IN HUMAN RIGHTS WORK, WE DO NOT ALWAYS NEED NEW ALTERNATIVES; WE NEED ALTERNATIVE THINKING ABOUT EXISTING ALTERNATIVES. (Boaventura de Sousa Santos)
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about some out-of-the-box thinking and approaches in HR work. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. Examples of what to do along this line of thinking could be:
- Foster a deeper and broader political education, both for claim holders and duty bearers. [This is key to help build mass adherence to an alter-capitalist project among social movements and to help them guard against co-optation by the sweet talk of the dominant modernization discourse. (Nora McKeon)].
- Come-up with and deploy serious arguments against the (clever) selective use of human rights (HR) by Western powers. [Some arguments are: Western and hegemonic powers have always focused on civil and political rights. However, as we know, HR are not only universal, but also indivisible. You cannot only respect civil and political rights if the population is hungry and extremely poor. The right to education or to housing cannot be respected in a country if international financial institutions put a cap on social expenditures. Also, a democratic right to vote is meaningless if people cannot read or write, or if rights to participate in public and political debates are limited. This selectivity seriously undermines the credibility of Western countries who will keep their eyes shut for serious violations in some countries and nit pick over others. They have failed ethically on these rights]. (Francine Mestrum)
- Debunk the slogan ‘justice as far as possible’ that is clearly misplaced when it comes to recognizing and fulfilling human rights.
- Combat the idea that human rights are subject to voluntary measures since this contradicts the core entitlement aspect of rights. (Bill Jeffry) [Universal human rights are either universal or they mean nothing. (Yanis Varoufakis)].
- Also consider this: In a good part of the international discourse about HR, rights are too often referred-to as ‘binding’ in a way that is categorically different from the sense in which most people think about HR. Keep insisting that, if a right is binding, anyone ought to be able to ensure they enjoy that right or be compensated for its breach by obtaining a court or HR tribunal order. [The sense in which ‘binding’ is used means more like it aspires-to-be-binding or just refers to a moral obligation of governments to make many rights (aspirationally) binding internationally. Any enforcement mechanism in HR treaties is to make rights are made binding (including between states). But are those mechanisms actionable by citizens, personally, beyond providing an international forum to complain about government actions or inaction? Mentioning the issue of justiciability or other means of enforcing or assuring the realization of HR remains important in our activism since international HR are not automatically implemented domestically, even in countries whose constitutions state that HR are automatically part of domestic law. At best, courts defer to legislatures –and this can take forever. (Bill Jeffery)].
- It is indispensable to verbalize (y)our outrage: “I have had enough”, “things are no longer acceptable” are the attitudes to embrace. [But existing values do not trigger outrage. We have to make it clear to people that what is happening is not ‘a pity’ –it is outrageous. So, we have to work to change the prevailing value system –and we are far from this –not least embracing wealth redistribution head-on. Following our vision must not blind us from pragmatism; we have to combine both. Beware of often used empty slogans like: “Do not worry, the children will take over”. … We are the goddam present and are doing nothing for them. This assertion is a cop out. Therefore, empower the youth with voting rights at an earlier age. Stop restrictions on their ability to protest. (Philip Alston)].
- Always focus on the political economy of HR. [Yes, the HR framework does have a political economy component within! And criminalizing HR will not take us to address the political economic upstream causes. Criminal justice is not what victims of HR violations are looking for. (Philip Alston)].
- Keep up with your knowledge and act accordingly on the fact that international HR laws are undergoing a highly significant, but largely unacknowledged transformation. [They are increasingly prioritizing a narrow range of ‘atrocity HR violations’ at the expense of much of the vastly broader agenda that they are not also addressing. This process has been gathering speed for two decades and is now beginning to transform the main priorities at both the national and international levels. While prosecuting heinous violations/violators must be a part of the overall response, a disproportionate emphasis on mostly addressing these violations poses major risks. Only a very small number of individuals will ever be prosecuted, but the many other widespread violations are being marginalized, and structural remedies continue to be ignored. In addition, this moves the focus to individual rather than collective social responsibility. An example is the prosecution of sexual violence rather than more broadly focusing efforts to uphold women’s rights. The logic seems to be that if the problem is not classified as a crime, it is not going to be taken seriously. Such measures are often tokenistic –they enable governments to score points while evading the tougher questions that need to be addressed. (Philip Alston)].
