PHA-Exchange> Neutral food for non-neutral thoughts

[claudio]

Human Rights Reader 43

The ideological neutrality of human rights is its greatest strength, but its
proponents should not be neutral in engaging to achieve them:

       There is no neutral territory in combating poverty and
       oppression.
       Those who believe in such neutrality more often than not
      become prey to the agendas of dominant social forces.
     (F. Manji)
     The principle of neutrality --being indifferent-- is
      increasingly  obsolete; it is immoral and short sighted.
      (J. Foster Dulles)

1. An undeniable contemporary fact is that, too often, our political
leadership is dissociated from moral and ethical considerations. But
essential for their legitimacy is precisely their ability to translate
prevailing social and  ethical values into politics (or 'ethical praxis', if
you want): politics is the translation of all our scientific, ethical and
historical knowledge into a fair management of society. (D. Najman, P+QLI
Commission)

2. So, not trying to be facetious, if our leaders do not know how to
equitably distribute wealth and justice, shouldn't they at least equitably
distribute poverty and injustice...?

3. Consequently, in human rights (HR), stepping from the 'ethics of
principles' to the 'ethics of responsibilities' means that our leaders must
be made to stand by their signatures and made to keep their promises,
basically because they made them...of their own free accord (or convenience
at the time...).

4. In today's world, the life of a person who lives by her ethics is not
easy: it is rather a crusade. For her, certain principles are
non-negotiable.

5. In the human rights-based approach, rights are not negotiable. Therefore,
we have to pin down the HR-expected outcomes --100% of them-- as
non-negotiable (in a way, a zero tolerance stance). It is this, then, that
has to become our point of reference to judge which Assessment, Analysis and
Action (AAA) processes in society are positive and needed in our endeavor,
and which of them we have to challenge, because they do not lead to such
outcomes (i.e., are negative and/or neutral AAA processes for the
achievement of HR).

6. In the same way, by now, we know that Respect, Protect and Fulfill all
represent HR obligations of states: they thus have the connotation of a
social contract!  Carrying it a bit further, some people consider Respect to
be a passive obligation, Protect to be an active one, and Fulfill to be a
proactive obligation.  So, for instance, when governments only respect and
protect, but do not fulfill state obligations towards, say, the entitlement
to food, to care and/or to Health For All, they should be actively denounced
and confronted by us; neutrality is not an ethical option.

7. One can ask: is it not commensurate with cowardice to live an uncommitted
life in a world of growing polarization? We need to critically  examine our
commitments of all sorts. Uninformed innocence in a ravaged world amounts to
pain and suffering that can be counted as dead bodies and children
handicapped for life. We cannot be fundamentally unengaged on HR issues.
Detachment has to be challenged. Detachment can come from our early
training, disappointing experiences or mere indifference. We simply cannot
selfishly shun commitment. A world of choice and action opens before us. We
have to make choices. We have to take sides to remain human.... (A.A. de
Vitis).

8. In troubled times, a vocal identification with ethical principles needs
to be forged. Silence is a strategy to avoid commitment, in our case in HR
work. Silence compromises the future of what we stand for. Silence is
speech; it is a willed act in the furtherance of one's objectives. (Is it
self-deception?)

9. We cannot attempt to disengage; political involvement in HR matters and,
in final instance, is humanizing.  Of course, the choice can be made to act
as a 'sympathetic outsider'; from such a position, reality-out-there remains
but a picture on the canvas.  (Z. Pathak)
[I recognize that people exist as dismembered bodies; we are constructed as
complex, fragmented subjects, in part because there is a dialectical
relationship between the personal and the political...].

Can Human Rights advocacy be overdone?

10. All people have equal rights, but are indeed very different --and want
to be different... (J.Rau, German Federal President, 13/5/02)

11. Because HR pertain to all people, everywhere, one danger is that the
term "human rights" be used for many disparate things, if not for everything
under sun. The fear is that, eventually, the term be abused so that it gets
diluted to the extent that it loses all its original meaning and becomes
empty rhetoric --like so many other 'big words' we have seen abused --from
democracy to freedom to equity...

12. Human rights has actually become a 'convenient' moral term, so useful
and effective in advocacy that, to be on the safe side, everyone (friend and
foe of HR) throws it in...just in case. And that is where the danger of
abuse and dilution lies.

13. While I am aware of the efforts to expand the traditional HR concept and
expect that HR will play some role in areas such as the environment, I am
wary that if everyone keeps stretching HR into everything under the sun,
within ten years, we risk seeing a huge backlash in the HR arena: whoever
mentions the term "human rights" will be suspected of being a dinosaur or a
fanatic. In the next five years we will see expansion, but what in ten...?
This, of course, does not mean that linking HR to environment issues should
not be pursued... (Tran Dinh Hoang, personal communication).

14. The caveat here is that we ought to advocate for a faithful adherence to
the established and already sanctioned international legal human rights
concept and principles; expansion from there should be cautious, well
justified and long-term.
If something is good, use it carefully, consistently and with care...

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
aviva at netnam.vn