- A neglected avenue is becoming increasingly important for human rights activists to pursue in order to more effectively meet the various Human Rights covenants’ goals. The avenue: to more actively propose/promote-new and/or amend-existing legislation –rather than continue implementing traditional development projects which do not necessarily address areas where the compliance with the respective Human Rights conventions (e.g., the Convention on the Rights of the Child -CRC- and the Convention to End All Forms of Discrimination Against Women – CEDAW) is the weakest.
- As a matter of priority, the traditional project approach has, therefore, to be complemented (or replaced?) by a holistic, more legal approach to struggle for Human Rights. This, since current, embryonic rights-based programs are only a minor part of current development agendas of UN, government and non-governmental organizations. Moreover, they mostly promote ‘rights- orientations’ rather than more explicitly seeking ‘rights-improvements-as-an-outcome’.
- So far, most UN agencies’ and NGOs’ new rights-based programs mostly inform-about, train and disseminate, but do not seem to test-rights-in-the-legal-arena (e.g., through legal challenges and/or leading claim holders to get involved in pressing-on with their legitimate demands using national and/or international legal channels). [Note that many domestic legislatures give treaties precedence over domestic legislation].
- Unfortunately, many of these current rights-based programs also often convey a message of powerlessness of the pertinent Human Rights conventions, i.e., that they cannot really change the deeply entrenched attitudes of duty bearers that are causing harm, for instance, to poor women and children.
- There is thus a risk of using the concept of rights in ways that have little to do with actual progress in the implementation of the actual Human Rights conventions –or of promoting just ideas, and not linking them to action.
- [Because of this, someone even proposed that it would perhaps be better to define ‘the-inverse-of-rights’, i.e., what duty bearers do not do and what the penalties are].
- That is why we, as rights activists, have to be part of the solution beyond pronouncements, by working with claim holders and getting them actively involved in actions that will make their appeals heard and acted upon.
- But equally important is to give claim holders pointers of where and who to turn to when their rights are being violated. Emphasis is thus not only to be placed on poor women or children receiving particular benefits, but rather on achieving changes in processes-and-attitudes-of-relevant-institutions.
- We, therefore, need to come up with new capacity building projects –understood as platforms-to-change-behaviors-on-rights-issues rather than to foster career advancement of participants. These projects are to include a whole new set of partners, e.g., parliamentary committees, political parties, labor and student unions.
- Additionally, coming up with a framework for analyzing existing laws and to understand their shortcomings (i.e., inconsistencies with the Human Rights conventions or the fact that promoting equality is not a feature in them) is also needed. Missing laws, failed implementation of existing laws, and ambiguities in current laws will all become apparent from this analysis as well.
- There is an easy test that can make the global Human Rights mission clear and that can be used to ‘diagnose’ any program’s compliance with the spirit of, let us say, the CRC and CEDAW. The test consists in taking those programs in a country and replacing the word ‘children’ or ‘women’ with the word ‘farm animals’ raised for productive value and the word ‘school’ with training pen’. The proof of the extent to which each of these programs (and the country’s laws, for that matter) reflect the goals of the CRC and CEDAW is in the number of cases where these programs promote the essential rights and qualities that are part of being human and that go beyond (farm animals’) basic needs. If the score is low on this test, there is a problem and, as activists, we need to engage in reorienting strategies in our work with the Government.
- The rights of claim holders (poor women and children in our example) will ultimately have to be guaranteed by laws; this means that the state (and not families or donors) has to assume the major role of fostering equity and equality –and this has to be guaranteed by law– at a time when market forces are bringing about more and more inequity and inequality.
- The paradox is that while in some countries some development indicators are looking better, the state’s role in guaranteeing the rights of all its citizens is getting weaker, at a time when the risks to and needs of those individuals being left by the wayside by economic growth are becoming greater.
- For all of the above reasons, the reward system for project implementers has to be changed as well. They have to be assured they will not be penalized for vigorously pursuing claim holders’ legally recognized rights. We have to engage them in showing the claim-holders-they-serve the bases of the conflict they have with whomever is limiting or curtailing their rights: for sure, someone concrete is holding back the actions that are needed, after claims have been rightfully placed. If duty bearers do not act, approach them repeatedly; if they still do not act, expose them! This is pointed out here, because information alone does not give project implementers sufficient incentives; it often only adds to the frustration they feel with their own powerlessness… and that is precisely what we want to avoid.
- Laws are not something abstract, ‘probably useless’ and un-enforceable, just because few people are using them or are benefiting from them. Widely disseminating information about pertinent laws creates awareness, but nothing else. There is this mythical belief that awareness is the first step to achieve ‘something’, and that other steps will automatically follow in due course; the reality is that they do not. Without behavioral change, information can actually have no effect (or completely opposite effects than those intended)…that is why TV promotions offer discounts and free samples…
- The big challenge ahead is for us to succeed in telling legitimate claim holders what rights are and how they work; how, as claim holders, they can exercise their given rights and how other countries’ claim holders are successfully struggling for their rights. Most important of all, we cannot convey a message of powerlessness.
- An annual reporting on progress of each of the Human Rights conventions to show progress article-by-article would thus seem to be highly desirable. Civil society is best placed to do this. (We simply have to make sure that certain groups are receiving particular benefits due them –and that is so much easier with the law on our side…).
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City