Sustainable development is about processes of popular enrichment, empowerment and participation that our technocratic, project-oriented view has simply failed to accommodate. Unfortunately, difficult problems have the power of leading us…
Discrimination against women (and minorities) is still common in countries that have undergone significant economic growth where one would have expected these groups’ rights to also have improved. . The…
To make sense of current world problems, we too often fall back on a “shish-kebab mentality”. This much easier and convenient approach looks at the various problems affecting the world…
A word of caution is called for at this point on the issue of what I call “pseudo-basic intervention techniques or approaches” that many of us have advocated-for at one…
As I had said earlier, factors such as foreign debt, international and national income maldistribution, the exploitation of the primary (agricultural) sector, the commoditization of agriculture, overt or hidden un-…
Given the present conditions, the outlook for quantum changes in the human rights (HR) situation in the world appears to be limited, but certainly not hopeless. The room left for…
Moralists, too often insist on quixotic actions against the injustices of the prevalent social system –which they also clearly condemn. But they do not seem to realize that, in the…
An emotional commitment to human rights (HR) work is loose and romantic; a political commitment is more militant. People or institutions that fall under this category strongly feel that the…
The objective consequences of many a development project may turn out to be different from their original subjective intent. We need human rights (HR) activists who are strong and elastic…
Much of what has been called liberal activism in the last half century has been merely an accommodation to historical change –to circumstances. It represents a triumph of circumstance over…