Human rights: Food for adopting an undeniable thought ‘Macro causes are the constraint’
Human Rights Reader 491
The role of ideology
24. Nutrition seems to be as good an entry point as any other (employment, education, energy, natural resources, ecology, etc.) for getting involved in questions of equity, equality and the right to nutrition in our societies. Nutrition can indeed lead to global considerations if it is not seen as an isolated issue (and so is health…).
25. Malnutrition should not be urgently addressed on grounds of utility, but because it is morally necessary. What we need to fight for is equality not utility, as is the focus of the human rights-based framework. Poverty should not be seen as an inevitable evil, but as a basic injustice to be made right. In that sense, poverty is to be considered more as a relative rather than an absolute condition.
26. The ideology and outlook on world affairs (largely determined by social class extraction) of development planners searching for the determinants of hunger and malnutrition play a vital role in the selection of the contents of the final in-depth analysis (one sees only what one wants to see!). Once a certain level of consciousness is attained (by interacting with claim holders) an action-oriented attitude can follow. At this point, there is a convergence of ideology and action that makes the difference between taking an observer’s as opposed to a protagonist’s role. Knowing about injustice does not move many of us: becoming conscious about human rights (HR) violations generates a creative anger that calls for involvement in corrective actions. The latter can only happen within the framework of an ideology consciously acquired. In the context of development, then, ideology carries the additional connotation of commitment, both emotional and intellectual, and of action-orientation.
27. Ideology is not simply a body of ideas determining goals; ideology also includes the instruments, strategies, and tactics to be used in planning for economic and social change.
Objectivity in the analytical stages of the planning process is nothing but a myth
28. Since the solutions being proposed for malnutrition heavily depend on the final diagnosis of the causes identified, there is no assurance that by following the procedures described in the previous Reader for the identification of macro and micro determinants one will end up with a better, more comprehensive plan to ameliorate hunger and malnutrition in any specific situation. The implications of this center on at least two issues:
• Will the outlook for addressing the right to nutrition in the world be any better without a concomitant process of political maturation of claim holders and duty bearers involved in nutrition work?
• Will more efforts towards demonstrating the futility of many ongoing food and nutrition programs initiate a new, more aggressive approach?
The possible answers to these two questions are again ideologically charged.
29. In trying to solve the problem(s) of malnutrition, intra-professional responsibility must not be neglected. This responsibility has to be taken up starting with a process that critically analyzes our professional affairs and goals with their inherent contradictions. Basically, nutrition workers should be searching for a new ethos, a professional, political ethos. The ‘sense of responsibility’ many scientists feel does not seem to be sufficient to see necessary changes occur; it has basically lead nowhere.
It may solve the conscience problems of the person who devotes time and effort to doing ‘something’ to solve malnutrition. It, however, seems to have little effect on the real problems of those rendered poor and malnourished. An isolated emotional commitment is loose and romantic; ideological commitment is militant.
30. The concept of being socially responsible is nothing but a euphemism for what really should be called a political responsibility towards HR. A political commitment is important, precisely because governments function as political entities. Political forces are fought with political actions, not with morals …or with technological fixes.
31. It is precisely a misunderstanding of reality (or a partial understanding) that often reinforces the amoral/apolitical position of some nutrition workers. Or, some of them, may not really want to understand; they have, all too often and for all the wrong reasons, already made up their minds about one reality, thus often searching for the statistical ‘whats’ instead of analyzing the ‘whys’. To continue pushing supra-structural measures is to perpetuate the problems. In the vast majority of cases, it will mean a waste of scarce resources and ofprecious time.
32. We need to have a-more-than-objective diagnostic tool, a good framework to consider alternative intervention strategies that criticize policy decisions stained by the wrong ideological outlook.
Working with the community
33. If little can be expected from the central level, then community-level/grassroots organization around right to nutrition issues is to become the viable answer in the long run.
34. Popular participation is absolutely fundamental to success in nutrition planning. But planners have persistently disregarded this central issue. What is needed is more dedication to working directly with those rendered poor so they can tackle the causes of their poverty and malnutrition themselves. This calls for nutrition workers to go, as much as possible, back to fieldwork and out of their offices or laboratories. Only there can the strengths needed for a change in direction and perspective be found. They need to learn from the people and from their perceptions of the problems, establish links with local mass movements and participate in their consciousness raising.
35. The participation of the affected population begins with creating awareness that they have a problem, to be followed by ample discussion about what can be done about it. Here, the outsider’s role is to ask the right questions and not to point at what s/he thinks is wrong.
36. It is only through praxis that political consciousness can be strengthened, and it is only when people are convinced that change is in fact taking place that they will listen and learn the abstract concepts that must be actualized in their experience. In our work with the community we have to pass from a mutually shared analysis and understanding of the local micro determinants of malnutrition, which should be more easily identifiable and perceived by the community at the beginning, to the analysis and understanding of the local and then general macro determinants of that condition.
37. For the latter to be possible, the community will have to go through a slow process of political maturation before effectively gaining consciousness of the role of the social and economic constraints that determine malnutrition in their milieu; these are more difficult to understand. People have to be made aware of their problems in a specific context first and then in an ideological context. The exposure of macro constraints should, in the first instance, lead to generating commitments to implementing the needed structural changes. It is important to demonstrate to the masses that it is in their power to change not only the physical reality that surrounds them, but the social and political reality as well.
38. There are three levels of possible involvement in fieldwork. At the first level, one solicits the participation of the community in a given project. (Participation has turned out be harmless for the vested interests and is, therefore, a regular appendage of every government and donor project). A second level calls for outright consciousness raising among the population. At the third level, an effort is made towards the mobilization of claim holders and the effective empowering of those rendered poor.
39. Because village problems are often not the governments’ problems, local felt needs have to be converted into concrete issues so that a course of action to address them can be mapped out. This may involve developing functional knowledge about people’s rights, or challenging public agencies, landlords or other powerful people or institutions by filing specific demands or claims. A new type of community-oriented nutrition worker is needed for this Herculean task: one that plans with people to get organized to work together in solving the problems.
40. We need to move in the direction of training nutrition workers as HR trainers of others so that their own experiences can be reproduced at many levels in each country; this, given the limited geographical coverage per worker that this approach from the bottom up inherently has. The shortcomings of this approach are many, not the least of which is a) the fact that it is a very slow process based on mutual trust in each community, and b) that its replicability is, therefore, also very slow even in the best cases. The dangers, of course, are also significant, especially when the political outlook of government is hostile.
41. The question that still remains at the end of this discussion is: Is this approach realistic or not? If it is not, let us keep in mind that not being realistic is a judgment that history can change; what may sound unrealistic today can very well become true tomorrow, if we work for it with decision.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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