In political terms, the birth of human rights was a non-trivial achievement. The human rights principles about development have now become a firm part of the framework of the modern study of social systems.
1. Human rights (HR) give us the intellectual strength to defend what we do and what we believe-in, as well as giving us tools on how to hold and defend those beliefs. Therefore, criticism and argumentation are part of the HR discourse. As such, HR do not really intend to pull us away from our lives; they rather enlighten our lives. (R.C. Solomon)
2. Worldwide, one can indeed talk of a ‘united-league-of-HR-violators’. It is the role of an existing and upcoming ‘united-league-of-HR-defenders’ to more systematically begin to set up a counter-power and, as so needed, blame-and-shame the violators. One way could be the yearly ranking of violator countries. Because this is a worldwide challenge, cultural relativism is not acceptable to HR, i.e., HRapply universally. The most widespread cultural-relative pattern is patriarchy which manifests itself the world over as different versions of the same problematic pattern that so importantly conflicts with HR principles.
3. Adapting an axiom of Baruch de Spinoza, I feel comfortable saying that everything happens necessarily because of its causes. The knowledge of an effect depends-on and involves the knowledge of its causes. Everything in HR has a structural cause behind it. In the absence of that(those) cause(s), there would be no negative HR effects; the knowledge of these causes depends on our actively looking for the always underlying structural causes. In Thomas Kuhn’s words: We find what we look for.
4. Consequent with the above, it is high time that the symptoms of an ideological shift towards HR begin showing and manifesting themselves more clearly. Even if, while preparing for the post 2015 era, one sees the simultaneous emergence of new competing ideas in many places, the needed cultural turmoil these create in debates has not yet really bridged the existing gap. One has yet to see the crystallization of a new-cosmovision-centered-on-HR as a new coherent global system. We thus still must come up with the needed determination and conceptual toolbox that will allow us to overcome this period of turbulence. …A role for HR Learning here! (Alain Minc)
To accept the future, we must renounce much of the past
5. Shifting paradigms, in practice, means transforming our way of thinking. On certain occasions in our lives, such a shifting is needed as a way for us to retain dignity while throwing up our hands. (L. D. Landau) The old paradigm’s progressively shallower ideas begin to conflict with the new ideas, prominently so with those that call on us to recognize our own HR vision of the world.
6. In the end, to understand, one has to ‘change gears’.** One has to reassess and reassemble how one conceives-of the important things that are going on. Anything else is a wasted effort, because what is really happening has nothing to do with fancy, stale social theories. It then is not an academic question any more to ask what is really going to happen in the future.
**: Not surprisingly, very often, it is non-specialists who think out-of-the-box as needed, who find the new ways, ways that completely change what it means to know something.
7. What we miss today are ‘terribly’ ethical women and men that do not concede anything, that go in search of the truth wherever it is to be found and that do not fall for the slogans of the prevailing development paradigm. (A. Castillo) For instance, as I have many times quoted: charity robs people of their dignity.Or: imposed ignorance is a HR violation. (Shula Koenig)
Human rights organizations are far from homogenous
8. What is here implied does not mean, of course, that all HR organizations should be addressing the full range of human rights. It is perfectly valid for organizations to focus on aspects of the agenda suited to their competencies and traditional modus operandi. Note though that methodology can adapt to mission, rather than vice versa! Belatedly, not necessarily after 2015, it is necessary for civil society organizations to develop and apply more effective and rigorous methods to document abuses of the economic, social and cultural rights they witness to, then, attribute responsibilities for specific breaches of HR standards and principles and press for accountability. Exposing the injustice behind the more systemic discriminatory and retrogressive policy failures requires developing new methods for rights-based monitoring and advocacy. These include quantitative tools (marshaling certain statistical evidence using indicators, benchmarks and indices) and techniques such as budget and tax analyses to assess whether resources are being generated and allocated in line with HR principles.(I. Sainz and AliciaYamin)
9. These approaches have to be married with various forms of empowering social mobilization. There is considerable evidence that HR research, policy advocacy and litigation, particularly when associated with social movements mobilization, have been successful in many different contexts in challenging economic and social injustices: from the denial of access to life-saving medical treatment, to deaths resulting from dysfunctional food chain systems. Experience has shown that for HR advocacy to bring about change in the sphere of economic and social policy, accountability must be pursued in a variety of different forms and venues, from courtrooms to boardrooms, to newsrooms, to classrooms, to living rooms and on the streets.*** For this reason, economic, social and cultural rights organizations have made it a priority to forge links with social movements and grassroots groups, working with them to devise tools and strategies for accountability and to support their efforts to localize and ‘vernacularize’ HR claims.***: Sensibly, a growing number of HR workers are asking to subject the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO, USAID, the European Commission and other development organizations to the HR Universal Periodic Review process of the UN HR Council which, so far, every four years, reviews the HR performance of all UN member states.Furthermore, States simply have to be made to open up an adequate domestic policy space to meet their HR obligations when pursuing business-related policy objectives with other States or business enterprises, for instance through investment treaties or contracts. Bilateral investment treaties and free-trade agreements may create economic opportunities for States. But they often also affect the overall domestic policy space of Governments. They can, and often do, constrain them from fully implementing new HR legislation, or put them at risk of binding international arbitration if they do so. Therefore, States should ensure that they retain adequate policy and regulatory powers to protect HR under the terms of any such agreements. (C. Herman)
10. What this debate drives home is that HR organizations vary greatly in mission, methods, approaches to partnership and levels of resources. While each organization is at liberty to define its mandate based on where it perceives it can make a difference, those with the greatest reach and profile must guard against undermining the efforts of others to promote a more comprehensive and transformative understanding of what human rights mean. (I. Sainz and A. Yamin)
In human rights there is a message that is not being heard
Breaking through the vicious cycle of humiliation means that the oppressed must confront their oppressors.
11. In our struggles, we uphold HR and justice for all since, else, we run the risk of perpetuating humiliation and we become the new oppressors, i.e., we become victimized violators. Why this risk? Because the prevailing structures of society socialize us to dominate and to exclude others. It is the learning about HR, directed to how to use them in practice that will help us see how the patterns of oppression shape our ideology and behavior. Everyone has to take-on some responsibility for these ingrained oppressive behaviors. (S. Koenig).
12. Yes, we live in a culture of domination and submission, of indifference (where ‘the other’ has virtually no presence). The question is: Why is there no aggression in indifference? But actually, there is, whenever the indifference is intentional. In that case, silence is aggression (and let’s keep in mind that not changing behavior can be a type of aggression). When I defend myself, I am responding to some kind of aggression, that is, I am treating my circumstance as an aggression and that treatment can, in some circumstances, be remaining silent.(Humberto Maturana)****
****: Franz Kafka calls this a combative silence; one that makes those who keep silent actually participants. (Franz Kafka)
13. Bottom line: One day, our multiple and multiplying, unresolved and accumulated global HR problems will become insurmountable barriers to a paralyzed society. By then (should we wait…?), the stupid –in the Latin sense of stupere which means staying quiet, unmoved, bewildered– will either become resigned or become violent. (M. Denevi) “Fear the slave who breaks his chains!” (FriedrichSchiller)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org