Claudio Schuftan
schuftan@gmail.com
The vast majority of humanity just has the right to see, to hear… and to remain silent. (Eduardo Galeano)
A touch of history
1. The newly emerging Human Rights framework in development work comes as a reivindication to old time radicals who have been advocating and fighting for a more political approach to the ‘maldevelopment’ the second half of the 20th century has witnessed.
2. Gone are the heydays of Latinamerican revolutionary fervor and of African Socialism, of President Allende’s Unidad Popular and of President Nyerere’s Arusha Declaration and Ujamaa. But the role of an avant-garde remains the same: to cause fermentation. (1)
3. Historically, countries in the South first saw the arrival of Northern-led infrastructure/public works builders who attempted to set up the backbone of Third World economies. Then, in the 1970’s, came basic human needs backers who attempted to provide people with their bare-bones necessities for survival. Now, we have the greens reminding us of the environmental limits of development. But, so far, these approaches only weakly touched the political dimension, failing to tackle it as the principal stumbling block to genuine people’s development.
4. I have personally been a witness to this snail-paced process of politicization of development work; I have seen it evolve in slow, incremental steps over a period of roughly 25 years. My experience has mostly been in the field of nutrition.
5. My journey started with the rise and fall of the ‘Food and Nutrition Planning’ era from 1974 on. At the time, many of us critiqued that newfound panacea to solve the problems of malnutrition in the world. (2)
It eventually died a quiet death. Systems analysis techniques and models, devoid of a political vision/perspective, simply led to a dead end alley. It took us years to figure that out.
6. Furthering the fight for a more genuine grassroots development, a second breakthrough, to me, came in 1984. At that time, the first steps were taken in coming up with what later became the ‘Conceptual Framework of the Causes of Malnutrition’ with its different levels of causality. (3) The accompanying AAA approach (assessment/analysis/action) came as a consequent companion to such a causal analysis. It called for the entire AAA process to be carried out by the beneficiaries themselves. [The AAA approach contended that only when those living in poverty are understood to be the most effective analysts of their own problems and agents of their own solutions, is it possible to formulate effective and sustainable interventions. (4)].
7. As is now well known, the Conceptual Framework’s basic causes focus more proactively on the people’s access-to and control-over the resources they need to develop and on the structural underpinnings of underdevelopment. The Conceptual Framework/AAA approach thus represents the acceptance of a dialectical approach that looks at the major and minor contradictions in society that result in worldwide ill-health and malnutrition of women and children as an outcome. The adoption of this approach was, therefore, a step towards further politicization of the development paradigm.
It called for a dialectical unity of knowledge and action. (5)
8. In 1990, the Conceptual Framework/AAA approach actually became UNICEF’s flagship approach to solving the problems of malnutrition the world over. For a long period thereafter, the international public nutrition community got side-tracked and concentrated mostly on acting on the underlying causes of malnutrition insisting though that each of them (food, health and care) was necessary, but not sufficient. Not surprisingly, such a shortcut approach ended up being “too timid and too narrow”. (4) Again, it took us years to figure that out.
In a way, this was a comparable phenomenon to that which, a decade earlier chose reductionistic approaches to PHC such as GOBI or GOBI/FF (growth monitoring, oral rehydration salts, breastfeeding, immunizations, food security and family planning) that led us only half-way to ‘Health For All 2000’. [Moreover, a sizable portion of the world’s nutrition community got more heavily involved in the micronutrients field –and away from the Protein-Energy Malnutrition field– which also de-emphasised the political aspects of combating malnutrition. (6)].
9. Roughly ten years after the Conceptual Framework/AAA approach was launched, came the (complementary) ‘Human Rights Approach’ encompassing:
a revival of the role of the Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in development work,
a drive to explicit ‘poverty redressal objectives’ in development work making it paramount that we need to work with the poor as protagonists, and
a further bid to more concretely operationalise the newly approved rights such as those enshrined in the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Right of the Child (CRC), the Right to Food, and the (upcoming) Right to Development.
The new discourse
10. The main areas of concern of this Human Rights approach are eight:
population and gender,
mortality and fertility,
health,
education,
income and employment,
habitat and infrastructure,
the environment,
human security, and
social justice.
