- The critical evaluation of human rights (HR) in a country addresses generally disagreeable issues, such as abuse of power, tyranny by those in positions of political responsibility, disrespect for the law, corruption, misappropriation of wealth, inappropriate use of public funds and other offenses.
- The promotion of independent institutions such as unions, chambers of commerce, professional associations, universities, the press and NGOs can institutionalize controls over government by civil society who can (with the needed passion, sense of responsibility and sound judgment) formulate concise political demands that keep the processes and outcomes of state activities in check. In this work, it has to be kept clear that strategic and tactical considerations are a means and not an end to achieve the respect of HR. The end is to build a lasting democratic political culture of actively and consistently claiming human rights…and the nobler the end, the more shameful it is to remain indifferent to the means being used by HR activists in their work to pursue their ultimate end. For example, when the means of international development cooperation are used against the interests of the poor or their HR are abused by foreign aid, any further such cooperation must be stopped and any resumption made conditional upon very clear criteria being met.
- Those who keep silent about HR violations –only because these violations are committed in countries with whose political leaders for whatever reason they enjoy harmonious relations– have to face up to the fact that the honesty of their commitment will be open to question. So, when HR advocacy serves only to lend legitimacy to lip-service or to a feeble and dwindling commitment to equitable development, this can be devastating to the HR movement.
- As this Reader has said before, part of the reason that people do less than they might is that while they feel ‘charitable urges’ towards the world’s poor, they feel no duties. Therefore, the developed world has a growing store of unfulfilled duties towards the poor people in the developing world…and
these duties have been growing in the era of capitalist globalization. Certainly, the modern world is not organized in a way that safeguards the rights of most of its people. The link between rights and duties can only exist within a moral community that has the political will to enforce HR duties –and, mind you, capitalist globalization has been expanding the moral community that we live in worldwide and is thus importantly affecting our and others’ rights and duties.
- To help others is morally good; yet, at the same time, we more often than not deny that we have duties in that respect. Knowledge of the dire situation of the poor, by itself, brings about duties! We are literally “debtors of duties”.
- The capitalist view, on the other hand, proclaims that market relations –based on ‘legitimate’ transactions– do not entail any duties to those who lose out through the market. We counter this view by saying that if we know that the market inherently creates losers, that knowledge alone imposes duties on us to help the losers to claim their legitimate rights.
- Ultimately, our protection and promotion of HR is related to the protection and promotion of individual freedoms –not because those rights lead to freedom, but because those rights are defined in terms of that freedom. Freedom is seen as the absence of imposed constraints; increased poverty conceptually entails a loss of freedom…and, let us not forget, money serves to remove some of the important constraints. What is being said here is that levels of poverty affect levels of freedom…and since the level of freedom enjoyed determines the existence or non-existence of rights, poverty does indeed affect the rights that people can be said to enjoy or not to enjoy. Ergo, as said many times, poverty reduction can be defended in terms of the respect of what we know are inalienable rights. It must also be noted that levels of freedom can be redistributed without anybody suffering an actual loss of rights!
- Cynics, of course, say that the poor themselves are to be held responsible for their poverty and hence for their un-freedom. This leads to the accusatory finger being pointed at the actions of the poverty-stricken themselves.
- The growth-mediated fight against poverty imposed on governments in the Third World by neoliberalism generates harmful effects. The very system that enriches some requires the maintaining and deepening of the poverty of large numbers of others. In other words, the neoliberal system has a structural need for poverty. [Keep patently in mind that redistribution to the poor is NOT achieved by securing them social services as health, nutrition and education plus the matching infrastructures; “the eradication of poverty is not achieved by providing social services, Mr World Bank (and Mr Sachs)!”). The eradication of poverty is not feasible from within the very same economic system whose deep logic requires the perpetuation of poverty; that is why we talk about embarking in the struggle for the-right-to-be-free-of-poverty.
- So, the question we are left with is: Why do we still need even discuss formulating a conceptual basis for an approach that views poverty as a violation of human rights? By now, it should be clear to all of us that, sooner or later, the prevailing global political and economic system will enter into collision with the HR-based approach to poverty alleviation; so, we better be prepared for this. There will always be tension; the absence of tension is not a value in itself. (But danger acknowledged means danger averted…).
- The question of poverty has always been considered a local problem in which other societies can be occasionally involved in the name of solidarity or cooperation, but not in the name of fulfilling a legal obligation.
- Now, there seems to be a perceived global obligation for the international community to root out poverty in all societies in the world so that the presence of poverty can be considered as a dereliction of duty and thus a violation of the right to non-poverty in the world. If what is said here is genuine, we would be on the right track. But, so far, the international community has failed to organize a credible system of global re-distribution, so it can be objectively regarded as a violator of the right to non-poverty –despite all the PRSPs and MDGs jargon and talk (and charade?). The idea of solidarity as a duty serves as a foundation for the associated duty to make poverty a global problem to be duly solved.
- This begs yet another couple of questions: Are Rich countries responsible for poverty in poor countries? Is their responsibility situated upstream –in the sense that rich countries have, from the beginning, hampered the process of development in poor countries? Or is it downstream –in the sense that the rich are guilty of leaving the poor in their misfortune?
I will leave you to respond to these closing questions.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City