[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how governments go off course and fail to deliver on their HR promises. It is time to make HR a reality. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Note: You can easily translate the Readers to many languages. Use the app deepl.com and it is done instantaneously. It takes seconds to download the app into your computer or phone and translations are of high quality.
-Rivers of ink have been written about human rights, only to see how the ink then tends to fade. (Giorgio Solimano)
1. Any government can say it has lofty human rights (HR) goals. These things may even be promised in the nation’s constitution. But we know that there are many cases in which governments go off course and fail to deliver on their promises. In nations where there is an effective HR system, there are specific mechanisms for calling the government to account; that is, for making course corrections. The most fundamental of these mechanisms of accountability* is for claim holders to actively demand effective remedies using mechanisms that allow them to complain so that the government simply has to comply. This is the missing (struggle) piece in so many countries.
*: My friend Krishna Belbase facetiously says: Accountability? I cannot even apply it in my own kitchen, much less in HR work. But jokes aside, HR abuses that go unpunished degenerate into incurable evils. (Louis Casado).
2. Where there are no effective remedies, there are no effective rights.** Court (legal) interventions are only one possible mechanism of accountability –and courts are not normally available to ordinary local people. Nevertheless, court cases do become necessary, precisely because there are too few other effective mechanisms of accountability available to ordinary people at the local level. Until local people know their rights and know that they have effective means through which to demand accountability, there will not be an effective system of HR enforcement.*** (George Kent)
**: Also, without resources (progressive taxes?) there are no rights.
***: All HR are callable/demandable; they entail clear liabilities.
Human rights are not only unashamedly utopian(#), but also eminently practical. They can make a difference: It is time to make them a reality (Jean Ziegler)
–Keeping claim holders waiting is the human condition that HR activists vehemently oppose.
-It is thus necessary to act with convictions and principles, to take a position but, at the same time, to know how to leave questions open. (Alain Badiou).
3. Several of the most prominent critiques go beyond a call for rethinking or reform. They argue that the age of HR is over, that its endtime is here, that HR law and the HR movement are ill-suited to address the injustices of our times, that the failure of HR approaches to seek or bring about structural change or economic justice highlights their deeply neoliberal ‘companionship’, and that HR advocates ought to perhaps no longer seek to preserve HR, but should make way instead for more radical movements.
4. Several of the sharpest criticisms focus only or mainly on one particular dimension of the HR system though and thus tend to caricature and reduce a complex, plural and vibrant set of movements to a single, monolithic and dysfunctional one. At the same time that the most pessimistic of the critics are writing obituaries for HR, multiple constituencies around the world are indeed mobilizing and using HR language and tools when pursuing social, environment, economic and other forms of justice.
5. None of this is to suggest that HR advocates and activists ought not to constantly scrutinize and reevaluate their premises, their institutional strengths and weaknesses and their strategies. On the contrary, hard-hitting critiques of HR for failing to tackle structural injustices and economic inequality have helped to galvanize change and a reorientation of priorities and approaches. (Viviana Krsticevic) [If activists do not have a very detailed plan, at least they ought to have a plan for a plan. (Adam Gopnik) So, fellow activists, keep in mind: Fear determined by lucidity is not cowardice. (Albino Gomez)].
The appeal of human rights, at least for those seeking justice, seems as potent as ever
-Realistic as our intellectual claims for the fulfillment of HR may be, these are not choices we can make on our own. They must represent decisions made by whole of society that must come up-with progressively through political processes we can only help catalyze.
6. In this turbulent era, and within the broader framework of progressive social, economic, environmental and cultural movements, the diverse and heterogeneous array of actors that make up the international ‘HR community’ have an indispensable catalytic role to play,. (Grainne de Burca) Only increasing the breadth of actors involved in the common platform of HR ideals will strengthen the HR movement’s ability to hold its ground and open new paths. Increasing the breadth of actors involved in the common platform of people’s rights ideals will indeed strengthen the HR movement’s ability to hold its ground and open new paths. Herein lies the challenge. (V. Krsticevic)****
****: A caveat about convergence: We always use the magic word ‘convergence’ –and agonize pursuing it. But what if there is no possibility of one such, because of the usual conservative streaks in those we purport to converge with? Would it not then be time to bypass them? …and create a new convergence with those who agree with our position(s)? I am talking of creating an alternative convergence (of ‘the willing’, as G. Bush, for the wrong cause, would have said…). How out-of-the-box am I?
7. Ultimately, rights-based strategies are supposed to help achieving goals –understanding that goals are mainly about final destinations, and well-designed rights systems can progressively help in getting processes going (or stopped) to get there. (G. Kent)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-For many years we have been living in a stage play; in a theater of the absurd, to be exact. The whole world has been transformed into a huge stage where HR violations are everyday occurrence. (David Torres)
– #: Utopia is on the horizon. (u-topia = no place). I move two steps closer; it moves two steps further away. I walk another ten steps, and utopia runs ten steps further away. As much as I may walk, I never reach it. So, what’s the point of utopias? The point is this: it makes us continually advance. (F. Berri) Hence, the best way to predict the future is to create it. So, take charge of your life by embarking on that what you always wanted to do. If your goal seems utopian or overwhelming, start small. I could not live without a daily victory, no matter how small.