- An intellectually sound analysis around the new Human Rights-centered development approach is needed to arrive at a collective platform or policy for the South. This is needed as part of the South countries’ quest for solidarity and cooperation with one another –in their endeavor to follow a genuinely people-centered development path in freedom.
- It is our collective responsibility to organize and coordinate up-to-date analyses –analyses by the South and for the South– specifically on the new and not-so-new specific national and general international Human Rights issues. The countries of the South will be able to cooperate and act together more effectively only when they have access to greater knowledge and a shared understanding of the major Human Rights questions at stake in their own development –including the implications of these questions for their continued freedom and independence. There is a need for global action in the field of Human Rights and the changes needed have to be channeled to serve all of mankind, but especially the people in the South.
- The economic, political, military and social units which have most of the knowledge, skills and capital necessary to make a difference in Human Rights worldwide currently have far-reaching power over those who lack these assets. No country can escape the effects of these powers.
- We in the South, must try to understand what Human Rights are in our context and what it will mean not to adopt the Human Rights approach.
We need to know about and seize the opportunities in front of us and be aware of the dangers to our development ambitions if we fail to act accordingly. It is imperative that the South understands its own needs in Human Rights as distinct from the needs and desires of richer and more developed countries; only then can we negotiate from a position of strength.
- Countries in the South need to be in a position to act together to maximize the South’s benefits from and bargaining power in international negotiations and decisions related to Human Rights. Central to this action is to work towards a common position on Human Rights for collective consideration. Such a position paper is to give information and to analyze the major new and evolving Human Rights issues; it is then to recommend to the countries and organizations of the South what actions they could usefully consider taking, separately or together.
- Identifying and articulating the South’s common Human Rights interests does not imply seeking confrontation with the countries of the North. The existence of distinct groups of countries (e.g. Group of 8, OECD, Group of 77, Non-aligned Movement) is an expression of a reality: the imbalance in the level of development –and therefore the imbalance of power– in the world. These imbalances impose an obligation on all of us to continue the endeavor to reduce them. Actions of the rich and powerful have a greater effect on others than do events in poor and weak countries. That is the everyday meaning of the imbalance of power. (But even so, the poorest or smallest of us do affect others –either by what we do or fail to do!). Within this imbalance, different degrees of interdependence have always existed. But now, with the speed and nature of modern communications, the effect of external developments or decisions can be very quick and great. For the weak, these effects sometimes have been and are catastrophic.
- Therefore, we in the South must be able and ready, at any time, to speak for –and more often to defend– our own Human Rights interests as these power-induced changes actually take place, or as we are collectively threatened with them. Doing this is the normal process of negotiations between groups with different interests. For, ultimately, progress can only take place on the basis of respecting human and national equality; changes will only be beneficial to world peace and to our collective betterment when respect is accorded to all by all and when justice is available to all.
- Neither Human Rights nor development can be based upon the oppression of might, whether this be economic, scientific, political or military might. [Nor can the current acquiescence of silence on the part of those whose Human Rights have been and are ignored and violated –but who feel too vulnerable themselves to argue or protest– continue!].
- All governments sometimes find it helpful to have someone who can say what they would like to say, but from whose words they can, under pressure, disassociate themselves if necessary. As members of civil society, we need to say such things! And the call is here to do it for Human Rights concerns which do relate to economic, social, cultural and many other questions which underlie and affect the peace and development of our countries and our people.
- The need is there. We thus have to set up the participative mechanisms to work towards making recommendations concerning possible action by the South in the realm of Human Rights. But then it will be for the governments and the people to ultimately determine what actions they wish to, have to and can take. We can only persistently lobby. Therein lie our challenges, because what we do in this domain has to be used by the people, by the governments and by the institutions of the South… An instrument becomes useful only by it being used!
- Our countries face an international environment and a world economy dominated by the strong developed nations and corporations of the North. Moreover, international institutions are, to a considerable extent, shaped on the basis of the values and interests of the North. It is an understatement to say that often the values, aspirations and interests of the South are ignored as if they were unimportant.
- Developing countries can have strength on this issue of Human Rights only if and when they act together, in cooperation and in a coordinated effort. We do not have to be ignored. We are too many to be ignored. If the South wants to count, it must stand up and be counted! Let’s encourage this needed collective action and let’s continue to advocates the reforms of international institutions as and when this seems necessary to achieve our declared Human Rights goals.
- But let’s also be conscious of the things we have not done which ought to have been done and in particular which it would have been useful to do.
- To focus on the most important Human Rights issues of current or future relevance to development requires political, diplomatic and intellectual support from the South governments and from non-governmental organizations; it also requires financial support from the South.
- Our capacity to achieve the goals of the South will depend on the support these goals receive from the countries of the South. Assistance from friends in the North will, of course, be helpful. But we in the South must continue to be the prime engine.
- The value of what we achieve in Human Rights will lie in our intellectual autonomy and independence.
Claudio Schuftan, Hanoi
*: Adapted from mwalimu Nyerere’s address given at the South Center in Geneva,
Sept.18, 1995. (South Letter, Vols.1+2, No.37, 2001).