11. Because Human Rights derive from the dignity and worth inherent in the human person, when deprived of rights, a wo/man does not represent the human person whom the Universal Declaration regards as the ideal of a free wo/man. (7)
What I am focusing on here under –let me clarify– is not (directly) on the need for the overall Political Rights of people to be universally upheld. I am rather interested here in the politics of enforcing (all) Human Rights using a people-centered AAA process. This, since, for me, Human Rights are the resurrection-of or the return-to a greater focus and action on the basic causes of the Conceptual Framework which still remain unaddressed at the base of the causality pyramid.
12. The Human Right approach reiterates, in no uncertain terms, that a relationship exists between human rights and economic and social development. And within a Human Rights-based development, it is the politics of equity that ultimately counts.
13. Orthodoxy aside, politicization is here meant to be a process that transforms anguish into anger and into the search for being ultimately relevant –keeping in mind that a political climate is something one creates, not something that is found out there.
14. In that same sense, Human Rights is about breaking the silence of powerlessness that keeps the needs and desires of the poor from being part of national political agendas. For the disempowered to get voice is not enough; Human Rights is about getting them influence, and about the processes that lead from having voice to having influence.
15. In sum, the added value of Human Rights is that they cannot be relegated to a mere social aspiration: they are rights; even if, at present, some of them are not enforced (or enforceable).
When a little is not enough
What you push is what you change. .
16. I would like you to agree with me that taking, what I call, a ‘minimalist stand towards Human Rights’ will do no harm, but neither will it do much good.
17. This, because Western Development has led to:
adopting what has been called an ‘exclusion fallacy’, where what we choose not to discuss (most often the politics of it all) is assumed to have no bearing on the issues, and led to
consistently adopting soft solutions when faced with hard choices (e.g. ‘safety nets’ that are nothing but a part of a strategy to manage poverty so as to attenuate social unrest and keep it at a minimum cost).
18. Moreover, such exclusions and the choice of patch solutions make impact their primary goal, not equity, not Human Rights. The stark reality is that
there is no escape from politics, no way to represent the social world free of ideology.
Commitment to change coming from ethical imperatives alone does not fuel great social movements anymore. It is not enough to encourage the articulation of a shared moral vision, because it leaves us unable to consolidate this vision into moral outrage and that outrage into political power to change an unfair state of affairs impinging on the most basic rights of people.
19. Society is said to evolve as a (bloody) pendulum: a conservative cycle/a liberal cycle; action and reaction, always taking a toll of death. As long as we are trapped in this cycle and do not proactively try to break its passive successions, we cannot expect much in the way of Human Rights (in this context meaning ‘liberation’ to many). As a matter of fact, we cannot even expect any fundamental change, except that of the awful slow variety where each step takes two generations or more. (8)
20. Actually, both soft (ethically-motivated) and hard (politically-motivated) approaches to Human Rights are necessary. But the former alone is simply not sufficient! Both call for a militant commitment.
21. The bottom line is that there will be no more business as usual (or even business being more focused or interventions more targeted, as the present mood seems to call for). This is thus a key time for reflection and soul searching. (9)
22. We need moral advocates to influence perceptions. Granted. We need mobilization agents and social activists to influence action. Granted. But we also need political advocates to raise political consciousness and provide leadership. The latter cannot be left for later. Therefore –since working on a common set of values is politics– agreeing on the politics of Human Rights –beyond ethical pronouncements– is the real challenge.
23. But orthodoxy (the right doctrine) is not enough either. Orthopraxis (the right acting) is ultimately more important. (A. Gramsci). The challenge is to move the process from orthodoxy to orthopraxis and from minimal to full steam.
The Human Rights paradigm
24. The use of the Human Rights discourse in development work undoubtedly constitutes a paradigm break. But so far, this break has only been conceptual, not yet operational. In this day and age, there is a social need for commitment beyond ethics. What I am convinced of is that, in its operationalisation, the new Human Rights paradigm will have to become more overtly and explicitly political with the creation of well organized pressure groups among those whose Human Rights are being violated. And to transcend minimalism, these groups will further have to rapidly coalesce into major movements –a challenge, among other, for the Internet.
