[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about making silenced voices count in the struggle for HR. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—Radical liberation ideas do not directly lead to radical practices. This, primarily because the powers-that-be have efficient ways of preventing people coming together, i.e., of people and groups beyond those that benefit the powerful. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
1. Coming together is not as simple as just asking everyone what they want. It is about setting up spaces for deliberative decision-making that actually work —without allowing the outcomes or the process to be captured by those in power. This requires time and deliberate intention. If claim holders are thus to become engines of direct democracy —and defend human rights (HR) as is needed– they simply must pioneer new ways to organize local communities so as to mobilize community members to protect themselves; and this requires creating robust spaces for participation-of-a-binding-character to proactively place demands on a host of different duty bearers at different levels.
2. Existing legal frameworks are not enough (or not there) to ensure that claim holders can actively protect their rights. Reviewing best practices and guidelines applied elsewhere in other places is essential in this.* Ergo, it is not enough to bring together committed community members. Existing power holders/duty bearers must also be brought-in to ‘buy-into’ processes as early as possible, i.e., engaging them as early as possible: but doing so in-a-level-playing-field is critical. This means educating officials from the national to the provincial and local levels to witness firsthand community or labor union organizing efforts. This, to eventually build a cadre of HR champions in powerful positions that enable the organized community claim holders to exercise their claiming role. Training these community members is not a one-time thing though. They need regular training and coaching if they are to be effective and active in a participatory way (or, as said above ,to ‘walk together’). Eventually, all this is to become part of a legal empowerment process that creates sustained spaces for building the needed counter-power to proactively demand the realization (the respect, the protection and the fulfillment) of HR. (adapted from Michael Zanchelly, Morgan Hargrave)
*: Movements toward liberation are found in so many communities worldwide. To understand the shape that social justice movements are taking around the world, as communities engage in HR work, we have to make visible the connections between participatory action, mutual aid, and legal empowerment. The stories these movements generate are not making it into the mainstream conversations about social movements and HR. While there is a need to discuss burn-out in the face of often heartbreaking and insurmountable injustices, these movements continue to instill political consciousness on claim holders so as to sustain their struggles. These sustaining activities are also ways of working through the not-unusual exhaustion of activists and finding new energy to sustain the struggle. (Antonio Gutierrez et al)
Let’s sail together (rather than sink in competitive silos) and make the convergence of activists visible
3. Individually, we can work harder, but show slow progress. Meanwhile the clock is ticking, and we continue to individually struggle to move forward towards what is/are our common goal(s). It is time to acknowledge that these goals cannot be achieved with more parallel (isolated) efforts. We all need and must seek better returns on our efforts as they add to/complement others’. We need interdependent team work between organizations and communities; we need to forge thoughtfully designed relationships with one another. (Scott Francisco)
4. Take the United Nations:
- When there is no real plurality in the UN agencies (that are ultimately controlled by the power of the Northern member states);
- when the attitude of countries rendered rich is ideological, biased and partial, when there is no free debate allowing opposing views (i.e., a more direct democracy);
- when Southern member states (and public interest civil society) disagree and are systematically accused of being anarchists, extremists, resentful and other similar or worse epithets;
then, there simply are no conditions that make it possible to arrive at truly participative, democratic and open resolutions. (adapted from Louis Casado)
5. And then, there is the other neglected aspect of participation: The right to speak is unevenly divided –and people who are not yet born, mind you, are not even heard at all. They do not get a say, but have to bear the consequences of our actions. Also, children are not taken into account. They are still currently doomed to silence. It is thus pertinent to ask: Do humans have a general propensity for a limited prospective moral care?
Bottom line
— The right to participate and speak-out is a HR just like other rights; it is (wrongly…?) considered a second generation HR, together with solidarity rights, collective rights, extraterritorial rights and the rights of future generations. (It is thus different from the first generation political and civil rights and social, economic and cultural rights).
6. If the right to participate is not respected, everything starts to slide and brake-up and there is no chance of a common understanding (‘walking together’). This is why HR cannot be left to duty bearers without questioning –regardless of their position of power, regardless of their motives. Why? Because key is who decides, and these are those that have the power. Not for nothing was the Precautionary Principle** introduced 30 years ago at the UN Summit on Environment and Development. (Rio de Janeiro, 1992)
**: If there is no scientific, 100%, certainty that a given development will not occur, it makes sense to assume in policy choices that it will. Precaution then implies that we are not faced with irreversible consequences (think about the need to embrace a Precautionary Principle for Artificial Intelligence, because it simply cannot be uncritically equated with progress of human civilization). The Principle entails a moral (and increasingly a legal) responsibility for the consequences it can carry –and claim holders simply have to have a say in insisting the Principle be applied. (adapted from Cees Hammelink and Jan Pronk)
7. ‘The peoples’ have now awoken and can participate! Now, indeed, what is established in the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is beginning to become a reality. Now, yes, “We the peoples” (article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) can demand a participatory model of democratic governance with a binding character on a global scale. (Federico Mayor Z.)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
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Postscript/Marginalia
–Mushrooms emerge from the soil after the rain, but their growth would not be possible without the vast network of mycelia that connect the ecosystem. (A. Gutierrez et al)