-“Where there is a need, a human right is born”. (graffiti in a wall in Barriloche, Argentina).
-Human rights apply to all people in all places at all times, a concept that is challenged by patriarchy, fundamentalism, racism and neoliberalism.
[If you have missed previous Readers, here is a good telegraphic summary of the human rights-based framework attributes and, what I call, its ‘iron laws’].
1. What does the Human Rights-based Framework actually do?
• It encourages more holistic thinking, a more complete understanding of power, politics and of social change thus providing the evidence for the need to nurture social movements at all levels.
• It further encourages a) a strategic consciousness raising of claim holders and an engagement with various duty bearers in government agencies, b) support for the marginalized and their organizations engaging them as protagonists, and c) the realignment of power relations by building active constituencies for change in the Global South, as well as solidarity in the North.
• It uses/introduces distinct human rights language in development work.
• It fights internal feelings of fear or defeatism.
• It looks beyond people’s material conditions and focuses our attention on their position in society that is what ultimately restricts poor people’s access to the resources and services they need.
• It not only opens up the political agenda to new issues, but also, and perhaps more importantly, brings new grassroots social actors into the political arena.
• It re-energizes our work on gender, inserting the political edge into this effort. It further engages-with and learns-from women’s rights organizations working at local levels that already have experience and skills in grassroots organizing, consciousness raising, activism and livelihood initiatives.
• It supports and strengthens the capacity of poor people and excluded groups in society helping them to articulate their priorities, to take up leadership, to build their organizations and to demand genuine accountability from development agencies.
• It strengthens critical analysis skills in local leadership; it reassures people when taking sides and helps them handle inherent conflict; it also builds self-esteem, solidarity, political awareness and social responsibility with a focus on long-term processes, and
• It reminds us that micro-level activism should not be underestimated.
2. Other Human Rights attributes that give them their profound social meaning are:
• Human rights (HR) work involves diverse processes such as enabling participation; local organizing and grassroots consciousness raising; challenging, mobilizing, as well as sharing analyses of causes, of context and of power relations; and it supports joint decision-making and joint action.
• HR strategies do not come in neat packages, but rather are part of dynamic, sometimes messy processes of resistance where some groups’ HR compete and conflict with others. (Veneklasen and Miller).
• HR work ensures that national laws support and advance the HR of poor and excluded groups. It builds synergy for a collective struggle; it challenges oppressive practices and promotes critical thinking and mutual support, integrating these dimensions so as to increase the impact of the collective actions undertaken, and
• HR principles are not legalistic formulas designed by sophisticated experts on behalf of the majority; they have been achieved through past collective struggles; they can only be made real by the involvement and empowerment of people whose rights are being violated. Only with people’s decisive involvement can the exploitative power relationships that deny rights be challenged and eventually overturned.
3. What we should keep in mind before applying the Human Rights framework:
-Human rights work is always work-in-progress, i.e., work that is forged and refined through social struggle.
-We are not here to beg, but to demand justice.
• Making HR real in people’s lives requires changes in deeply engrained attitudes and behaviors.
• Linking grassroots practical needs with wider strategic interests is crucial to long-term change towards the vindication of HR.
• HR work requires and fosters an alternative vision of how power should operate in a more just manner, e.g., defining good governance in HR terms, paying special attention to making the excluded members of society’s voices gain influence.
• NGOs cannot just be implementers of development. In the places they work-in, they have to strike alliances with social movements active in the collective struggle for change. This implies taking clear political stands in favor of people marginalized by poverty.
• Often, NGOs provide services that ought to be the responsibility of the government so that, in fact, they are absolving the government of their HR obligations.
• It is important to start with an understanding of HR as a political process in which people translate their needs and aspirations for a better life into effective claims and demands that seek enforceable commitments by the state.
• There may be time-bound prospects to push for changes during unique windows of opportunity for HR. Seize them!
• We cannot romantically assume that the voices of the poorest and the marginalized always offer the best analyses or proposals to be adopted; they are wrong as often as we are… On gender issues, for example, a patriarchal culture definitely does not offer the best analysis of gender issues.
• While policy changes are necessary, they are not sufficient to transform the structures, the attitudes and the values that are at the root of societal inequalities and injustice. HR work has thus to go beyond changing public policies –to change people’s attitudes and behaviors.
• The notion of struggle is implicit in claim holders placing demands that are based on high moral principles.
• Adopting the HR framework often means ending old partnerships, and
• A key challenge in HR work is to link community-based social movements with each other, and then going from local to regional, to national and to international levels.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org