- Denounce the fact that funding cuts are undermining the potential effectiveness of core UN HR activities such as treaty body monitoring and the accountability roles of Special Rapporteurs.
2. Bottom line here: It takes more than hope to continue to feed our cause. Way too few HR activists are actively opposing any of the above failings, this often leading to only a few guilty evil duty bearers shouldering all the blame while the HR violators in the broader society remain unaccountable. The biggest challenge is how to achieve balance. We also need to engage much more with structural issues such as extreme poverty, massive inequality, and entrenched racially and sexually discriminatory frameworks. The first step is to acknowledge that there is a problem. Not just governments, but the HR community as a whole –in consultation with victims of HR violations broadly defined (rather than just survivors of dramatic violations) are the ones called to act.
Has the human rights framework accepted economic and social inequality as a natural fact, one that could be mitigated but never eradicated?
3. ‘The system’ has offered us only the best that neoliberalism has to offer.* And that is not good enough since it is demonstrably a failed economic system. In practice, it has meant primarily championing certain rights that have historically been prized in the West as reflected by its own values –for example, free speech and LGBTQI+ rights– but looking the other way when Global South majorities demanded the rights that mattered most to them, such as basic minimum wages.
*: All over the world, we have thousands of slick ‘desk heroes’, spitting the same streams of lies that will bring some to the front lines of battle… and will ensure the others are left comfortable and tame in the rearguard. (Bento de Jesus Caraça)
4. Instead of moving towards a world where all people are entitled to all rights, all of the time, we now have a world where there are only some rights, for some people, some of the time. Faced with these failures, there is a temptation to discard the HR framework altogether. But that would be a crass mistake.** What is needed instead is to rescue the HR framework by reimagining it, i.e., by pulling it away from the overly legalistic form into which it has too often been cast. (Biraj Patnaik)
**: Our reflections regarding the HR framework may be considered as unrealistic by some given the existing practices a result of the global power configuration and the tenacity of structural pro-status-quo forces. This, however, is not a sufficient reason for one not to attempt imagining and planning-for structural institutional improvements that are logical and needed. (adapted from Boutros Ghali and Branislav Gosovic)
5. Consistent with Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative***, HR are conceptually incompatible with any instrumentalization. The preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights refers to the inherent dignity of humans. Correspondingly, HR are traditionally understood as natural rights, only to be recognized and respected, not to be created or abolished. Conceptualizing the respect for HR as a business opportunity, as we not infrequently see, relocates rights in the realm of instrumental, utilitarian reasoning, where concerns are not pursued for their own sake, but as means to an end –in this case, the end of profit maximization. (Simon Simanovski) This reminds me of a poster and canvas displayed during the social outburst in Chile in October 2021. It read: “Until dignity becomes customary”.
***: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
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Postscript/Marginalia
-The time has come to consider memory as a duty and to remain silent as an act of inadmissible irresponsibility. (Federico Mayor Z.)
-It is time for people to demand that their voices be given a higher volume. Because we-the -people have too much to lose. Because there is no other alternative at this time. Because the time has come for the people to ponder about: The ever-recurring déjà vus; all the accumulated feeling of impotence, all the laissez faire that has characterized passivity; all the historical mockery the people have endured. The hour to honor all those who plowed vainly in the sea with terrible sacrifices has come. The hour in which the unquenchable thirst for freedom and justice that not even centuries of ‘misfortune’ could bend has arrived. The hour to execute the impossible over conspiracies and treason. The hour to wage battles of justice together with the ‘descamisados’ (shirtless) of centuries, without hesitation, without doubts, without pessimism, still leaving alive the unfinished and genuine dream, achieving it all the way to the victory of the just, defeating the humiliation and the infamy of what has been a millenarian tyranny. (Carlos Angulo, Venezuelan poet)