Human rights: Food for an imposed thought ‘HR and development’
HRR 746
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about what has been a recipe for a process of maldevelopment that has rendered poor countries poor. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
G7 governments are only willing to concede baby steps compared to the giant strides that the Global South has been demanding
—The chasm between what the Global South needs and what the Global North is willing to concede is enormous.
–Do not forget that the G7 countries are blind to the evidence that private finance only rushes into countries or sectors that guarantee them substantial returns. (Iolanda Fresnillo) …wither human rights (HR)
1. Let us agree: The local development context does not exist in a vacuum. It is affected by, both, national and international governance frameworks and the power dynamics between rich countries, their corporations and local elites. (FIAN)
2. The corporate/elite economic development model imposed on the Global South has clearly underperformed for workers. Far from delivering on their promises of shared abundance and economic prosperity, ‘business-friendly’ policies have impoverished workers in the South. The model has led to the region’s economic underperformance as a whole. States that embraced the model are underperforming till today when compared to those that did not implement this model. Instead of funneling resources to wealthy Southerners and corporations, policymakers should have strengthened the social safety net, adequately funding schools, providing affordable access to universal health and childcare and to transportation, as well as enforcing labor laws and safety standards for workers, among other. (Chandra Childers, Economic Policy Institute) But this is not what the model was/is about…
3. At the base of this is the fact that, for too long, the Northern (Western) notions of development have been based on a theory of stages, which is a huge illusion that normalizes the idea that nation-states and societies will eventually develop and each will end up more or less the same –except some will advance faster, others slower. This is an alibi for self-deception that seriously affects health and other social services, not least human rights (HR). The economic-centric development of a stepwise social welfare approach is simply a fallacy; it rather is a type of export product (by the ‘development industry’?) in which the illusion of development is constantly updated-in and spread from the Global North. (Oscar Feo et al)
What has been tried and not tried
4. Coalition building: In coalition-building work, we often assume that, if we share a narrative of the social change we seek, then we will automatically have shared attitudes and we can share work and push collective action. But it is not enough to call for everyone to just ‘get along’. It is about a call to commit to a practice of engaging diverse claim holders with their lived experiences so as to broaden coordinated movement actions –and this requires unmasking* the systems of discrimination and oppression that sow division and harm.
*: So, who is behind the masks?: An abundance of anti-democratic forces that fuel deeply divided societies with a diet of dangerous othering of whatever ‘out-group’ (racial, ethnic, gendered, or religious) should be blamed for society’s ills.
5. Operating within these divisive contexts, pro-democracy and rights-based actors often have to struggle with the existing fragmentation among and between movements and potential allies. This is not over; we continue to experience fragmentation and toxic othering within many of the development-focused movements we want to bring together. (Julia Roig)
6. Radical Change: What we want to make the center piece of our struggle now is absolute transformation –and not reform— of the development model and its institutions. (Mia Mottely) [The hoped-for reforms have merely been a repackaging of already existing proposals, some quite problematic.** The call is for no more broken promises, because they are costing lives. (Vanessa Nakate)]
**: Mind you, the three weeks that it took to create the current Bretton Woods Institutions should be enough to design their replacement! (William Ruto)
In this day and age, I’d say, two issues need priority addressing: The-migration/refugee/asylum-seeking-crisis and the role of the UN
–The Extreme-right says migrants are an invasion. The no less Extreme-right wants to send the army against them. In a more neutral language, there is talk of rationally managing the migratory crisis.
7. In the collective imagination, “migrants are many, very many; we cannot handle them all; it is economically unfeasible”. But how many are really many? It depends. In relative terms, the great century of migration is not the 21st, but was the 19th. The fear of immigration is quantitative: there are too many of them. But also qualitative: the migrants are too different.
