1. These days, the market is presented to us as capable of resolving all problems –even of protecting human rights; but the latter, basically through the façade of corporate social responsibility (see Human Rights Readers 190 and 191).
2. The market, it is said, must have access to everything. So people’s rights must all be ‘conveniently’ modified to allow the market unregulated access. But since thereby duties and obligations would be defined by the market, inequality will clearly be legitimized –and marginalized and powerless people will be further disenfranchised. Both equity and justice are thus ignored in this attempt and are being replaced by paternalistic ideas defined largely in market terms.
3. Even the judiciary is internalizing this ideology that looks up to the virtues of the free market thus promoting the logic of globalization and all the negative consequences it entails for human rights (HR). This de-legitimizes peoples’ justified struggles for human rights.
4. Both courts and parliaments the-world-over are today expected to be amenable to the dictates of the market. National laws, initially introduced to protect HR, are too often being ignored or even derogated.
5. Globalized capital, ever eager to extend its reach, has literally moved into an “accumulation-through-dispossession” mode by, among other things, taking the land, the biodiversity and the culture from communities, as well as by excluding vast sectors of the population from meaningful economic activity, from meaningful participation in decision-making, and by expropriating their resources. In short, globalization has become one of the engines of the maldevelopment we currently see.
6. In the prevailing paradigm, it is seen as fitting to sacrifice HR to facilitate the expansion of global capital and of the process of market globalization. As paradoxical as it may seem, the powers that be are using both HR and democracy as legitimizing pretexts for giving free reign to the free market and, in the same vein, to transnational corporations.
7. All in all, a new variant of the ruling paradigm is being promoted, with the creation of phony “market-friendly rights”, where the very concept of HR –and thus of rights violations– is severely restricted and distorted. In it, the individual becomes a consumer or a potential consumer, not a real holder of rights. The ultimate idea is to force a consensus on this interpretation of HR, in that way completing the deception. Those of us who are active in the struggle for HR simply must actively combat the ascension of such a new twist to the paradigm.
8. We therefore need to critically analyze this increasingly pervasive discourse of “rights”. Let’s call a spade a spade: It is ultimately being used to promote neoliberal interests.
9. To reiterate: The struggle for HR is a dynamic process of resistance and change that engages and transforms the existing unequal relations of power. HR can be achieved only through the involvement and empowerment of the community as a whole, particularly those whose rights are being violated.
Using HR standards one is using a powerful resource for transformative, action-oriented political change.
10. Ordinary people do not begin their struggle by inquiring how HR are defined in the international HR framework that their governments have ratified. It is from people’s day-to-day reality that they eventually come to identify themselves as bona-fide rights holders. Human Rights are then to become a tool for communities in their struggle to understand why their human dignity is being violated day-in-day-out. HR further help them identify who is responsible for the current state of affairs and what demands they have to place in front of those duty bearers.
11. Once in the struggle, rights holders are to move beyond single-issue struggles, i.e., largely ineffective and discredited tactics of protest against more restricted reivindications, and engage in a broader HR-based struggle.
12. This will entail embarking in a process of confronting and transforming unequal power relations and structures that are denying them the respect, protection and fulfillment of their rights.
13. Some key tools to use in this struggle will be: engaging in negotiations; in protest and resistance actions; in confronting not just the state, but also other actors (including corporations and development agencies); and in monitoring the progressive implementation of HR strategies.
14. Ultimately, the aim is to renegotiate the engagement of the people with the state and other duty-bearers.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
cschuftan@phmovement.org