25. Fighting for Human Rights is combating the surplus powerlessness of the have-nots by creating a movement that helps build committed, multi-level action networks.
26. We need to explode the myth that things are just fine; they are not. For this, our strategy, of necessity, must become more political; that is an imperative set by how the world ticks. Power politics cannot simply be ignored; we cannot look the other way; we have to deal with it.
27. It is not enough to go from
People’s Needs, to their
Entitlements, and from there to their
Rights, and then
Passing Laws, hoping the latter are Enforced.
This is considered to be a soft approach in the new paradigm.
28. We need to start from the
People’s Felt Needs, translate those into
Concrete and Effective Demands, that foster
People’s Organizations, to start
Exercising (growing de-facto) Power, and then
Consolidating (their newly acquired) Power with that of other like-minded similar organizations.
29. The latter delineates the needed hard approach and path, because what is needed is to counter a host of complex social and political issues that are preventing people from improving their own well-being –and these are mostly related to control processes in society.
Has science helped people’s development?
30. In the latter part of the twentieth century, Science was not deliberately at the service of people’s rights and development. The mainstream sciences –both basic and social– simply failed to raise the level of the political discourse in development work.
31. Science does provide us with all the knowledge we need to implement Human Rights. But without the ethical and political imperatives to apply its principles to human development it remains toothless and idle, and overwhelmingly serves the interests of the ‘haves’.
Getting from here to there
32. Meetings on Human Rights (e.g. the recent 26th Session of the UN’s ACC/SCN, Geneva, 12-15 April, 1999 and many other), and even the UN Secretary General’s own pronouncements, are desperately asking for ways to operationalise the new Human Rights-based paradigm.
33. As alluded earlier, the fundamental changes needed to realize universal Human Rights are not possible without conflict with the powers-that-be (those who have excess power). Thus the call for politicizing development praxis in this new paradigm.
But because there is no progressive politics without the masses, only political mobilization –or ‘practical politics’, as it also has been called– will do; no matter how we will call it. Otherwise, we may have to wait for another ten years, for who knows what new breakthrough… [Actually, I do subscribe to the metaphor that “without genuine political mobilization, development is like a Christmas toy: batteries not included”.
34. We are talking here about a practical, hands-on mobilization: mobilization for self-help actions, for lobbying, for placing demands, to fight for people’s basic economic, social and political rights, to exert active resistance to social evil. Such a mobilization has to lead to empowerment where popular demands are accompanied by concrete action proposals. (10)
Human Rights in the era of Neoliberal Global Restructuring
35. I am convinced the Left/Right, Capitalist/Socialist ideological divide is well and alive and kicking as the world’s political pendulum is desperately trying to regain its center (and maybe go beyond…to the left?) after the free market ideology has been reigning supreme. (11, 12)
36. As under Colonialism, under Globalization we live under the rule of “Might is Right” and, under the rule of that might, Human Rights just fall between the cracks…
37. Globalization does not have a human face, it leads to the recolonization of the whole planet. The term Globalization is a euphemism for a process of domination. Power differentials are at its crux. We cannot wish it away. [This fact reinforces the view that when economics ceases to strengthen social bonds it is time to start thinking in political terms].
38. But as opposed to people only having their Basic Needs taken care of, people having Basic Rights makes it possible for Rights Holders to legitimately claim the same. Additionally, the Human Rights approach imposes clear obligations on Duty Bearers (e.g., signatory governments) that, by definition, must the met. (As the cliché goes, a right exists only with a concomitant duty). Such obligations include respecting, protecting and fulfilling Human Rights provisions they agreed to by becoming signatories. (13)
And that is the breaking point of the new paradigm: It strengthens our hand to act politically.
39. In the development context, what this means is that states have the duty to improve the fair distribution of the benefits from development. And we have to hold them accountable for it.
40. Not all forms of growth and development are Human Rights friendly. Development has to demonstrably give protection to the most vulnerable and impoverished in society to be Human Rights friendly. (7)
41. The values we will now advocate for under the new Human Rights discourse are thus underpinned by International Human Rights Law that, in the future, needs to be incorporated into national laws –in part through our future political struggle for this, and through our action as a watchdogs of their enforcement. Our Human Rights work should, therefore, begin at home.
