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[claudio]

Human Rights Reader 49

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROJECT AND PROCESS IS OWNERSHIP. HUMAN RIGHTS CANNOT
BE IMPLEMENTED AS A PROJECT.

                             Projects create islands in the ocean of
poverty.

                            The origin of Human Rights lies in the rather
                             subversive idea of protecting the collective
                             interests of the poor and weak in a society
                             against the rich and powerful. (Adilisha,
                             FAHAMU)

1. One violated right is a violated right. Suffering is not increased by
numbers. One body can contain all the suffering the world can take.

2. In Human Rights, we do not judge in terms of quantity (alone). By doing
so, one surely betrays Human Rights's principles.

3. We must, therefore, no longer allow the sovereignty of states to be used
as a shield for gross violations of Human Rights, simply because there are
times when sovereignty just protects grave suffering. (J. K. Galbraith).

4. The Human Rights struggle is about turning human suffering into history
rather than destiny --and we can't face heavy artillery with water guns. (D.
A. Moi)  That is the naked truth.

5. But we live in a world still in need of believing in old truths that
nobody has wanted to believe in...and Human Rights are not exactly a new
truth.

6. Because to achieve change one has to attain a critical mass of process
ownership, human social struggles are, by necessity, intergenerational. (C.
Sepulveda)  But this does not allow for complacency or procrastination.
Bluntly put: the struggle for Human Rights is overdue.

7. Health rights  are to be taken-up-by rather than bestowed-on or given-to
the people as charity. So, to move the process ahead, we need to move into
new territory. For example, we need more parliamentary, civil society and
student involvement in the struggle for Human Rights: more constituent
groups have to take ownership of the human-rights-restoring process.

8. In the struggle to achieve that, it has been easy to meet, but not so
easy to act together. (The rich are more united precisely in that sense;
they close ranks very rapidly when threatened; the rich are also 'very
charitable': they understand that they have to pay ransom for their riches).
(G. B. Shaw)

9. Our challenge, then, is to interpret our individual experience from a
Human Rights perspective to better serve the people so they take de-facto
ownership of the specific struggle for Human Rights. But beware: experience
is not what happens (or has happened) to you, but what you do (or have done)
with what happens (or has happened) to you! (A. Huxley)

10. Idealism, when uninformed by experience, is abstract and dangerous in a
world coerced by the cult of power. (A. A. de Vitis) Moreover, idealism and
ethics are a mockery where the question of action is never even raised.
(Robert Scholes) ...and our inaction and ineffectiveness in the field of
Human Rights is bliss for politicians and bureaucrats. (Or, we sometimes
wrongly assume that decision-makers are rational, righteous and pious, and
will accept hard evidence or will react to outrageous injustice...).

11. Too often, the aim is clear, but what precisely we want to achieve, and
how we can act together, is less clear; the 'how', on 'how-to-get-to-our-aim
' stays in the dark. Too often too, genuine protest movements have big
words, but even a bigger cluelessness. We do not want to be like that.
Slogans alone no longer do in Human Rights work. The discrepancy between
slogans and reality is simply too painfully apparent. The challenge thus is
to go from getting-all-relevant-information -- to mounting-an-argument -- to
organizing-action. But beware, too often have we tended to mistake
(sometimes endless) negotiations for action. (J. G. Speth)

12. Standing up for a common cause often means to resist, to oppose, to
redirect, to counter, to denounce. Getting the right information to claim
holders is thus an armor and a weapon for people to take the ownership of
Human Rights work. From the right to know and the duty to inquire flows the
obligation to act. (S. Steingraber)

13. In the Human Rights arena, courageous individuals act; they listen to
people's complaints, learn from them and teach them; they treat them like
someone of value.

14. The challenge is thus to adopt a course of action which, for all its
drawbacks,  positively affects social change in the direction of the
achievement of all Human Rights. And when acting, just REacting limits our
choices. We have to take the initiative and denounce, yes, but also announce
a new order.

15. While denouncing, presenting alternatives, showing the way and
suggesting alternatives, Human Rights activists have to be 'comfort-busters'
and 'disquieters', as well as 'callers-to-reflection-and-action'. This
eventually makes them into true alter-egos of the civil society community.
Their mission is to center-the-debate and articulate-the-reasons for Human
Rights. It is indeed a heroic battle of 'universal ideas against special
interests'.

16. For all the above reasons, I see our task as critics being one of
actively politicizing the Human Rights discourse and leading it into new
action-oriented positions.

17. In doing so, we also often have to unveil the workings of many a
colonized consciousness: Great spirits have always encountered violent
opposition from mediocre minds. (A. Einstein)

18. So, if you think we are too small to be effective in upholding Human
Rights, ...you have never been in bed with a flee.

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