PHA-Exchange> Food for a manipulating thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 168



*DO STATISTICS SERVE THE HUMAN RIGHTS CAUSE WELL?*



When the same data are pored over many times, there is a danger we will find
patterns that are there by accident. (R. Rajan)



1. Statistics today essentially serve lead our attention to
subsidiary/secondary/lesser --not global and structural problems.



2. Statistics are too often used to avoid a debate about the mechanisms that
produce inequities; they are elevated to the rank of objectives and/or made
to serve an economic system that ignores human rights (HR).



3. There are loads of statistics, but very few about HR-as-a-social-product.
Statistics are actually --more often than what you think-- used for the
reductionistic purposes of those in power; they thus have other ultimate
goals than to inform; they may ultimately hide more than what they show
--apart from the fact that they may be worth their weight in poor people's
misfortunes.



4. There is indeed an excess of data around, but a (most probably
deliberate) lack of data about the
social-ill-being-of-poor-and-marginalized-people. It is indeed rare that a
link is made between health statistics, for example, and HR or social
justice.



5. Conversely, statistics are used in the construction of fear about the
menaces of poverty or of epidemics (since the rich are fearful of the
diseases of the poor that they can catch). (CETIM)



6. In development work, statistics make visible only certain aspects of
reality and thus lead to only certain practices. So is born a veritable
culture of ignoring equity and HR issues and, at the same time, a distancing
from the needed critique of the prevailing social, economic and political
system.



7. This resulting reductionistic logic ultimately ignores (or makes
invisible) the essential underlying social relations and thus substitutes
for a comprehensive explanation of the phenomena observed. While
'evidence-based-policy' is touted as the catch phrase, there is  a readiness
to embark on such adventures without any evidence whatsoever. (PHM India)



8. The interpretation of reality as fragmented, overlooks the important
connections and unequal relations that have become worse during the
neoliberal period. Action is then centered around these fragments of reality
that only lead to minor adjustments instead of acting on the profound
transformation of the whole.  [So you vaccinate children against the six
major killer diseases, but do nothing to lift them out of malnutrition and
poverty….so they die from a non-immunizable disease of poverty…: where is
the ultimate logic?]



9. Such a vision --also called the 'shish-kebab mentality' in which the
focus is on the morsels instead of on the skewer that holds them together--
is convenient to the power holders and is often used as a tool to darken and
make disappear the destructive impacts brought about by un unfair system
(and the corporations that control it) that is destroying human lives and
ecosystems; the fact that such actions are often
'honest-and-well-intentioned' (or born by ignorance of the big picture)
matters little. (J. Breilh)



*A note aside:*  Epidemiology is a prime generator and user of health
statistics. But, statistics taking a passive view and a permissive logic
towards the deterioration of poor people's health, modern-day epidemiology
does, in the end, very often play the game of private interests, not
infrequently selling its services to enterprises or playing a role of
mediator in the conflicts of labor and those relating to the environment.
(J. Breilh)





Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan at phmovement.org <schuftan at gmail.com>   NEW ADDRESS

[All Readers can be found in www.humaninfo.org/aviva under No.69]
Partly adapted from 'La sante pour tous! Se reappropier Alma Ata',
PubliCetim Nos. 27-29, CETIM/PHM, Geneve, janvier 2007.
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