PHA-Exchange> Food for a globalized thought

[Claudio]

Human Rights Reader 97

 

Succeed, we ultimately must! If not, Human Rights will be relegated to simply being an indicator of violations rather than an essential foundation of the new development paradigm.

 

1. Globalization confuses the Rights-of-Liberty of persons (i.e., non-interference by the state in issues of the persons) with the Rights-of-Corporations who insistently claim for non-interference by government.

Human Rights (HR) work primarily focuses on the groups socially excluded  from the prosperity some have long gained (and continue to gain) from Globalization (or from any previous stage of Capitalism). Therefore, HR work focuses equally on Rights-of-Justice (as on Rights-of-Liberty) denouncing, where needed, state regulations and actions that interfere with ensuring/guaranteeing equity and fair distribution-of and access-to social, economic and cultural benefits. 

 

2. In today's globalized world, minority-power-holders (often important duty-bearers) put in place political distortions to consolidate their oppressive and exploitative power. We need to understand why those forms of power have been accepted and are deemed-bearable-by-the-people-who-suffer-under-them. The French philosopher Michel Foucault was of he opinion that the real scandal is not 'power abuse', but 'obedience abuse': the real problem is not the base of power, the real problem is one of docility. [It is always useful to look at the other side of the coin, isn't it? --some more food for thought here on what to do about this.]

 

3. In a world globalized or not, a Need is much more than a Want. A need, if not satisfied, causes damage, for example, the-non-satisfaction-of-basic-needs eventually leads to social and/or biological death. That is why, in many of us, basic needs (have) generate(d) the desire or the moral imperative (but not the obligation!) to do something to satisfy them. (C. Sepulveda)

  

4. Furthermore, a Right is much more than a Need. It carries with it a legally binding obligation for redress (i.e., 'correlative duties'). Countries that have signed and ratified the different HR covenants have, in fact, signed social contracts to respect, protect and fulfill the human (people's) rights enshrined in them. 

 

5. This notion of a social contract allows us to be very clear: We are never going to achieve our HR goals by stepping up the lobbying of NGOs or by promoting ever stricter conditionalities in foreign aid (ODA) only. [For many reasons, PRSPs will not do either. Just a key example: PRSPS do not address the disadvantaged position of poor countries in the world trading system].

 

6. Progress in HR work will depend on mobilizing claim holders, opening opportunities in ways that will inspire them to think in new ways and to take action themselves. (R. Jolly)  New strategies also require the wisdom to focus, to persevere in carrying out consistent and determined action plus the ability to secure sufficient amounts of the (right) needed resources. The idea is not to overburden the system with a high diversity-of and with fragmented actions that blur the focus on our primarily HR-based work. [In a spider web metaphor, each string represents a different cause-and-effect-relationship. If one or even a few threads are damaged, the firmness of the web is still intact. Increasing the number of damaged threads threatens the strengths of the web until, suddenly, the web collapses. If we want to repair a-not-yet-collapsed-but-seriously-damaged web, we do not need to replace all its threads, but rather identify the most important ones to replace, as long as the replacement threads are strategically placed and are strong enough]. (R. Gross)  Or put in another way, the task is not to deliver excuses, but to get the job done (G. Kent). 

 

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn
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