PHA-Exchange> Food for the basically wrong thoughts that we need to be aware of

[claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn]

Human Rights Reader 88

‘BEHIND HUMAN RIGHTS ARE FREEDOMS AND NEEDS SO FUNDAMENTAL THAT THEIR DENIAL 
PUTS HUMAN DIGNITY ITSELF AT RISK’. (Goldewijk & Fortman).

1. Human needs provide a critical grounding for human (people’s) rights (HR). 
Not all needs correspond to rights though, and not all rights correspond to 
needs. 
But a central set of human rights rests on basic human needs. HR are often 
impeded by “wrong” social and political structures or adverse environments in 
those domains, i.e., the socio-political conditions that are required to 
sustain HR.  The needs-based approach looks for causal factors rather than 
for ‘deliberate acts by evil actors’. (J. Galtung). Using capacity 
(accountability) analysis, the HR-based approach looks for both.

2. The primary role of the HR-based approach is to make people aware of what-is-
basically-wrong. And when this is widely acknowledged, it has to be pointed out 
to people that there are legally-recognized-and-binding-instruments-to-right-
these-wrongs. Ergo, the poor and marginalized have legitimate claims in the 
struggle for the fulfillment of their needs.

3. Consider the example of the international debt of low-income countries:  By 
the late 1990s many very poor countries paid more in debt service to rich 
countries than they spent on education or health. Typically, their education 
and health budgets have been cut at the insistence of international financial 
organizations. Sacrifice of these basic needs, in order to service debt, is 
unacceptable. ‘Jubilee 2000’ campaigners for debt relief have shown how such 
cuts contravene the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) endorsed by 
nearly all governments, including the debt collectors’. The UDHR prioritizes 
access to education and health care. [Even in welfare-states, when a family 
goes bankrupt, no child is expected to lose access to basic education and 
health care in order for debts to be repaid first; this principle should apply 
for people everywhere!].

4. Ultimately, rights-are-justified-claims towards the protection of persons’ 
most basic needs and dearest interests; they are justified-priorities-that-give-
people-basic-claiming-capabilities to achieve them; rights convey respect to 
persons-as-choosers, as active rights-claiming, choice-making agents. 

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn
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MOSTLY TAKEN FROM ‘NEEDS AND HUMAN RIGHTS’, DES GASPER, IN ‘THE ESSENTIALS OF 
HUMAN RIGHTS ENCYCLOPAEDIA’, (FORTHCOMING).




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