[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about how states’ inaction in tackling socioeconomic disparity reduction is a human rights violation. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text].
–Poverty is a policy choice. (Dylan Matthews)
-The most-vulnerable-groups, to use the jargon of the ‘experts’, have stopped being vulnerable and have now become miserable. (Louis Casado)
The human rights framework demands the structural causes of poverty (rather than only of its symptoms) be analyzed and addressed, as well as assessing the impact(s) of government action or inaction on communities experiencing poverty (Alice Donald)
1. Let’s face it: Rarely are human rights (HR) at the core of a governments’ anti-poverty work. One reason is that anti-poverty actors see the language of HR as complicating their efforts to influence some audiences who may view it as legalistic, overly adversarial or irrelevant.
2. For example: For the Bretton Woods organizations, poverty is not seen as a collective and social problem; they see it as being concerned with individuals-that-are-excluded-from-efficiently-participating-in-the-market. Poverty reduction policies are thus only for poor people –and states should not do more than that. Non-poor people should buy a social insurance in the market.
3. As a corollary, instead of social protection, the World Bank now prefers to speak about ‘risk sharing’. Its not too distant White Paper was about fostering a ‘guaranteed minimum’ of transfers and subsidized premia.(https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/09/17/social-protection-must-adapt-to-changing-nature-of-work-world-bank-says) Next to that, the same Paper, proposes a system of ‘social insurance’ with obligatory contributions to a ‘risk sharing pool’.* However, the Bank remained strongly opposed to obligatory contributions burdening the wage bill. Furthermore, the Bank is still not in favor of minimum wages that risk being ‘distortionary’ and ‘redistributive’; also, labor contracts should not be regulated. The main objective of the whole exercise of the White Paper is not about a ‘social contract’ for all; it is not more social justice or more social citizenship for the whole of society but, rather, it is a shifting away of responsibilities for social justice from corporations and smaller companies to the state.
*: Poverty attracts an abundance of risks, whereas the wealthy (in income, power and/or education) can purchase safety and freedom from risk –or even profit from the risks by producing or selling the technologies that help prevent risks from occurring or deal with their adverse effects once they occur. (Ulrick Beck)
4. As regards to the IMF, it warns us that it will not follow the rights-based and universal approach of the International Labor Organization (ILO). If some social policy is accepted today by the IMF, it is only to the extent that it contributes to political stability and that it avoids social protests. If the IMF is now somewhat concerned about inequality, it is because its research department pointed out that it definitely hampers growth. The paradoxical situation today is that, while never before social protection having been so high on the international agenda, never before has it been so seriously threatened. It has been forced to be made compatible with neoliberal policies. It is rather weird to allow poverty to be created only to then try to solve it… (Francine Mestrum)
Jurisprudence on socio-economic rights has established that such rights are justiciable
5. Human rights have indeed provided a powerful banner under which communities unite around shared injustice. On the other hand, historic jurisprudence does not always yield generalizable principles that can be applied to systemic aspects of poverty anywhere in the judiciaries of many countries.
6. On top of it, you have the myriad obstacles for individuals experiencing poverty to access the justice system –including cost, protracted timescales, a dearth of legal advice and low levels of awareness of the possibility of justiciability. So, HR gains in the courts will not impact upon policy and practice without strategies to ensure monitoring of this access, including sustained social mobilization where needed to overcome the obstacles found.
7. Here, then, is some advice for activists in their work on poverty as a predominantly HR issue.
There is a need to:
- ‘Translate’ HR so that they resonate with particular audiences.
- Combine litigation with social action outside the courtroom.
- Use HR to transform the debate about poverty, moving away from a punitive or stigmatizing discourse to one that focuses on socially and legally guaranteed entitlements.
- Challenge perceptions that HR are limited to civil and political rights.
- Ensure that legal processes are accessible, including through legal aid.
- Use international treaty-monitoring mechanisms (through NGOs shadow reporting) and the Human Rights Council (through submissions to the Universal Periodic Review).
- In pursuance of HR goals, use HR-based budget analysis and monitoring of public spending cuts to ensure that they do not fall disproportionately on people on low incomes.
- Finally, anti-poverty work is strengthened when the experience of people living in poverty is brought directly to bear on advocacy, policy development, legal strategies and direct action. (A. Donald)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
Postscript/Marginalia
-As regards International HR law, the following instruments include a wide range of rights relevant to tackling poverty. The texts of these, and other human rights instruments, can be found at https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-and-mechanisms/international-human-rights-law
–Key rights relating to poverty eradication include:
• the rights to equality and freedom from discrimination;
• the right to life;
• the right to be free from torture or from cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
• the right to freedom of expression;
• the right of peaceful assembly;
• the right to freedom of association including the right to form trade unions;
• the right to take part in the conduct of public affairs;
• the right to work;
• the right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food, clothing and housing;
• the right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health;
• the right to education.
• the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948);
• the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966);
• the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966);
• the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965);
• the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979);
• the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984);
• the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989);
• the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families (1990);
• the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (2006);
• the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006);
• the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.
-With the exception of the Universal Declaration and the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, all these instruments are treaties. Lists of state parties to each treaty can be found with the treaty text at the above link. (Find out if your country is a signatory!). State parties to a treaty are bound by it. In some countries, treaties are incorporated into domestic law through the enactment of specific legislation.
-And finally, bringing back to Ukraine 2022 a pertinent oldie: “One dies not for one’s country, but for the industrialists”. (Anatole France)
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