- Human rights (HR) violations are varied and dynamic; they and/or their character and intensity change over time. Commonly found patronage (clientelism) and exploitation structures find ways to perpetuate these violations by quite systematically preventing changes that could reverse them. For sure, there is now a greater recognition of the political roots of HR violations, and these clearly change over time. That is why, to ensure a principled and consequent approach to development interventions, we now need to integrate capacity (accountability) analyses in all HR-based approaches to development planning –and do so repeatedly and on an ongoing basis, because power and wealth relations simply also change over time.
- Therefore, vulnerability to HR violations is now rightly understood more in terms of powerlessness rather than simply as a lack of resources to uphold and sustain these rights.* People are most vulnerable when their livelihoods and coping strategies are blocked, or if their group identity, political position or material circumstances make them particularly exposed to exploitation.
*: Keep in mind that credibility is a central issue in power relations. Without access to knowledge, it is not possible to have power; knowledge of existing legal instruments is particularly important as a source of power.
- For human (people’s) rights to be upheld under any political system, duty-bearers need to be monitored (including political leaders since holding elections and embracing a multi-party system does not necessarily guarantee more democracy or a better HR agenda).
[In keeping an eye on their decisions, beware that duty-bearers often suffer from selective blindness, selective deafness, selective silence and selective amnesia. (Mira Shiva)].
- Development agencies and NGOs thus need to understand this dynamics-of-vulnerability-and-power in all societies in which they operate. The bottom-line question is: ‘Through their work, are they doing ‘maximum good’? While the practical constraints to this maximization are considerable, the tools to maximize good have long been there. So, the most significant challenge is an institutional one, i.e., how these agencies are to integrate a (political) HR capacity analysis into the mainstream of their activities at all levels. This is a challenge, because the powers-that-shape-things are, first and foremost, in the political sphere: so we all have to deal with them in that sphere.
After all, development IS the realization of civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights.
What this means is that the achievement of HR has to be the overarching objective of development processes.
- Unfortunately, the educational and scientific institutions that prepared us and are guiding the future of our upcoming colleagues (and leaders) have only responded marginally to the challenge posed by now having to use the emerging HR-based approach in the training of the new generations of development professionals.
- …And related to what Development with a capital D ought to be, have you noticed that no actual Development Strategies are announced anymore? Only ‘goals’! But goals are not strategies! They are statistical objectives. You can only achieve a goal if the path to it is described…
- Therefore, I contend that the Millennium Development Goals are primarily a rhetorical device. You disagree? Then, consider for a moment that –for the specific poverty reduction MDG– even those who pass the $1/day mark by 2015 may still stay between 1-2 dollars a day…forever. (F+D)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City