220 A VISION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WITHOUT A WIDELY SHARED ACTION PLAN LEADS NOWHERE.
It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to absolve yourself from it. Abraham Lincoln said: The probability that we may fail in…
219 DEVELOPMENT POLICY (..AND HUMAN RIGHTS WORK) IS NOT ABOUT (ETHICALLY MOTIVATED) ALMS FOR THE POOR. (H. Wieczorek-Zeul)
Development has become hostage to finance. Finance has to serve development and not, as it is presently, the other way around. (Yash Tandon) 1. Under neoliberalism, the prevailing development paradigm…
218 WHERE THERE IS NO EFFECTIVE CLAIMING FOR REDRESS, THERE ARE SIMPLY NO PROSPECTS FOR EFFECTIVE HUMAN RIGHTS.
Before becoming de-facto claimants, the excluded come from an experience of being treated by bureaucrats in a way that echoes colonialism. 1. Human rights are mostly of the yes/no dichotomous…
217 VALUES, POLITICS, DEMOCRACY AND HUMAN RIGHTS.
1. In this day and age, if one looks at the political spectrum in rich countries, value politics overshadow and outdo class politics. As a consequence, in most of these…
216 SICK, UNDERFED, UNDERPAID, DISCRIMINATED AND OVERLOOKED, THE EXCLUDED ARE AT THE CENTER OF HUMAN RIGHTS WORK.
Human rights work is about first greatly reducing –and then putting an end –to the dynamics of exclusion. 1. In human rights work, we see exclusion as no longer being…
215 SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER
The struggle of man against power is the struggle between memory and forgetfulness. (Milan Kundera). 1. We do not live in a just world. Delivering justice to those who are…
214 ACTIVISTS’ ACTIONS ARE NORMALLY MORE ENDURING WHEN DRIVEN NOT ONLY BY SELFLESS INTEREST, BUT ALSO BY A CERTAIN SENSE OF SELF-INTEREST. (A.R. Ghatak)
-Most of us are passionate about what we do. But the truth is that a good part of what we do does not matter to what we are passionate about…and…
213 BRING HUMAN RIGHTS PRINCIPLES OUT OF THE CLOSET. #
Implementing the human rights framework in a participatory way is equivalent to exercising direct democracy (as opposed to representative democracy which has basically left rights holders in the cold). 1.…
212 DEAR MR(S) PRESIDENT/PRIME MINISTER: ELEMENTS OF AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GOVERNMENT
As human rights workers, our loyalty is recognized when we can feel ashamed about the behavior of our own government. (F. Stern) We need to tell our leaders the truth,…
211 HUMAN RIGHTS ARE PART OF A NEVER-ENDING HUMAN STRUGGLE TO IMPROVE PEOPLE’S LIVES AND TO PREVENT REOCCURRENCES OF PAST ABUSE. (part 2 of 2)
4. Human Rights Iron Laws on Advocacy: -The public advocacy we promote in HR work draws on five major sources: The power of people, direct grassroots experiences, popular information and…