PHA-Exchange> Food for thought for a new beginning (part 1)

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

MORE ON THE POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS 

Human Rights Reader 69

What should drive human rights (HR) activists in their daily work? Why choose 
HR and not another field? Why the appeal of working, either locally and/or 
globally, to alleviate the suffering of those whose rights are being violated? 
Are HR activists more aware of the political implications of their daily 
activities both as professionals and as concerned citizens (two inseparable 
spheres of action)? Can anybody working in development evade the 
responsibilities that these questions bring with them? (from HRR 55)

A BASIS TO DEVELOP A NEW VISION FOR THE FUTURE. (Part 15 of 16)

151. Sustainable development is about processes of popular enrichment, 
empowerment and participation which our technocratic, project-oriented view has 
simply failed to accommodate. Unfortunately, difficult problems have the power 
of leading us to focus on their more manageable components thus totally 
avoiding the more complex basic, structural questions. This is known as 'the 
exclusion fallacy' in which ‘what-we-choose-not-to-discuss is assumed to have 
no bearing on the issue’.

152. An uncritical, repetitive reliance on the same old, shallow interpretation 
of unresolved issues --i.e., not considering all the human rights (HR) 
violations we witness as outcomes of complex social and political processes-- 
has equally foreseeable conservative consequences. Outlooks stemming from such 
a vantage point particularly suffer from an inexcusable narrow understanding of 
the nature of control processes in society (both in the North and in the South).

153. Somehow, debates about past historical rights and wrongs are not guiding 
us to come up with more cohesive propositions for tomorrow. If there is no 
cohesion in our vision, as campaigners we will weary and the campaign will 
perish; we thus need to reshape our vision firmly embedding it in a more 
realistic practice. To walk away from making our debates ultimately relevant to 
those we purport to serve is a luxury we cannot afford. A vision is not much 
good if it simply stays in the air as something devoutly to be desired; a 
vision of that sort is a mirage: it recedes as you approach it. To be of use, 
the vision has to suggest a route, and this requires that it takes into account 
many unpleasant realities.

154. A vision is of no use unless it serves as a guide for effective action. 
These actions will, once and for all, have to be biased towards the oppressed, 
because it is their rights that are being trampled-upon day-in-day-out. We can 
no longer abandon the have-nots to the dollar-dispensing Northern bilateral or 
multilateral agencies. The moment cries for us to press for more. Windows of 
opportunity have a way of slamming shut.

155. I am aware it is still very difficult for some of us to maintain our 
political agility in a hostile environment. But the role of an avant-garde is 
to cause fermentation. We cannot fall in the trap of believing someone else is 
going to take care of these things for us; we have to get active. A strategic 
overhaul of our actions requires nothing less than a crisis in our thinking and 
if by now there is no such a crisis in the horizon, we have to perhaps create 
one.

156. The future of our work cannot be a simple extension of the past. If we try 
to pursue a path of business-as-usual we will find some altogether unusual 
consequences. As said, however much we may engage in fine-tuning the engine, 
this will not suffice unless we redesign certain sizable parts of the motor 
itself.

157. A new politically conscious professionalism will emerge only if we are 
explorers and ask, again and again, who will benefit and who will lose from 
choices made and actions undertaken in our work. New professionals 'who put the 
last first' already exist; we still are a minority though. The hard question is 
how we can multiply and, most importantly, how we can interact, coalesce and 
organize dynamic networks among ourselves and between us and grassroots 
organizations.

158. Making prescriptive recommendations on what each of us needs to do to 
contribute our individual grain of salt to making pro-HR interventions more 
effective and sustainable would be presumptuous. The materials in this Reader 
are just a wake-up-call for some and an always-timely-reminder for others. It 
is about being more critical about what we do and see. This, as a basis for 
each of us to develop our own (new) vision for the future: a vision that fits 
our own specific situation, one that we commit ourselves to share, and one that 
we are willing to implement working with others.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn


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