[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how uncountable claim holders have yet to reach their turn in the queue of dreams. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
Why do the poly-crises we are living through now not suspend rules that apply to the ordinary?
—Human rights (HR) remain a principle of truth (so far only sometimes firm enough though) in a world where so many truths have (and are) crumbled(ing). (Leonardo Padura, Decent People) Is it because HR point in the direction of binding obligations that, inevitably, they have to be negotiated in a political process?
1. The principal strategy in the political negotiations needed will be to mobilize claim holders on class lines in what will be part of their class struggle. Do they have another choice?
From local voices to global forces; from passive actors to protagonists
–Uncountable claimholders have yet to reach their turn in the queue of dreams. (L. Padura)
2. To talk to claim holders about HR, someone has to be be made responsible for not having provided and guaranteed these rights; we call them duty bearers. Take, for instance poverty: There is seemingly no current international obligation to eliminate poverty. So, who has the duty?*
*: The worst kind of disempowerment is not being clear about who has the duty. [The French fittingly define empowerment as ‘investiture de pouvoir pour l’autodetermination‘].
3. Too many claim holders do not think once in their whole life why their rights are trampled-upon: Either because they do not care, or because they do not have the knowledge to do so, or because the monotonous daily life they live (almost always a shitty life**) does not, for many reasons, allow them to. At the most, they come to tell themselves that they have had good luck or bad luck or no luck at all —as if it were only the result of a lottery or a fatality –both non-appealable. Sometimes, if at all, they dare to ask themselves: Why me? Why does this happen to me?***
**: Even unexpectedly touching a good chunk of money is complicated for the starving. (L. Padura)
***: Establishing how anybody’s life unfolded, tries to understand why certain reasons or decisions ended up unfolding the way they did when they never thought they would become what they ended up being.
4. To start the emancipation of claim holders, it is key for them to shed light on why (their) HR are being violated**** and, for that, a call must be made for massive human rights learning so as to help/contribute to empower claim holders to demand the needed changes by themselves.
****: Human rights violations are an assault on human dignity; this is why these violations must be defused.
5. In their assessment of the HR violations affecting them, claim holders have to ask themselves what would/will happen looking forward if these violations are not questioned. (…But keep in mind that just questioning them does not guarantee remedial actions). (Dan Roth Stein)
6. Helpful is the following trend of thought: When you are, again-and-again, trying to help people empower themselves to address HR violations affecting them and have little (if any) results, is it not time that you tackle the upside structural causes of what is perpetuating the problem? Only few activists are insisting on this …and, beware, they have become targets of repression.***** (Arif Husain)
*****: Note that, a common HR violation is ‘killing’ people with false accusations and torture, instead of with a gun, does not make it less of a murder. (Arwa Mahdawi)
7. Claim holders not claiming are, in a way, ‘living, but dead’
—If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressors. (Desmond Tutu)
- As the threat from the many HR-violations-we-see increases, so too does the cost of inaction.
- Even if-and-when political rights are guaranteed, social rights must still be struggled-for. (Hernan Sandoval).
- Long term government political commitment is a result of social pressure exerted from below –not from the much touted ‘lack of political will’ from above! (Urban Jonsson)
8. Yes, HR face widely documented challenges from authoritarianism, populism and states proclaiming HR, but failing to uphold them.****** Civil society organizations that work on HR also face challenges from within the system: for example, competing for funding and/or living under pressures to demonstrate measurable results across short timescales. A common response to such challenges is for organizations to narrow their scope and focus on short- or medium-term goals. As a result, we are left with neglecting what is needed to achieve the longer-term HR goals. (INTRAC)
******: Ask not only what alternatives exist, but why they are being supported or undermined and by whom (by which vested interests).
Bottom line
–We need to stop reinventing the wheel and start putting wheels on the wagon. (Alan Berg)
9. What we need now is a much noisier demand for action to force the issue into public consciousness and onto the political agenda. In the final analysis, appropriate HR policies will be adopted only in response to widespread and insistent public outrage. (UNICEF)
10. The truth is that policy makers often do not know enough about economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) to act in their country’s best HR interest. So, please, just for once, could the world leaders surprise us by taking seriously what remains the world’s biggest shame? (From an editorial in The Guardian). Are the days gone when these leaders could be expected to apply a philosophy of common sense? (Gramsci).
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
–Crucially, academic freedom is closely linked to human rights. There is a significant decline in the scores of academic freedom given the high level of precarious academic labor at academic institutions. The neoliberal attack on academic freedom, namely the decline of tenure and job security and widespread system of third-party funding, should also be seen as a major threat to academic freedom when academics do not have tenure or job security. This helps us understand the need for academic solidarity. The neoliberal higher education enterprise, that is run by market forces and competition submits academics to the existing power structures. Crucially, academic freedom is also closely linked to other human rights, such as freedom of speech and the right to education. Any attack on academic freedom is a broader threat to HR in our societies. Academic freedom must be protected in order to secure a just and sustainable society. Hence, we should not forget that forging a committed academic solidarity will, above all, contribute to fulfilling our common goal to protect individuals’ rights and freedoms in our societies. (Ercüment Çelik)