Human rights: Food for an unachieved thought ‘HR in neoliberal regimes’
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the contradictions HR face in a neoliberal world. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—Article 28 of the UDHR is perhaps the most overlooked; It reads:
“Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized”.
1. The current institutionalized world order –based on neoliberal, financialized capitalism as it is– has, over-and-over, proven incompatible with an order in which the human rights (HR) of diverse people around the globe can be realized. A transformative HR praxis thus calls for addressing the issues of structural inequality at the heart of the political economy plus working across disciplinary silos primarily through public interest progressive networks and social movements. (Alicia Yamin)
2. In that context, we have to avoid that the HR discourse becomes a new civil religion in the realm of conventional ‘development’. Human rights should not automatically become a hegemonic discourse if used to appease the victims of authoritarianism, of the market, of preventable diseases and of natural disasters. Therefore, claim holders (not stakeholders!*) cannot be reduced to being clients of NGOs since, without a critique of the neoliberal discourse, there will never be human emancipation. Struggles for HR cannot end up incorporating claim holders into the existing system, without providing a way to transform it, transforming the coercive state and the phony ‘moral community’.
*: Why don’t we begin hating the use of stakeholders? All stakeholders are not rights holders!
3. To provide the emancipatory vision called-for for the future, the politics of HR needs to be rethought from scratch in order to distance itself from how conservative states attempt to apply them to further their politics and not the interest of claim holders. This rethink is still in its infancy; and I hope this Reader is part of it.
4. If we are not to descend into the irrelevance of the praise-singing of power, we must extend our critique of the established mode of state politics. Let us not deprive the HR movement from its right to think critically. The right to think is denied by denying the possibility of anything different to the current consensus of the one-way-thought, i.e., of anything different to what exists. Let us confront leaders that are saying that it is them who know everything and that the majority of the people cannot think –because we can and we do! This must be the starting point of a different conception of our HR politics.** Human rights politics is not an opinion, it is a thought that opens realistic new possibilities! But to do so, it must help clear the intellectual ground for thinking an emancipatory alternative leading to the progressive realization of HR. (adapted from Michael Neocosmos)
**: Mind you, in electoral systems there is no freedom of thought. There is only a freedom to hold opinions. This means the freedom to support those in power or those-in-the-opposition-that-pay-lip-service-of-being-unhappy-with-the-government.
5. For HR justice to become more than a site-of-counter-practice will require some radical discursive and institutional shifts. This means recasting forms of action typically regarded as ‘private’, ‘voluntary” and ‘care-related’ into forms of action as ‘public’, ‘justiciable’ and ‘political’. At the same time, it means insisting that the institutions that render any state legitimate, take seriously their responsibilities to afford security to people and other living beings whose capacity to survive, let alone flourish, they have systematically undermined. (adapted from Danielle Celermajer)
6. In summary here, until the anthropocentric, capitalist and technocratic order changes, there is little point in reformulating or expanding HR within the existing order. This begs the question: Can the social order be reformed using tools that are an essential part of the current order –which is capitalist, essentially unjust and, in terms of mindset, immoral? By extension, if bureaucratic or neocolonial, institutions are pitifully falling short, can HR have a better chance? Being realistic, all successes will be temporary since evil is part of the prevailing power structure and the social order; it cannot be wished away. At first, we have to settle for progressive improvements, which will be disturbed many a time. (adapted from Cees Hammelink and Jan Pronk). Le succès est un voyage et non une destination!
A bit of a historical perspective
7. Since the beginning of the history of mankind, certain rights have been inherent to wo/men regardless of race, nationality or gender. Although, there have been incremental changes to the concept of HR, as the world evolves, its core conceptualization has remained the same. In the past, only rights of privileged people were protected but, over time, the scope has been expanded to incorporate other hitherto marginalized groups.
8. In1948, the newly formed United Nations Organization’s General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), a document that represented the necessity of HR for all peoples. Consequently, international law, national constitutions, and other conventions support and expand on the UDHR*** to promote and protect the rights of people(s).
***: Speaking about the UDHR, it is pertinent to talk about the ‘natural rights’ theory. The same is very helpful in our understanding of the origin of the concept of the current-day HR. Natural rights are a very old philosophical concept. Related to natural law, natural rights refer to rights that are universal and inalienable. They are not related to any government or culture. By being human, a person is entitled to their natural rights –that is where the concept of universal HR is gotten from. (Tersoo Nande)
9. As an aside, note: International lawyers do agree that there cannot be a ‘legal black hole’ when it comes to the over-arching principles of HR law. Up until December 9, 1948, international law did not contain a specific and explicit ban on genocide, for example, so crucial after the holocaust, Rwanda and now in the Middle East****: Collective punishment of any kind is contrary to every system of law. (Alfred de Zayas)
****: The right to one’s homeland is a HR, because a) self-determination cannot be exercised if one is driven from one’s homeland, and b) the right to one’s homeland is a precondition to the exercise of most civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights. Today, international law is very explicit in prohibiting expulsions: i) “No one shall be expelled, by means either of an individual or of a collective measure, from the territory of the State of which he is a national”; ii) “No one shall be deprived of the right to enter the territory of the state of which he is a national”; and iii) “Collective expulsions of aliens is prohibited.” In war and peace, expulsion and deportation represent crimes within the purview of international law. In accordance with Article 8 of the Statute of the International Criminal Court of 1998, expulsions constitute war crimes, and according to Article 7, they constitute crimes against humanity. (A. de Zayas)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
I am happy to report that a bilingual booklet on moving HR beyond Capitalism was just published in Mexico. It is authored by me with the invaluable help of Howard Waitzkin.
The link here below gives all the details about it.
Claudio