42. The focus has now clearly shifted to the politico-legal links between development and Human Rights (G.B. Brundtland) keeping in mind that in the Human Rights framework, the duty to fulfill the rights –of children and women, for example– does not depend on economic justifications or excuses. (4)
43. Moreover, the Human Rights leverage should also be forcefully applied to contingent bilateral and multilateral diplomacy as a preemptive move to prevent violent man-made disasters and their flagrant Human Rights violations.
Pleading Guilty
44. Democracy and Human Rights are interlinked and mutually supportive. (World Conference on Human Rights)
45. As development organizers acting as political activists we have to be willing to come into conflict with the ideology of the ruling minority any time it disregards Human Rights. For that to happen, we need to demystify the ideology of power-taken-as-being-neutral in the ruling development paradigm.
46. But so far, our prestige as intellectuals has depended on laying claim to being ‘rational and apolitical’, in short, espousing the “ideology of the extreme center”.
47. Moreover, there is not yet among us a felt responsibility for the creation of national and international conditions favorable to the realization of Human Rights. (7)
48. Because of that, I think most of us stand accused for our complacency towards the status-quo and violations of Human Rights, for our lack of criticism of the overall lack of progress in development, for our political naiveté (or our choice not to get involved in the politics of it all), for our uncritical pushing forward to do something and get things done and over with, for our paternalistic and ethnocentric approach.
In short, we cannot escape taking part of the blame.
What we have not yet done
49. The implementation of Human Rights requires first and foremost its translation to the domestic level. The current lack of development may not be invoked by Governments to justify the abridgment or postponement of internationally recognized Human Rights. Human Rights work will thus require committed leadership and an expanding popular commitment focused primarily on ensuring democracy, improvements in the incomes of the poorest, universal access and affordability of quality health, education and other social services, and improvements in the overall living conditions of people (especially women). (7)
50. As a start, at the country level, we need to check on the follow up each country has made on major recommendations from international conferences that they attended (a key role here for UNDAF, the new UN Development Assistance Framework).
51. How can the UN be associated with such a hard approach without being accused of political interference? UNDAF is but a very first, yet insufficient and mostly still top-down, step in that direction. It is hoped it will evolve to higher levels of accountability on Human Rights issues.
52. Steps also have to be taken, then, to clarify the universal minimum core content of Human Rights as opposed to a minimum core per country; the latter risks excessive relativism and/or lenient application of the principles of the Universal Declaration and other Human Rights covenants. (7)
53. Furthermore, existing standards that are not in conformity with the current Human Rights regime have to be openly opposed.
Where to start?
In development work, dreaming is OK, but being naïf is not.
54. We do not exert effective political leadership on most of these issues yet. But we cannot run away from showing intellectual leadership at least. All of us are called upon to help legitimize and enforce all UN-sanctioned people’s rights, and that requires a crucial change in conceptual thinking, a change of our mindset.
55. More than before, defining Human Rights objectives and establishing explicit Human Rights goals is thus a political task we cannot escape. We urgently need to contribute to the setting up of the legal entities that will define people’s rights more bindingly (e.g. setting up National Human Rights Committees).
56. To this, we will have to add all the needed work at grassroots level to launch the Social Mobilization and Empowerment processes needed to pursue the hard path alluded to earlier. (14)
57. Additionally, among many other, what we need to, is to
-strengthen the capacity of development workers in all fields of specialization to more effectively analyze and act upon the core economic, political and social determinants found in the
basic causes of maldevelopment wherever they work (4)
-overcome the culture of silence and apathy of this staff around Human Rights issues; this means they will have to work more directly with communities using a AAA approach
-challenge and build consensus on political issues related to Human Rights, perhaps starting with eliminating in people’s minds the division they see between politics and their professional
endeavors
-move from the politics of status-quo to a politics of global responsibility for the enforcement of Human Rights; we need to become scholar-practitioner-activists
-work towards the more liberatory view of social movements (Paulo Freire), and not waiting for opportunities, but creating new opportunities [rights have to be taken; they are not given!].
