[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about an omission in the HR covenants and how corporations take advantage of this including in their cooptation of the UN. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. By excluding neoliberalism (i.e., neoliberal global restructuring) and neocolonialism from the HR-based analysis, related violence and violations are sidelined from the policy sphere and thereby normalized thus going against the spirit of the UN Charter. The remnants of a colonial past are simply too strong in historically exploited places. They still bring about systemic and structural violence specifically used by powerful actors of the global economic system –i.e., the (old and new) geopolitical powers and corporations you and I know (and their national bedfellows). Their purpose still is to further exploit the enterprises (and nature) in the neocolonies as they did during the colonial era.
2. Furthermore, export policies based on exploitation inevitably lead to hunger (a violation of the right to food). Tackling the challenge of how to integrate categories of this neoliberalism and neocolonialism into human rights-based systems analyses is the only way to switch ‘from oppressive and extractive relations among states and within countries towards reciprocal, non-dependent, sovereign relations’.* (Aoife Nolan)
*: Take palm oil. Palm oil is in everything: what we eat, wear, read, drive. And like so much else that we consume and cannot disentangle ourselves from; palm oil is enmeshed in global supply chains that rely on brutal working conditions and the destruction of the planet. Ultimately, palm oil helps us map the forms of capitalism that triumphed since the last century or before. (Scott W. Stern) The Story of Palm Oil Is a Story About Capitalism
So, beware: Corporate influence and trust is being purchased (Jody Harris et al)
–Human rights abuses are in good part due to corporate capture, i.e., the undue influence of corporations over decision-makers and multilateral and bilateral public institutions. (If this influence is exercised through unwarranted and excess power, are we talking about a scenario of corporate dictatorship…?).
3. Civil society should not automatically feel good about the fact that a corporation has a person with ‘human rights’ written in their title. Unfortunately, this often means that a position was created for compliance or for reputational management purposes, to deal discreetly with human rights (HR) issues, or to engage with (read: manage) civil society relations. By contrast, companies that take HR seriously, embed the topic across functions and departments, working towards including HR within the company’s ethos. (Andres Zaragoza)
This you already know (some lose ends)
-Tú ya sabes: un economista = una opinión; dos economistas = una contradicción; tres economistas = una confusión. (You already know: one economist = one opinion; two economists = one contradiction; three economists = one confusion). (Louis Casado)
-Davos is where, year after year, repeated doses of the same medicine have put the global patient in intensive care. (Mukesh Kapila)
4. Scandalous profits as we see them in the global financial system are capable of surpassing (and do surpass) the norms and legislations at national and international level. And with it, you have the eloquent confirmation of how transnational corporations and their CEOs become the villains in the wielding of power. (Fernando Reyes Matta)
5. The general paradox of the consumer society is that abundance generates scarcity: the more ‘things’ there are, the more people want them so that then they stock-out. (Albino Gomez).
6. You hear the Gini Coefficient may be improving in some places in the Global South. But what you do not hear is that its improvement is so painfully slow (and does not measure HR) that people do not perceive it; they are rightly rebelling due to the persisting unbearable inequalities.
Just a couple avenues for action (For sure, only a pitifully small sample)
7. It is high time for the UN HR system to look into the structural drivers fueling war, conflicts, occupation, and widespread silent and overt violations of HR. It has become urgent to reverse the dramatic erosion of the principle found in the UN Charter that urges states and their acolytes to refrain from using their power and to take effective collective measures to prevent and remove threats to HR –and, in the end, to peace. The ultimate goal is to prevent powerful actors from: using exploitation, land grabbing, the provocation and exploitation of conflict, as well as using occupation, and war** as strategies-of-accumulation in today’s global economy. (A. Nolan)
**: The war industry now gets no-bid contracts baked-in so is building a fortress-like defense industrial base. (Jeremy Scahill) In the midst of arms, said Cicero (106-43 BC), the laws are mute…
8. In the Global South, a majority of the workforce has been pushed into the informal sector. Nevertheless, it is perfectly possible to provide social security to all these people. Why is it not done? (Francine Mestrum)
9. In the global economy, the taxation of wealth is the first step we ought to pursue, together with taxing windfall profits of TNCs. We need to do it ASAP to make use of the widow of the opportunity created by the outrageous profits of oil companies during the current energy-cum-pandemia crisis (…wither the contemptable state subsidies they receive). Here is an urgent tactic for our movement. But note that the issue is not only one of taxing, but how the new resources generated will be used.***
***: I often ask myself: Is expropriation and alternative to taxation…? Food for thought.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
– In reality, many of us are pained by the world, so blinded that we do not see those who fight and those who repress and massacre with impunity to keep control of the planet, i.e., the oligarchs of all kinds, the very rich possessors of everything, those who never go to prison for the simple reason that ‘justice’ always takes care of them. (Louis Casado) We are talking about a dazed society in which only those with control (that master a calculating rhetoric) enjoy good health and peace of mind regardless of the fact that oppression and corruption, aggressiveness, negligence, the lack of civility and of hope affecting so many people are rampant: an enchanting panorama…! (Leonardo Padura, The Transparency of Time).