreover, the TRIPS regime is also severely unjust and its imposition, per-se, a HR violation given the avoidable morbidity and mortality it produces.
18. Ergo (as members of civil society**), by helping to maintain (or being indifferent towards) the present global institutional order we are participants in the largest HR violation in human history. (Thomas Pogge)
**: Note that civil society is a concept that rarely includes labor unions, popular movements and political parties. But the human rights that some of us enjoy today were actually conquered by direct political actions, be they by unions, by political organizations, or by popular movements –oftentimes fought in the streets. They are all thus our natural partners in the struggle for HR today. (CETIM)
19. In short, as Mahbub Ul Haq said about the largest HR violation in human history: The neoliberal ideology behind the prevailing institutional order balances the macro-economy and unbalances people’s lives.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org