Development has become hostage to finance. Finance has to serve development and not, as it is presently,
the other way around. (Yash Tandon)

1. Under neoliberalism, the prevailing development paradigm has, in good part, deplorably led to exacerbated social-fault-lines between capital and labor, between town and country, between the religious and the secular, as well as to overplaying ethnic backgrounds. I simply refuse to be depressed about this; there ARE growing hopes we will break the barriers of this ruling paradigm.

2. Conciliatory apologetic speeches abound proposing amendments to this ruling discourse. But do these speeches point in the direction of really needed fundamental changes? [No]. And if yes, what do such changes propose? Anything in the realm of human rights (HR)? [No]. I must say that I do not find the analysis in most of these speeches very profound.

3. To argue that we must put an ethical dimension into markets seems pathetically insufficient –if not coming 200 years too late. First, markets work on the basis of profit, not ethics, so just how on earth are we to introduce morality into the world financial system? Second, it is all fine and good to say that the rich and their governments should behave in a moral way, but just how do we make that happen?

4. On the other hand, if some of these pronouncements honestly mean real change, do they offer HR activists possibilities of joint action and alliances? [Probably not]. Would such alliances be promising? [From a HR perspective, most probably not]. Would they simply (re)produce the proclamations of yesteryear? [Probably yes]. Do they have the potential to lead to meaningful progress in HR? [I am pessimistic]. These pronouncements would, most probably, just represent a change in rhetoric.

5. So, have we come to a point where enough-is-enough? I think we are all for a translation of rhetoric into practice. (M. Anderson) So, (what we can call) the Anglo-Saxon paradigm of the-freest-possible-market is simply neither a win-win model of economic policy…nor a model fit to reverse HR violations.

6. What this means, is that the business logic cannot be applied to development cooperation and to HR work. In HR work, whether some measures work or not fundamentally depends on embracing the HR framework, something the ruling paradigm does not do beyond lip service. Simply put, there is a fundamental failure on the part of too many political leaders with the power to influence events in development work to see HR violations as a grave problem that undermines often at-first-sight-well-intentioned development efforts.

7. If the ‘engineering approach to development’ (that often makes elegant analyses, but on the wrong questions or premises) is devoid of the political focus this Reader calls for, this basically reinforces the abundant evidence we have that indicates that those who have the resources do not really care enough about those who have the problems, i.e., those who are sick, underfed, underpaid, discriminated against and, in short, overlooked. We thus now have to alter our emphasis from political commitment to legal obligation. (Paul Hunt)

8. ‘Boutique interventions’ imported from the rich countries tend to mask the real disconnect between those that have the power and those who have the problem. Let us not fool ourselves in a way that conceals the real challenges that need to be addressed: If we do not look at this disconnect in a straightforward and honest way, we are not dealing with the realities that need to be addressed, i.e., we must begin to focus on the intervening social forces, their economics and their politics –and then find ways to replace those structures that endlessly reproduce HR violations such as poverty, preventable ill-health, preventable malnutrition and preventable deaths. (George Kent)

9. Through HR learning and through the social mobilization of claim holders we thus need to organize local and national advocacy coalitions that provoke changes in the awareness of leaders and, through the mobilization of claim holders, sternly remind policy-makers of their HR obligations –thus de-facto linking HR to national development. (T. Benson)

10. History is a political battleground; its writing has always been a political tool trying to legitimize the views and rights of those in power (strictly speaking, the past is thus not as clear cut as we are made to believe… ‘orthodox history’ is a contradiction in itself). So, if the past is open for reinterpretation, so is the present. Because life is lived forwards, but understood looking backwards, I contend that what we learn from critically analyzing a distorted history must make us activists in the present –but activists departing from a new HR perspective that puts the analysis of power relations at the center –a position diametrically opposed to ‘alms for the people who happen to be poor’.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org

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