[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about why so many years of HR work have had less than the hoped-for impacts. 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.
Human rights violations coming in many forms, if you see something, don’t shut up (and that’s not exactly what we do!)
1. Leaking information about violations of fundamental rights is not an option, it is a duty.* It is in your hands to prevent flagrant violations of human rights (HR) from happening again and again: when you witness ‘negligence’ (really…?) in which fundamental rights are threatened, send an alert. (Mario Vargas Llosa) Protecting fundamental rights is not an option, it is a duty! (Frag den Staat, José Bautista)
*: This first premise of democracy gains strength especially in the area of migration. [Is there such a thing as the right to flee…?].
2. There are multiple essays on evil and moral conventions that try to explain at what point a society endorses genocide, idolizes a murderer, celebrates violence or accepts torture. Dehumanization and hatred can be found and are justified in all societies, perhaps also in every human being. (Miquel Ramos). Take, for example: Our society is loaded with racist prejudices that not only ignore, but also despise those millions of indigenous people and minorities whose rights are violated day-in-day-out and who are intentionally kept with their backs to civilization. (M. Vargas Llosa)
So, you see?
3. The high-flying purpose of the UN HR Covenants and corresponding General Comments have ultimately not had a real bite. (The former were often ratified ‘to keep up with the Joneses’; the latter did not require ratification). If they had a bite, where are the deeds to be found? Yes, we do have some to show for. But, in the end, only explicit/de-facto commitment to HR brings about the needed discharge of obligations by duty bearers.
4. The lesson here is: International HR law does not ‘know’ everything. Grassroots philosophies, as the ‘buen vivir’ movement, add a needed complement.**
**: Among other, buen vivir has taught us to speak languages other than English to counter the colonial hegemony.
Now let me move to another burning human rights issue: (…and excuse the little bit of a technical jargon here)
Extraterritorial Obligations (ETOs) are a missing link in the universal HR protection system sanctioned by the UN
5. A bit of history: The so-called Limburg Principles (1987) clarified the nature and scope of state parties’ obligations under the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. So, what traction was there in it for ETOs? None, really. An important legal source on economic, social and cultural rights had to follow the Limburg Principles on the Implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This happened in 1997 as part of the Maastricht Guidelines on Violations of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. By then, the Limburg Principles had been (and still are) extensively used in national legal systems as an interpretive tool for establishing violations of economic, social and cultural rights. The Maastricht Guidelines built on the Limburg Principles and identified the legal implications of acts and omissions when violations of economic, social and cultural rights so often and continuously happen.*** (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic,_social_and_cultural_rights)
***: The closing of NGOs as we see/saw in Nicaragua, Afghanistan, the Philippines and other rogue countries actually also is an ETO issue. Furthermore, religious discrimination can be made an ETO by ecumenical groups who could sue for this.
6. In the context of ETOs –and given the growing instances of corporate capture– HR activists have had to:
- Caution corporations that, according to the Maastricht Guidelines, it is no longer acceptable for them to just talk of their corporate responsibility’; they actually have corporate accountability. But now, activists are demanding corporate liability (i.e., juridical responsibility) –an important role here for PICSOs and social movements.
- More forcefully engage politically to demand TNCs be regulated as a preamble for their justiciability (i.e., increasing the capacity of non-lawyers to sue and litigate pertinent cases).****
- But on top of the above, activists are to identify lawyer-activist-networks the world over since the HR movement needs lawyer activists to work with lay HR activists thus seeking a division of labor and a complementarity.
****: You may well know that for the past ten years the UN’s HR Council has been endlessly negotiating a Binding Treaty on the HR responsibilities of TNCs; the rich countries have been boycotting such efforts. Furthermore, the ETO Consortium (https://www.humanrights.ch/cms/upload/pdf/111220_ETO_Consortium_mission.pdf) is about to come up what they call the Maastricht IV Principles on the human rights of future generations.
7. But beware: HR activists well know that it is not only about justicializing HR, but about organizing and mobilizing claim holders for non-judicial actions! International HR law does not ‘know’ everything. Grassroots philosophies as, the ‘buen vivir’ movement add a needed complement.
8. Bottom line here: The challenge is to move ETOs into a solid UN and SDGs implementation position since the SDGs do not recognize remedial ETO obligations needed for a sustainable development. Better late than never…
Researching HR violations by corporations is not the ultimate though
9. Not all researchers are activists (a lot of valuable work ends up as what I say is ‘paralysis in analysis’). But all activists are informal researchers. The key questions to ask are: Does corporate ETOs HR research expose enough to influence the needed outcomes? What is done with the results? Who do decision-makers/duty-bearers listen to? How can claim holders fight the guardians-of-the-neoliberal-paradigm protecting TNCs?
10. Food for thought here takes the form of the following: Are we, HR activists, victims of our own success? We ought to be held responsible for what has or has not happened. We have promoted HR and half succeeded (we were contented introducing the HR framework) and only belatedly did/do we get a grip of the political connotations that HR have and thus need to embark-on in a second revolution that politicizes HR –and this implies massive training, organizing and mobilizing. (Sylvain Aubry). As somebody said: We need to move from walking with crutches to riding a very mobile athlete’s wheelchair.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com