[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about fears of claim holders faced with rising cost-of-living expenses and inflation in the absence of collective rights. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
–Unpunished abuses degenerate into incurable evils. (Politika)
1. The fear caused by the many human rights (HR) abuses has been with claim holders all their lives; they have always lived in fear. Fear is a permanent state in claim holders and, yet, instead of the prevailing national and international social order appeasing those fears, claim holders their poverty and their fears have only been a study material. (Leonardo Padura, The Transparency of Time).
2. Fear derails any kind of cognitive act. Because of some kind of conditioning or due to some kind of irrational thinking evoked by fear, fear often has extremely mal-adaptive consequences.
3. The issue of fear aside, those problems about which we intellectuals usually have doubts, claim holders are very clear about and seldom make mistakes in their judgments. That is why, in working with them as activists, I believe that we learn from them –and they learn from us …although the latter much less! (Mario Benedetti)
The dramatic impact of increased cost-of-living on claim holders’ realization of their human rights, particularly economic and social rights, is clear. (Aoife Nolan)
–It is important to note that cost-of-living issues are often caused by supranational factors.
4. The fact that wealth redistribution (disparity reduction), whether across or between societies or both, is not contemplated under the UN’s International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is worrisome.
5. This being so, HR activists working in the development field have already outlined several fiscal policy measures that will be key to ensure a human-centered approach to the cost-of-living crisis. These include a) the choice of targeted cash transfers aimed at groups rendered poor and vulnerable –instead of broad subsidies that equally benefit more advantaged groups who consume more; b) the prioritization of public spending for long-term growth and sustainability; and c) the adoption of progressive taxation, whereby tax rates increase as taxable income goes up, including the deployment of property, corporate income, and wealth taxes. (Another much-discussed option, that has already been taken by EU Member States, is levying windfall taxes on the profits of energy companies). Over and above, and still in the context of cost-of-living inflation (where existing wages are not at a level for workers to ensure a decent living for themselves and their families), the cost-of-living threatens the HR to social security. (A. Nolan)
And then, claim holders are impacted by inflation
—Inflation in the prices of daily essentials creates a clear risk of retrogression, i.e., a deterioration or reduction in previous levels of progress in the realization of HR. (A. Nolan)
6. Retrogression can only be justified in international HR terms by establishing that such actions were necessary, non-discriminatory, proportional, and temporary in nature. Arriving at such measures must also have involved the credible participation of affected groups in examining the proposed measures and alternatives.*
*: Note that the obligation of states to avoid retrogression as a corollary of the obligation of progressive realization is clearly established in international human rights law.
7. Given the impacts of potential abusive cost-of-living measures (and where inflation is taken advantage-of to profit), the monitoring of HR cannot be more important. Trust-but-verify must be the gist of it and can be achieved through observable measures, such as: relying on regular inspection regimes and HR impact assessments using third-party guarantors and warning of risks of sanctions that will be triggered by non-compliance (‘technical’ weakness??). (A. Nolan)
Are individual or collective rights (or both) being violated here?
Most current constitutional designs do not include the search for effective and workable collective rights. The world community, including the UN system, do not have adequate, effective measures/mechanisms to ensure the rights of different communities in a diverse, multi-ethnic society are respected and protected. The cases presented above need concrete answers to resolving these kinds of conflicts though –and these must rely on collective rights, especially for minority groups within a multi-ethnic political setting. (Jeffrey Sachs)
It is impossible to understand a country’s collective human rights record without seeing how it differs from other countries (Seymour M. Lipsett)
—Those who know only one country know no country.
In the United States, the law focuses on individual rights, not on collective rights. Although this is not an exception among great (and not so great) powers, US law claims to be ‘racially blind’ even after centuries of slavery, racial discrimination and persecution. This blindness of the law to group protection leads to disregarding HR initiatives related to all the above.** (Maria Jarymowicz and Daniel Bar-Tal)
**: The United States functions on a cafeteria plan. If you want something you have to buy it. Not much is given to those who are not already rich. How does that measure up against other rich countries? There are statutory vacation and maternity leave laws in Canada while the United States remains a no-vacation nation, scanty maternity leave –and so on… (Stephen Bezruchka) The US is the leader because it sys so: The US unipolar hegemony is unsustainable. The problem is that the U.S. empire itself does not know this. (Caitlin Johnstone)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–The Readers are 99% about economic, social and cultural rights. Rarely do they cover civil and political rights. I found this quote that merits that other 1%:
–Do you know how torture works? By pain? It is much more… Torture is a potion that causes hallucinations. When a man is tortured, everything that has been his existence comes back to his mind and explodes. Then the unhappy man, who begins to be the person he was, says not only what he wants to hear the inquisitor say, but what he imagines it will be pleasant for him to hear from the inquisitor, since a bond — diabolical, it is true — is established between one and the other. Under torture, a man can spout the most absurd lies since it is not he who speaks, but his fears unleashed to the full. And do you know who are the best torturers? Not the rare hangmen or head choppers. The most efficient ones are often men of faith but they know the weaknesses of the body and the spirit because torture is a specialty and the one applied today is refined, and I am sure it will be eternal. What we have discovered about the manipulation of fear and the essence of torture will be applied for ever and ever, in future societies to come… even if, unfortunately or fortunately, neither you nor I are in this world to verify it. (Leonardo Padura, La Transparencia del Tiempo)