PHA-Exchange> Food for a trillion dollar thought

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

Human Rights Reader 74

FIVE DECADES OF DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE HAVE COST THE WORLD OVER 1 TRILLION USD: 
HOW MUCH IN IMPROVED HUMAN RIGHTS IS THERE TO SHOW FOR THAT?  

Development in the wrong direction?:
1. Development cooperation can neither be reduced to fighting terrorism nor can 
development policy remain a repair shop for the longstanding damage done by a 
whole series of wrong --purportedly anti-poor (??)-- economic policies. 

2. Those responsible for those wrong policies, i.e., the (macro) economic and 
trade policy makers, we have not seen and still do not see as the persons or 
institutions to whom we should be addressing our angry criticism. Ergo, we have 
been sending the letter to the wrong address


3. We, as part of civil society, should therefore, not look to Development 
Ministries and Development Policy Agencies, but rather to Ministries-of-Trade-
and-Finance-senior-officers to take our claims to. [Our claims should also go 
to the private-sector-that-so-clearly-influences-the-latter and interprets 
business ethics only as (sometimes) ‘honest-book-keeping’ and not as ethics 
also shouldering a clear responsibility for domestic and Third World poverty. 
In the same context, do not overlook the fact that the existing body of laws is 
like a tailor-made-suit that fits the interests of the more privileged in the 
private sector].

4. In part, this has happened, because in our development and human rights (HR) 
work we have not focused on finding the hidden (or not so hidden?) connections 
between the different forms of injustice, inequality and HR violations we 
witness day-in-day-out and their (sometimes removed) basic causes.

5. That is why this Reader has insisted we need ideology: to become aware of 
how hidden (political and philosophical) assumptions influence us, our theories 
and our praxis. The price for showing contempt for ideology has been that many 
of us are liable for grave past and present political mistakes.

6. The Reader has many times, and in different ways, pointed out that --in the 
words of E.F. Schumacher-- ‘markets are the institutionalization of 
individualism and irresponsibility’ and that the basic principle of Capitalism 
is money-making which is always valued higher than democracy, HR, environmental 
protection, or any other value dear to us. So, changing the rules of the game 
will mean, first, changing this basic principle.  (Note that the right 
to ‘material acquisition or accumulation’ has falsely been portrayed as another 
HR
!!).

7. The Reader has also repeatedly made calls to de-mistify the false division 
many among us still see between what is considered to be political and non-
political: HR is politics, as is food, health, education, the environment
and 
we unfortunately have little sustainable progress to show for in any of these 
fronts.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn 
==================================
Through much of this Reader I distilled arguments found in several issues of 
D+C the German development journal, the book ‘The Hidden Connections’, by 
Fritjof Capra, the book ‘Heading South, Looking North’ by Ariel Dorfman and the 
book ‘Refugiado del Iraq Milenario’ by Claudio Sepulveda.



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