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Human Rights Reader 51

THE NEED TO STRUGGLE IS ACTUALLY A BUILT-IN PRINCIPLE OF HUMAN RIGHTS WORK.

                                              The check has come back from
the
                                              Bank of Justice marked
'insufficient
                                              funds'.  (M. L. King)

1. If the title is right, it behooves us to closely examine the processes
that lead to widespread Human Rights violations. We need to identify the
myths behind those processes and to show how the contradictions on which
they rest are generated by political needs of the more powerful at a given
moment in history. (Z. Pathak)

2. Myths are seductive, but they crowd out facts; and when the facts make a
compelling case for action, myths must be buried. Myths make us complacent
and stifle our imperative for action. (L. Haddad)

3. This examination of the determinants of myths calls for creating a
ace   --strictly based on facts-- from which we can speak out as critics, to
counter the proponents of status-quo who seek to homogenize the differences
of religion, class, ethnic group and gender, that we know lead to widespread
violations of  the rights of large groups of people discriminated on these
bases.

4. If we accept the above, we simply cannot allow the Human Rights discourse
to remain a superficial exercise confined to seminar rooms; this defeats the
pedagogical objective of connecting our Human Rights concerns to the real
world. So, the real world is to be our seminar room. Our function is to act
as listeners, as well as teachers; and for that, we need patience and
passion to turn the passivity of many into committed involvement. The same
applies to our youth; our youth may be schooled, but it is not educated on
many things that matter.

5. Ergo, it is not enough to have all the right ideas and attitudes and not
to have real passion and a rock-hard moral and political center. As
activists working in different cultures, we have to press for the best
practices to have Human Rights prevail universally --in the realm of all
those cultures.

6. In Human Rights, we cannot look at people as empty buckets --without an
education, without a history, without cultural markers of the class they
belong to. We cannot pretend all these are not there. People's identity is
clearly inside a social, cultural, moral and political formation, e.g.,
people cannot be de-coupled from the political to re-couple them with the
economic and the social.

7. Active-intelligence rather than simple-good-intentions is necessary.  Too
often, we see high emphasis being placed on the development of technical
skills with low emphasis on the development of 'moral-intelligence'. (M.
Allott)

8. Ultimately, it is all about being committed: the modern world has no
place for innocence.  Innocence can and does cause harm; so, every single
one of us needs a sense of mission --beyond our seeking freedom from guilt.
Some call this 'optimistic-humanism', i.e., behaving
as-if-the-world-were-as-kind-as-we-wish-it-to-be. (J. Cassidy)

9. So, we have to be alert. The 'innocent' and the 'uninvolved' remain among
us, and they are not always quiet and harmless.

10. Writing (e.g., about urgent Human Rights needs) is certainly a kind of
action! But not of much help if one remains uninvolved, unburdened by
emotional ties....tinged with the paternalism-of-empire. Paternalism is
still very much in our midst and creates havoc through misinformation. (G.
Greene)

11Our own societies have lost the sense of what we are fighting for. We are
not trying to patch up the same kind of world that has produced the chaos we
are in right now. Many come to this understanding grudgingly. To pity is
easy, but it is difficult to really care. In the class that most of us come
from, overriding emphasis is placed on complacency --and that is no good.

12.So, to reiterate, the need to struggle is both a principle of Human
Rights and of development work overall; in this work, to be is to do.
We-are-what- we-do, but (in this day and age) particularly
what-we-do-to-change-what-we-are.

13. The focus must, therefore, be on results, not on dogma. Bottom line: It
is not the nice guys who bring about social change; nice guys look nice,
because they are conforming. (Denial ain't just a river in Egypt; it is a
powerful animal and some stay there most of their lives). Rights cannot be
theorized in the sense of claims being pursued in a vacuum, but rather as a
means of a struggle in a concrete social and political reality. Rights are
not standards granted from above, but a standard-bearer around which people
have to rally to bring about a struggle from below. (I. Shivji)

14. The underlying problem to all this is that people are not organized;
there is no substantial enough struggle from below (yet). The poor and
marginalized are neglected by modern, so called, democracies --because
democracies are held captive not just to the power that money buys, but also
to the ideas that money buys. (W. Greider)  Conversely, Human Rights are
beyond money-metrics...

15. We, therefore, need to foster indigenous Human Rights movements of the
people themselves --and movements to win the support of the people to change
direction towards the Human-Rights-cause need indigenous leaders;  we need
to find them and work with them. After a while, it will be up to these
leaders to merge into national and trans-national networks of poor people's
organizations, i.e., a "Globalization from Below"  (Voices of the Poor,
World Bank) See www.phmovement.org .

