[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about HR defenders struggling to navigate a sometimes unclear and treacherous path. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
The duality human rights defenders face is between struggling for universals-in-ethics or succumbing to an ethics-of-tolerance (Jeffrey Sachs)
1. In the UDHR*, human rights defenders are recognized, valued, and encouraged to work-for and commit to the promotion and protection of human rights (HR). But are these three action verbs really enough? [Mind you #1: “Commitment is an act, not a word”. (Jean Paul Sartre)]. Defenders must thus continue to speak out against all forms of injustice, for ourselves and for others, and set a mighty example for our children, as well as for future generations. (Bernice King)
*: Subsequent to signing the UDHR (Universal Declaration of Human Rights (art. 1), adopted by General Assembly Resolution 217A(III) of December 10, 1948), countries negotiated two more treaties in 1966, the (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights(ICESCR). The two treaties were adopted by the Member States of the United Nations on December 16, 1966. However, they only came into force in 1976, when a sufficient number of countries ratified them. According to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), to date, the second covenant, ICESCR, has been ratified by 169 states but not the United States of America (OHCHR, 2009, https:// indicators. ohchr.org/). Together with the UDHR, these documents are referred to as the International Bill of Rights. (Raymond Saner, Lichia Yiu)
2. Human rights treaties and covenants, and the more specialized HR instruments that followed the UDHR, effectively set out only a bare minimum set of duties and responsibilities that state parties owe to all people. [Mind you #2: The preamble to the UN Charter, a key instrument of international law that binds all 193 member states, reads: “We the Peoples of the United Nations … reaffirm faith in fundamental HR, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small … to promote social progress and better standards of life”]. The choice of words here is of critical importance. It is the will of the people –not the will of member states and their ruling classes.** …Food for thought.
**: Over the past four decades, it has become common to refer to social, economic and cultural rights as ‘second generation rights’ –as younger additions to the civil and political rights. This is a shame, because it obscures the deeper and more significant meaning of social rights. Social rights already appeared in the Jacobin rights declaration of 1793. But then, social rights necessitated the duty to work on providing charity, not calling on the duties of the state. Nevertheless, at that time, it was already claimed that the more the economy was liberalized, the more unstable the social rights situation became. In the end, as we know, social rights depend not on altruism, but on the obligation to pay one’s fair share in a market economy. (Charles Walton)
3. Alas, we now witness a HR paradigm shift that I prefer to describe as a movement away from the UDHR visions and values and toward what I name as ‘trade-related-market-friendly HR’. Briefly put, this simply means that TNCs and related business entities may claim the same order of HR as embodied vulnerable humans, articulating them in the language of the UDHR. But TNCs pick and choose HR obligations consistent with the empires of ‘hyperprofit’ and ‘infra-power.’ (Michel Foucault) The argument is that even constituting a class of prime beneficiaries of HR, corporate governance itself self-selects the menu of their HR responsibilities –this marking a cruel transition from the UDHR paradigm invoking the birth of the new paradigm of trade-related-market-friendly HR. (Upendra Baxi) …a disaster already under way.
4. To provide the UDHR with their necessary and, until now, missing counterpart, we need to focus more on Universal Human Duties. For this, we need to abide by specific/applied ethics such as political ethics, security ethics, bioethics, business ethics, educational ethics, public sector ethics, environmental ethics, information ethics, and last but not least, justice and ideology-based ethics. All these presuppose a common-starting-point/objective-foundation for us to be consistent. Otherwise, these specific ethics, will only reflect personal feelings –and this is not enough. The new needed code of universal ethics must possess not only a moral ‘ought’ but also a legal ‘ought’ to guide human actions and choices from which there is no escape, because its violation will be punishable. Would anybody prefer to prevent universal ethics, because they call into question their own ideology? (Enno Winkler) …TNCs seem to think so.
Getting back to the search for universals-in-ethics: By what right do we claim any rights at all? (Colin Tudge)
5. Human rights must be seen as a practical way of reinforcing moral principles. ‘Other rights’ that override those principles must not be recognized as HR at all. At best, they are slogans –and we cannot live sensibly by slogans alone. If we reject all morality –live our lives without any concept of good or bad– then we cease to be human beings and become robots.
6. Are HR irrational? Irrational in general parlance means mad –and, of course, we should reject ideas that are mad. But the antithesis of rational in this context is not ‘irrational’; it is ‘non-rational’.
7. Human rights are a rational convention, yes, a social and legal device that ought to help us to live harmoniously in societies. They are entitlements that spell out what we are allowed to do so that they counterbalance rigid rules that tell us top-down what we can and cannot do. But are HR really justa social convention, a convenience, to be formally stated in legalistic terms, or is there more to the idea than that? Can we arrive at moral principles just by thinking rationally? [Mind you #3: Hmmm… ‘It takes something more than intelligence to act intelligently’].
8. Clearly, moral philosophizing requires more than calculation. Of course, we must engage our conscious minds as far as we are able. But, in the end, our understanding and our philosophy of life –our attitudes, are rooted-in and guided by our intuitions. (C. Tudge)
Bottom line
9. How many of us are prepared to influence and shape the future? We assume that, as humans, we generally base our choices on rational calculations. While this assumption about human behavior is often patently false, many economic, social and political sciences theorists insist that their models can nonetheless yield valuable insights. (Garth Meintjes) [This is Mind you #4: model builders dare to believe that development or economic models can predict…].
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com