Rich countries still think the West is the center of the world and that salvation must (patriarchically) come from that quarter.
1. Can we muster the power of conviction and of mobilization to decisively pursue the human rights-based development path –and what cannot go without it– pursuing a more just and equitable new international economic order (NIEO)? This we ask because, dispassionately looked at, the corpus of human rights (HR) instruments is really also a tool for people to struggle against what in fact is the-disdain-for-HR-of-the-neoliberal-path-to-development. Is this an overstatement? No, not at all: Consider for a moment a) how elites defend the Universal Declaration of HR (UDHR) only half-heartedly and ambiguously, b) the fact that the 1986 United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development (RTD)* was not allowed to become a binding convention by the advocates of neoliberalism, and c) the collapse of the WTO Cancun* talks where the obstinate opposition of the G8 and others led to the failure of making trade a genuine vehicle for development.
*: Be reminded that the Declaration on the RTD explicitly calls for the promotion and protection of HR to be accompanied by efforts to establish a NIEO and for the eradication of all social injustices; it states that development cannot be reduced to the satisfaction of material needs only, and that all efforts are to strive for an equitable distribution of income. In the pursuit of all these goals, the Declaration requires governments to take sustained action. Be further reminded that the rules of the WTO only reinforce the position of the strongest countries –i.e., the hegemony of market forces– leaving HR, equity and social justice slip through the cracks.
2. As here proven –together with other HR covenants–, the Declaration on the RTD also sanctions the fact that HR can and do constitute a significant moral and legal reference for social movements. Therefore, civil society can and should use this reference when reminding governments of the solemn commitments they have entered into –especially now, when signing any agreements with the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF or with transnational corporations (TNCs).
3. As we have said many times in these Readers, the major obstacles to the respect of human rights in general, and the respect of economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) in particular (and of the RTD) among other are:
• Foreign debt and structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by international financial institutions (IFIs);
• unequal terms of trade and economic policies favoring TNCs;
• the unequal distribution of wealth, capital flight and tax evasion;
• the privatization of the world’s national resources and social services;
• misdirected and non-performing international cooperation;
• corruption and a lack of genuine participation by people;
• dependence on the export of basic commodities and skewed trade rules;
• obstacles to market access for countries in the global South;
• the non-respect of the exception clauses in the WTO agreements (e.g., TRIPS);
• embargoes, unilateral coercive economic measures and imposed conditionalities;
• the marginalization of the South in global decision-making processes and the non-respect of the self-determination of nations;
• armed conflict and the arms trade;
• the brain drain process…
…all these have serious negative HR consequences.
4. No wonder, then, that this Reader is skeptical of the intentions of the Development Establishment…: In a puzzling accommodation, its members now also (as we did long ago) criticize SAPs as having slowed development in poor countries –only to, then, entrust current development policies again to the same institutions that imposed those structural adjustment programs in the first place.
5. This is why, through this Reader, we are promoting a development process that allows the realization of all human rights as an explicitly stated process with explicitly related HR outcomes.
6. You can thus be reassured (yet again) that your concern-for and work-in HR overrules all economic arguments by bodies that unquestioningly support the current international economic order; this, because their policies are not based on equity and thus deepen the already existing inequities at the root of the shameful violations of HR that are intimately related to poverty.
7. In the same current international economic order, rich countries get involved in a somewhat cynical dialogue of the deaf; they quite predictably refuse to take HR-responsible-measures at the international level and instead keep invoking the responsibilities of the poor countries to integrate HR — without committing themselves to anything like-it in return. Furthermore, even well established, previously upheld rights are being flagrantly disregarded. The indifference towards the respect of HR in poor countries is literally entrenched in the leadership of most rich countries –as much as grandiose statements try to say the opposite; otherwise, they would put their money where their mouth is…
8. Simply stated, politicians in the North (and also in the South) cannot, on the one hand, pretend to support HR while, on the other, implementing economic, financial and trade policies that go against these same rights.
9. Bottom line, neoliberalism has proven not to be a true-development-model, but rather a domination-model-with-moralizing-rhetoric.
Its social disasters and its human dramas are well known and do not need to be repeated here. Its ideological anti-state dogma and calls for good governance aim neither at true direct democratic participation of individuals in decision-making processes nor at the respect of their RTD, but rather at state-sponsored-market-deregulation.
10. So, what this Reader is mostly about, is to combat the current impunity of the numerous violations of HR and in this way help the communities, social groups and movements victimized by these violations to be heard, to gain influence and to obtain redress where it is (over)due.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org