16. Because all states that ratify Human Rights documents are obliged to
bring their laws and procedures in line with treaty (covenant) obligations,
it is important for each of us to know which treaties our respective
countries have signed and ratified --and use this knowledge to put pressure
on our respective government to implement the rights found in the treaties
it has ratified (You can find information on this for your country at
www.unhcr.ch). Thereafter, with others, we  have to build a response
capability to all these Human Rights-related documents, global and national.
And, if national legislation has not followed the ratification of these
Covenants, pushing such legislation should become a high priority for all of
us.

17. Our inability to resolve Human Rights problems at home also represents
economic costs of  great magnitude; ignoring the benefits forfeited through
our inaction is irresponsible and criminal. (J. von Braun)  If you think
this statement is a bit radical, just ask yourself: Where are we going to
end up if nothing is done?

18. For the needed changes to occur, we have to step out of the biomedical
and neoliberal paradigms and become unashamed Human Rights activists.
This, because the prevailing paradigm allows to manipulate, dominate,
exploit, expropriate the have-nots whose rights are being violated. (I.
Illich)
Moreover, the  prevailing paradigm is prescriptive, targeting-actions-upon-
people rather than involving-people-in-decision-making.

19. This is why, as Human Rights activists, we do not condone
procrastination. In Human Rights, we need action now; we need reciprocal
commitments by the local, national and international community. We need an
international anti-poverty alliance based on Human Rights principles, on
debt relief, on increases of ODA to 0.7% of GNP, on the principles of 20/20,
on taxing international financial transactions (Tobin), on fair trade...
Given increasing marginalization of the now powerless, this might appear to
be a quixotic enterprise...

20. We also absolutely need to concentrate on women's rights, because men
and women experience poverty and violations of Human Rights differently.
This means we cannot allow gender hierarchies to persist in a hollow-
commitment-to-Human-Rights.

21. Neither can we be caught off guard in the battle for 'a-market-share-of-
the-public-mind'. We must bypass the biased editorial control of learned
journals, the audiovisual media, the press, the internet space; they are as
unreliable and biased as a smart advertising. (K. O'Neill) (J. Adamson)

22. In the work we are asking all of you to take-up, we cannot
underestimate: We are taking on formidable enemies, and we will not have
succeeded until we ultimately force (and/or replace) policy makers and other
duty bearers to begin adopting Human Rights-based approaches to development.

23. In all honesty, we too often are more concerned about being
scientifically correct than programmatically effective; even Human Rights
have been over-studied and under-acted upon. (K. Gautam)

24. I see discussions on Human Rights usually going trough three stages:
Confusion - Anxiety - Expectations ("what do these Human Rights advocates
want from me again now?"). Because of this, and to relieve these anxieties,
our promises will have to live up to the expectations we create, i.e., our
analysis must lead to a praxis.

25. As opposed to the soft and non-binding declarations so many of the
so-called Global Summits (often also called Summits of the Lowest Common
Denominator), our Human Rights plans of action must depict what is
achievable in real political terms and should go for broke to implement
those actions.

26. When reinforcing the sense of urgency to act, we cannot create a dooms
scenario, or make people feel guilty. Be optimistic: We shall overcome! But
warn everybody that things are going to get worse before they get better...

27. Perhaps with our help, each community could draw up 'entitlement-cards'
that list which entitlements they do have access to and to which they do
not; that can be a powerful basis to get organized to fight for those
entitlements they are denied. (M. S. Swaminathan)

28. In the current real world, the rules of free trade override the Human
Rights discourse: Trade agreements are binding and are enforced; Human
Rights treaties are often ignored and rely on voluntary compliance.

29. Moreover, as part of the rules permitted by free trade, access to the
state has become a source and means for the accumulation of private
wealth --as an end in itself among the ruling class.

Epilogue:

30. This --and all other Human Rights Readers-- are not trying to load all
these new responsibilities on your shoulders and make you feel guilty. We
are merely trying to get a process going --with you as an active agent. We
need an increasing number of people who understand the many worrisome trends
depicted in these readers and elsewhere and who do-give-a-damn and
decide-to-be-counted and do-something about these trends.

31. You will not --and are not called to-actually do the needed changes. We
are asking you to take the responsibility to be a catalyst and a validator
of the changes needed to avert further deterioration of the Human Rights
situation. Become active in your own environment in empowering popular
movements and their leaders. That's what it is all about.

32. We have been deeply intimidated by the magnitude of the problem in front
of us . We have imprisoned ourselves within our own skepticism, resignation
and cynicism about the inevitability of Human Rights violations being a fact
of life. (C. Lovelace)

33. There is no reason goodness cannot triumph over evil, so long as the
angels are as organized as the mafia. (K. Vonnegut)

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

Some of the quotations come from G. Greene, The Quiet American, Text and
Criticism section, Viking Critical Library, Penguin Books, NY, 1996.