1. Human needs provide a critical grounding for human (people’s) rights (HR). Not all needs correspond to rights though, and not all rights correspond to needs.

But a central set of human rights rests on basic human needs. HR are often impeded by “wrong” social and political structures or adverse environments in those domains, i.e., the socio-political conditions that are required to sustain HR.  The needs-based approach looks for causal factors rather than for ‘deliberate acts by evil actors’. (J. Galtung). Using capacity (accountability) analysis, the HR-based approach looks for both.

  1. The primary role of the HR-based approach is to make people aware of what-is-basically-wrong. And when this is widely acknowledged, it has to be pointed out to people that there are legally-recognized-and-binding-instruments-to-right-these-wrongs. Ergo, the poor and marginalized have legitimate claims in the struggle for the fulfillment of their needs.
  1. Consider the example of the international debt of low-income countries: By the late 1990s many very poor countries paid more in debt service to rich countries than they spent on education or health. Typically, their education and health budgets have been cut at the insistence of international financial organizations. Sacrifice of these basic needs, in order to service debt, is unacceptable. ‘Jubilee 2000’ campaigners for debt relief have shown how such cuts contravene the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) endorsed by nearly all governments, including the debt collectors’. The UDHR prioritizes access to education and health care. [Even in welfare-states, when a family goes bankrupt, no child is expected to lose access to basic education and health care in order for debts to be repaid first; this principle should apply for people everywhere!].
  1. Ultimately, rights-are-justified-claims towards the protection of persons’ most basic needs and dearest interests; they are justified-priorities-that-give-people-basic-claiming-capabilities to achieve them; rights convey respect to persons-as-choosers, as active rights-claiming, choice-making agents.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

schuftan@gmail.com

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