PHA-Exch> Food for a democratically representative thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 172



*PHYSICAL CAPITAL WEARS OUT; SOCIAL CAPITAL DOES NOT. THE MORE IT IS USED IN
EXERCISING DIRECT DEMOCRACY, e.g., to combat human rights violations, THE
STRONGER IT GETS.*



Democracy is a means, not an end.

Democracy is not a spectator sport.

The world is run by people that show up.



Let us start this Reader debunking a couple of myths:



1. *Myth # 1*: Foreign aid can transform an anti-democratic structure of
power into a democratic, human rights-respecting one.  No.  It only
reinforces what is there. Government to government aid only gives the elites
a greater stake in protecting the status-quo; overwhelmingly, it contributes
to increased powerlessness of the poor majority.



2. *Myth #2*: Democratization of, for example, health can be independent of
democratization of all institutions of society.  No.  The real problem is
not one of scarcity of health, but scarcity of direct democracy (or
collective decision-making power) over health issues.



3. In general, government services (in this case, health) become
rights-based only when the services that beneficiaries are entitled-to are
specified and when mechanisms to-review-decisions and
mechanisms-to-provide-effective-remedies exist, should someone be denied
access unjustly. Only then do beneficiaries have power on their side.



4. But to have power on their side, communities must undergo an
apprenticeship in new and higher forms of democracy for the needed changes
of the above type to happen.



5. It is the DIRECT, participatory form of democracy that is required for
development to succeed, because representative democracy has always fallen
way short. The question is: How difficult is it to install AND practice
DIRECT democracy around human rights (HR) issues?



6. Representative democracy-based forms of accountability have consistently
(and increasingly) proven to be obsolete vehicles for providing political
voice worthy of the term, notably to poor and marginalized people. (When
will we understand that only staging elections will simply not do?).



7. We note that what is being referred-to as 'good governance' in the
prevailing development discourse is actually politics depoliticized; we are
 thus called to turn this around so as to understand governance in political
and thus truly democratic terms. (PHM India)



8. As a corollary, non-state voices and action alliances have to arise. The
construction of new transnational accountability institutions is meant to
address failures of traditional state-centered accountability mechanisms.  This
is a goal that can only be achieved through  DIRECT democracy, particularly
because the fate of theoretically sound solutions to the human rights
problem is grim when, for political reasons, they cannot be implemented.



9. To make the needed difference, DIRECT democracy uses rational persuasion
AND political strength! It adds action-orientation to the process of
democratization aiming at a more just and fair human development.



10. The caveat, of course, is that authoritarian governments manifest their
fear of popular empowerment reaching those levels mostly through organized
repression. So, this also has to go into the equation of efforts to promote
DIRECT democracy.



11. In any democracy, it is the structural and cultural causes of HR
violations that need to be overcome. For that, one needs to have a holistic
understanding of the structural violence that expresses itself as HR
violations. In practice, this calls for locally assessing and acting upon
everything that prevents individuals from fully developing their potentials
and from living in dignity (including all forms of discrimination, unfair
distribution of wealth, unequal education opportunities, and disadvantages
due to environmental damages). DIRECT democracy is the vehicle to achieve
this --so we should be talking more about it when we talk about HR.



Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan at phmovement.org



[All Readers can be found in www.humaninfo.org/aviva under No.69]

Partly adapted from D+C, 33:12, December 2006, D+C, 34:3, March 2007, and
SCN News, WHO,  No.31, late 2005-early 2006, Geneva.
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