PHA-Exchange> Food for a troubled set of thoughts

[Claudio]

Human Rights Reader 139

 

HUMAN RIGHTS QUESTIONS I WISH I HAD CONCISE ANSWERS FOR.

 

1. HIV/AIDS is an example of a challenge that, in the last at least ten years, changed the political landscape in the health sector. One can ask, why has the HRBA paradigm not done likewise? Is the urgency of death not so visible for HR violations?  Have we, as HR activists, failed? Have our messages not been clear?  Have they been addressed to the wrong addressees? Have we been active in the wrong networks (have we been in the wrong company)? Are we not thinking/acting politically? Have we made governments understand the real long-term implications of not realizing the full range of economic, social and cultural rights?  

 

2. Should we, therefore, not develop the story-telling skills of Sheherezade? The networking skills of Paulo Freire? and the political savvy of Mahatma Gandhi? .would that help..? (adapted from S. Maxwell)

 

3. Have we been deceiving ourselves by thinking that our ideas would count? Didn't we know that the political force of the intellectual can only be felt  outside  the reigns of power --perhaps just in the limited circle of the readers of this column? Or are too many among us radical in their theory, but still conservative in their practice?

 

4.Has our assumption that HR will eventually become a political priority been wrong? Does it reflect our naivete about the political economy of priorities used by the neoliberal forces behind globalization? Have we gone by the false assumption that governments in developing countries will really give priority attention to HR?

 

5. Am I right to suspect that one half of the brains of the proponents and defenders of the neoliberal model --the ethical half-- is not really working?

 

6. For some of these questions, I think I have some answers (as all of you may have) but, in a way, I am angry; angry because our HR reasoning and logic have not overcome the neoliberal propaganda which is the food constantly being fed to the public. I conclude it is clearly not enough to set forth intelligent propositions in closed circles; we have to think and speak with a loud voice. Our being outspoken does indeed set a kind of 'jurisprudence'. More people are listening.and are starting to act.

 

7. Keep in mind that the Alma Ata Declaration did not only promote PHC; it also recognized health as a HR.and that was 25 years ago!

 

8. Perhaps for many years in the past, HR workers and development workers have been working in different 'reality rooms' (mainly because reality is not only about scientific facts, but also about values). To ignore this past, or to read only rosy lessons from it, is to condemn oneself to relive it. (R. Rajan). 

 

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn

___________

Mostly adapted from SCN News (UN Standing Committee on Nutrition), No.30, mid 2005; Carlos Fuentes, 'La Silla del Aguila', Santillana Ediciones, Madrid, 2005. and Urban Jonsson, 'Changing Approaches to the Problem of Child Malnutrition', 2006, forthcoming.
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