On power and Human Rights
- To be a fully empowered claim holder is to have the ability to compel the performance of some obligation; before being empowered, people are unable to compel important others to perform their obligations.
- This, because in our societies, having a right means having the power to command respect, to make claims and to have them heard and acted upon. Put another way, to have a right is to have a power; to have to obtain a right is to be powerless.
- That in these same societies some are powerful, dialectically suggests that others are powerless. So, any coherent notion of rights must, therefore, recognize this connection between power, respect and inequality in our societies.
- Seen from such an angle, our performance in the Human Rights (HR) arena is still largely inadequate, because so far, it has failed to reverse the powerlessness of the poor. This failure of ours is coupled to our continued choice of rather paternalistic interventions. (How many of us are aware that, in our work, rather than empowering the poor, we may be empowering ourselves to intervene in their lives?).
- Power and powerlessness are fundamental dialectical opposites in society; they regulate the interactions between individuals, the state, and its citizen. It is inconceivable to imagine a world without power –and utopian to believe that such a world might exist.
(A rights theory which envisions what should be, rather than what is, lacks the force and persuasiveness to effect true change): Rights must be tied to the notion of power and powerlessness.
- What this means is that a HR-based approach will indeed challenge patterns of authority and power. Placing claims does not grant equality per-se, but merely grants equality of attention; it is a first step in challenging existing hierarchies; placing claims is part of a slow historical process that will eventually lead to a better life for the poor.
- But a caveat is called for: Rights arguments are also increasingly being used to justify particular sets of policies imposed on the poor. HR arguments may actually be used against them.
- HR can contribute (positively or negatively) to the power struggles of the poor: they can be used as much in defense of privileges and the powerful in society, as they can be used to advance the interests of the poor and marginalized. Economic rights of the haves (e.g., to property) are often used against the interests of the deprived majorities, as much as legitimate rights of people (e.g., to information, to assembly) are not infrequently contested in litigation or simply trampled using brutal repression.
- If HR-based interventions prioritize the needs of the poor and marginalized, rights can become powerful tools to advance democracy provided they do not ignore the power imbalances that exist between and within countries. This, because rights are easily co-opted to serve those who already benefit from inequity and imbalances of power.
So, how do rights-based interventions put the poor first?
- An active pro-poor civil society has a key role to play here. Their social mobilization activities have to aim for the structural changes needed for meaningful and sustainable changes that will discriminate in favor of the poor. In some countries, Human Rights Commissions have been put in place, but are no panacea if they ignore tying rights to the notion of power and powerlessness in the country.
- While Western preoccupation with good governance makes a misnomer of what good governance should be, it is only active grassroots everyday public participation (and not ‘democratic’, often rigged, elections in which only a minority votes) that can really influence governments. Using a HR approach to foster such an active participation is paramount –remembering that individual rights and group rights are naturally compatible.
- The success of the HR approach should thus be judged by its capacity to strengthen the least powerful in society to act in their own interest, individually and collectively (indirectly leading to better governance).
- We have to better understand HR and the role they can play in the context in which each of us works and in which these HR are to be applied; therein lies the immediate challenge.
[Mostly taken from L. London, email, Univ. of Cape Town, Oct.5, 2002, and from K.H. Federle, Rights flow downhill, The Intl J of Children’s Rights, 2: 343-368, 1994].
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City