[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about finding and prosecuting duty-bearer-perpetrators of HR violations by claim holders on the receiving end of such violations. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Note: You can easily translate the Readers to many languages, Use the app deepl.com and it is done instantaneously. It takes seconds to download the app into your computer or phone and translations are of high quality.
Humankind is not an actor, but a victim (Roberto Savio)
-My people will be reborn from their ruin and the traitors (perpetrators) will pay for their guilt. (Pablo Milanes)
1. We think we are citizens when we just are ‘poor and simple manipulated people’. Who really cares, if those who pay the consequences of economic, financial, political and social crises are always the wretched of the earth?* (Louis Casado)
*: The tragedy of the poor man is that he can afford nothing but self-denial. (Oscar Wilde).
“Social processes cannot be stopped, neither with force nor with state repression” (President Salvador Allende)
–Every slave has in his hands the power to break his chains. (Shakespeare)
2. Human rights (HR) have too often become the arena of courtrooms, specifically the arena of tribunals addressing HR violations after they have occurred. When these violations are committed, HR activists go and find the perpetrators, name them and shame them –and maybe even put them in jail.
3. What HR activists not-often-enough-seek-to-do is to understand why specific HR atrocities happened or what these violations tell us about the political undercurrent. Human rights violence is very often nationalistic in nature. For instance, violence is frequently used against ethnic groups (that were separated into tribal units especially under colonialism), as they vie for the access to public goods they are denied and deprived-of. When HR violence is merely seen as criminal, it is only seen it as a function of individual repression when it rather ought to be seen as an outcome calling for a radical political solution. (adapted from Mahmood Mamdani)
A seated intellectual does not go as far as a walking claim holder (Michel Audiard)
4. Over the last decades, the ideas about ‘inalienable rights’ and what looks like (and is?) ‘consent-to-state-violence-being-given-by-the-governed’ have, gone from marginal ideas held by a few intellectuals to, now, common sense. This common sense, however, has so far failed to come up with the promised rights and freedoms for most claim holders the world over. This tension between what philosophizing intellectuals say about the world and the ways the world actually works is what challenges and animates me in the Readers. Ergo, are any of these measures that we take towards social justice going to have staying power –in a world where the elites of the world, not only are so in control –but also feel so very threatened?** (Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò)
**: Social justice, fairness and HR pose the question of how resources and personal security are distributed between different countries, communities and social classes, as well as within each of them. Philosophy is the place you go to think about background assumptions so as to remake the world in accordance with philosophical principles of justice. To some, a philosophy that accounts for the combined injustices and HR violations of all of history may appear to put an ideal world out of actual reach. But in HR work, in the world as it actually works, we cannot lose sight of the ideal. (O. Táíwò)
Addressing a deplorable reality
5. Much of the economic instability of recent years, as well as the widespread (de)privation and HR violations that continue undeterred alongside extreme wealth, can be traced back to governments’ failure to comply with their HR obligations. These obligations demand HR activists and claim holders to become bolder and more creative in their (our) strategies and tactics, including for instance, by addressing the root causes of these (de)privations more rigorously and proactively.***
***: CESR developed the helpful OPERA HR framework (https://www.cesr.org/opera-framework/) to help us shed new light on a) how discriminatory budget decisions and unfair tax policies impact people’s rights, b) how HR standards apply to tax and budget policies more clearly and how to translate them into more concrete guidelines for the design, implementation, and assessment of fiscal policies, and c) how to carry out collective advocacy for fiscal justice mobilizing popular support for broad HR demands –e.g., that ‘the 1%’ pay their fair share. (CESR)
6. You see? Innovative outputs and projects to revitalize the HR framework seem to be confined to a select number of organizations based in the Global North. But it is clear to me: we must stop these inputs coming from ‘consultants’. Instead, we need mid-career and gender-balanced younger staff members to work with senior executives on strategic initiatives so as to encourage an overdue scrutiny that challenges traditional ways of thinking and thus reimagines ways of working. Needed is a thorough critique of anchylosed institutionalism and proceduralism.****
****: The use of technical language and expected ‘expertise’ in many HR organizations seem to mostly fuel hierarchy and has made it daunting for early-career cadres to even suggest ideas to seniors or voice out a comment during a strategic planning session. (Dominique Calañas)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com