-move from Human Rights to wider Social Rights and from Declaration to Implementation (Gramsci); we need to “walk the talk and not talk the talk”.
-link the normative standards of Human Rights with other developmental processes in which each of us now works so as to proactively change our roles in development work in the new millennium.
-forcefully support the 20/20 Compact, because a Human Rights approach will need additional financial resources (20/20, also is a useful monitoring tool to monitor the intentions of
governments and donors to implement economic, social and cultural rights). (7)
58. The overall call is for us to move from a basic needs to a rights-based approach. In it, beneficiaries are active subjects and bona-fide claim holders. In the rights-based approach duties and obligations are set for those duty bearers against whom a claim can be brought, both nationally and internationally, thus ensuring that claim holder needs are met. The added value of the rights-based approach really lies in creating and enforcing the legal accountability needed and in legitimizing the use of political means in the mainstream process of enforcing it. (7)
59. The establishment of national and international complaints procedures is, therefore, also needed. Short of civil society taking up this function on its own shoulders, national and international monitoring bodies will be needed. One can start with eliciting contributions to the formulation and adherence to voluntary guidelines that pursue the application of Human Rights principles.
Epilogue
60. What has been said here, is not food for cheap Internet philosophers. I see this endeavor as the opening of the nth chapter of a long-term painful struggle on these issues that desperately attempts to horizontalize the previous more vertical dialogue on the topic. We need you to react. Here and elsewhere.
61. We are in for an exciting new era. We need all the courage we can muster. Wouldn’t you rather become a protagonist than a bystander?
62. Tactically, I am not so sure it is so good to say all this. It may give a tactical advantage to the ‘powers that be’ that are actually afraid of or fear and will oppose with all their might any move towards politicization.
63. There is a big catch up task to be undertaken to remedy past wrongs and making the next decade a winning decade for Human Rights. Never be sorry to be too late.
64. It is fitting to close with another quote from the Latinamerican writer Eduardo Galeano who asked: What if we would start exercising the never proclaimed Right to Dream to lead us to another, possible world?
References
(1) Schuftan, C., The challenge of feeding the people: Chile under Allende and Tanzania under Nyerere, Soc. Sci and Med. 13C, June 1979.
(2) Schuftan, C., Nutrition planning – What relevance to hunger?, Food Pol., 3:1, Feb. 1978.
(3) Jonsson, U., Ljungqvist, B. and Yambi, O., Mobilization for nutrition in Tanzania, Chapter 9 in Reaching Health for All, J. Rohde et al Eds., Oxford University Press, Delhi, 1993.
(4) Lewis, S., Malnutrition as a human rights violation: Implications for UN-supported programmes, SCN News, No.18, July 1999.
(5) Schuftan, C., Multidisciplinarity, paradigms and ideology in national development work, Scand. J. of Dev. Alts. VII:2+3, 1988.
(6) Schuftan, C., The different challenges in combating micronutrient deficiencies and combating PEM, or The gap between nutrition engineers and nutrition activists, Ecol. of Food and Nutr., 38:6, 1999.
(7) van Weerelt P., The right to development as a programming tool for development cooperation, CRPP/ALOP Workshop, Santiago, Chile Sept. 1997.
(8) Robbins, T. 1985. Jitterbug Perfume, Bantam Books, NY.
(9) Schuftan, C., Can significantly greater equity be achieved through targeting? An essay on poverty, equity and targeting in health and nutrition, recently submitted for consideration for publication to the WHO Bull., April 2000.
(10) Schuftan, C., Activism to face world hunger: Exploring new needed commitments, Soc. Chge., 20:4, Dec. 1990.
(11) Schuftan, C., Globalization, or the fable of the mongoose and the snake, recently submitted for consideration for publication to the Canad. J. of Dev. Studies, April 2000.
(12) Schuftan, C., Brave new world: A political pendulum in search of its balance, South Letter, winter 1992/93.
(13) Jonsson, U., Historical summary of the SCN working group on nutrition, ethics and human rights, SCN News, No. 18, July 1999.
(14) Schuftan, C., The community development dilemma: What is really empowering?, Comm. Dev. J., 31:3, July 1996.
Claudio Schuftan
Saigon, Vietnam.