Is it facetious to say that ever more people are ever more worse-off?
1. Human Rights (HR) provide an authoritative legal and moral framework to tackle the deep-rooted causes of the ‘inhuman wrongs’ of poverty and discrimination, i.e., the ongoing global processes of impoverishment. (U. Baxi) The HR framework deals not only with legal justice (that is the primary preoccupation of older, traditional human rights organizations), but also with economic and social justice that is as central to development work. To deal with both of these, many development actors –development organisations, donors and governments– are now actively integrating HR into development planning. Many of the latter are integrating HR into poverty reduction (disparity reduction) strategies as many more community-based organisations are advocating for themselves for their economic, social and cultural rights.
2. The HR framework offers distinctive strengths and specific tools to change the direction of development work. It makes individuals the owners of HR and puts the human person at the center of the development process. People are viewed as active agents who participate actively in decision-making. The-human-right-to-live-life-in-dignity (adequate housing, nutrition, education, healthcare, access to a decent livelihoods and to employment opportunities) is now seen as an inalienable HR to which everyone is entitled. This fundamental shift from charity/service delivery to HR moves the poorest members of our societies from a position of vulnerability to a position of strength and, therefore, from a position of powerlessness to a position of power. (Dignity International)
3. The Human Rights-based approach (HRBA) is not to be seen as an action plan, but rather as an enabling framework that has received broad and representative endorsement. Alone it has no teeth; leadership is indispensable to applying the HRB framework as a process.
4. The HRB framework provides avenues for citizens to become aware of, claim, and realize key HR. It brings key HR ‘closer-to-home’ by offering a realistic chance to claim. It has a significant value for diagnosis, for discussion, for deliberation, for informed discussion and for generating community awareness of the gap between what they are entitled-to and what they are actually enjoying. It makes sure that calls for reform are properly directed to duty bearers. It provides a forum for views and proposals-for-reform to be heard and heeded. In sum, it seeks bringing about fairness, recognition, self-determination, greater control, solidarity and identification with others. Together, these express the longings of those who, through adverse historical circumstances, happen-to-be-poor.
5. Not to be forgotten is the fact that, as part of the HRB framework, the State is called to correct market distortions that perpetuate poverty and thus have a negative HR impact.
6. But it is not only people who happen to be poor; we also see feminists, homemakers, retirees, students, artists, sex workers, men who have sex with men, drug users whose rights are chronically violated. The question is do these groups arrive at wielding any real power –regardless of their claiming?
7. To address these issues, the HRBA uses the guidance of HR standards and principles to analyze these inequalities that lie at the heart of HR violations; it sets out to redress unjust power relations and discriminatory practices that are in the way of human development. The HRB framework thus sets universal guarantees that protect all individuals from the abuses of power.
8. As commonly in use, social accountability tools (have not and) will not deliver(ed) their full potential in current development initiatives. That is why a complete paradigm shift is needed, a paradigm that looks at these initiatives through different glasses, one that seeks justice and commitments to address the power issue in key institutional relationships, as well as one that places initiatives in people’s hands in ways that traditional project participation does not. (D. Walker)
9. By scrutinizing power relations*, the HRB framework raises very valid questions about how power is being used and places citizens at the center of a newly created political space that empowers them.
*: Beware: Power relationships within our own HR movement are also important.
10. To us, in HR work, the vicious cycle of poverty begins to be broken (and a real redress of HR violations occurs) only when the powerful are held to account.
11. Because timing is of the essence, we talk about windows of opportunity. Let us thus be conscious that our failure means going back; and the powers-that-be will hardly ever again let us seize an opportunity like the one in front of us now; they will set up the necessary precautionary mechanisms to make it near impossible for movements like the HR movement to gain force again.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org