8. Migration is a problem; there is no doubt about it. But migration is a problem, above all, because it is traumatic for those who uproot themselves from conditions of poverty, climate crisis, persecution or conflict. It is also a problem, because it causes the countries from which migrants leave to lose valuable human capital; it is a problem for them much more than for those in the North. And, to find a solution to any problem, we must begin by understanding and focusing-on who are those that really suffer from it. (Alfredo Gonzalez-Ruibal) Hardly what we see being done…
9. The loss of the full narrative of the displaced translates into the loss of their rights. Asylum and immigration policies prioritize border security and externalize migration control thus disregarding migrants’ fundamental rights and any sense of solidarity. Current asylum and immigration policies make it clear that a comprehensive approach to migration is needed; one that addresses the political, human rights and development problems of the countries and regions of origin and transit of migrants.*** The approach must prevent all forms of trafficking in human beings (especially women and children); it must emphasize that illegal immigration must be tackled at source, especially by combating those who engage in trafficking and the economic exploitation of migrants. (Emma Martin)
***: When the world’s biggest donors direct their humanitarian aid to intensify/demand domestic pressures for migration control, this flagrantly undermines the moral grounds they purport to stand-for. (Mukesh Kapila) Moreover, donor ‘giving’ (?) is becoming less and less democratic and less and less money is going to those who desperately need it. Wealthy donors pocket their own aid, for example, by taking all the money they spend on migrants and refugees domestically from their international aid development budgets! Who loses? It is the poorest countries that lose out. (Francine Mestrum)
A distinction must be made between the political-UN and the socioeconomic-development-UN
10. The UN has never played a critical political role, because of the veto power that the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France and China have in the Security Council, so that it is the various UN agencies and programs that are left to do vital non-political (palliative?) work. (Roberto Savio) Actually, the UN has now become a paralyzed institution that inadvertently contributes to raging conflicts, because it is constrained by an archaic structure that no longer meets the dramatically changed world order. (Alon Ben-Meir)
11. We further need to correct the UN practice that consensus means unanimity. A frequent obstacle to a more effective multilateralism is the overreliance on decisions-by-consensus which, in many settings, has been interpreted to mean ‘unanimity without objection’. While ostensibly a reflection of collective decision-making, in practice, this highly inefficient and unfair approach allows a small number of states to block action that is clearly needed to address issues of global concern. It has led to stagnation, has hampered more equitable global finance, and has enabled a minority to obstruct meaningful action prominently, but not only, on the environment. (The use of wishy-washy language is a deplorable outcome).
12. This does not mean there is no place for consensus; in some settings, it is an important mechanism to protect against excesses of power and prevent impunity. But where consensus prevents equitable and effective decision-making on issues of global concern (prominently HR), alternatives must simply be found. Alternatives ought to help avoid the so frequent watered-down, least common denominator dynamic (especially when a single country can wield de facto veto authority over proceedings effectively holding the world to ransom).
13. Should we thus embark on identifying key processes that need shifting towards qualified majority or non-unanimous definitions of consensus voting systems? While making every effort to achieve unanimous decisions in all multilateral fora, our response to issues of global HR concern cannot be decided by a small number who benefit from the status-quo.
14. Shifting towards qualified majorities, or a new definition of consensus that does not require unanimity in the case of deadlock in multilateral processes, ought to help to address long-standing shortcomings in global governance. Such a shift will constitute a significant improvement in the efficiency of the UN. (High Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, 2023)
15. We further need to revise the selection process for intergovernmental bodies.**** Take the Human Rights Council: Non-competitive elections help enable each regional group of states to set a number of seats, and it is common for prior negotiations to ensure that no more candidates stand than seats are available. This is why public interest civil society calls for competitive elections as a minimum condition to enable greater scrutiny of the HR records of states standing for the Council. (Civicus, 2022)
****: Why do the heads of UNICEF and WFP always have to be a Northamerican and the one from the IMF a European –all non-competitively appointed?
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–After three hundred years of struggle, … Chileans continued what was called ‘the pacification of the Mapuche people’, that is, the continuation of a war with blood and fire to dispossess its compatriots of their lands. Against these indigenous people, all weapons were used with generosity: the firing of carbines, the burning of their huts, and then, in a more paternal way, the law and alcohol were used. The lawyers also became specialists in the dispossession of their fields, the judges condemned them when they protested, the priests threatened them with eternal fire…. (Pablo Neruda, Confieso que he Vivido)