PHA-Exch> Food for a ‘cherry-picked’ thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 176



*THE HUMAN RIGHTS DISCOURSE IS ALSO MDGs-SKEPTIC.*

* *

Real life is more complex than MDG slogans; even if we get there by 2015, we
will have achieved nothing more than isolated islands of progress in a sea
of grievances and of persisting human rights violations*.

Failing to address human rights shortcomings compromises any progress on all
the MDGs. (S. Sisulu)



1. MDGs:

·        pay scant attention to the global economic order and to the
resulting international roots of inequity,

·        totally ignore the structural causes of poverty,

·        emphasize mostly what is possible for the international market and
for donor agencies to achieve rather than what is needed in poor countries.
["It was noted that financial contributions alone by the rich countries will
not suffice to wipe out poverty". (UN Commission on HR, ECOSOC)],



2. Further, MDGs:

·        contain neither visions nor tangible action plans and do not
indicate which programs and partners to prioritize.

·        do not cover significant deprivations including those due to
minority status, race or caste,

·        do not denounce bad governance of the G8 countries or of the IFIs (UN
Commission on HR, ECOSOC), and

·        have nothing to do with the process of development, e.g., they do
not speak about, for example, the right to work, to civil liberties, to a
clean environment. (That is why a 9th   and a 10th MDG have been proposed:
one to overcome dictatorships, and the other to reduce CO2 emissions).



3. The MDGs must not be confused with the 1986 UN Declaration on the Right
to Development (RTD) which is an inalienable, indivisible and non-negotiable
human right (HR). Every HR violation --and not just some arbitrarily
'cherry-picked-ones'-- requires immediate measures for its progressive
realization (except discrimination of any kind which requires immediate
remedial actions). The MDGs can thus, at best, only very partially
contribute to the realization of the RTD. (CETIM)



4. In the MDGs, promises of the rich countries are not quantified whereas
the obligations of the poor countries are; this assumes poverty is a problem
of poor people only.



5. Moreover, debt relief is a precondition for even keeping-up the hope of
meeting the MDGs --and that only if the resources freed-up by the debt
cancellation are used for direct actions with a bearing on really pulling
affected nations, in part, out of poverty [in part, since funds freed-up
fall far short of the amounts really needed to achieve the latter (IFPRI)].



6. Debt reduction frees-up local currency to be invested. The question is:
Invested in what? …in the MDGs only? …or, in the case of health, also in
tackling its social determinants (SDH) that ultimately have the potential to
address several HR violations? Civil society should be watching because, if
there is no evidence of the SDH being tackled, this fact should be denounced
publicly to demystify the 'silver bullet' aura of just pointedly going-for
and achieving the eight MDGs. [Reducing maternal and child mortality will
not be achieved by only having set specifically targeted measures!!]



7. A pertinent related question is: Can we generalize about where debt
relief funds should go? (In our example, what percentage should go to public
health and what percentage to the SDH?). The answer is: No, we cannot
generalize. There are no prescriptions here. Each context is different. But
this does not mean that, as activists, we should not be vigilant and press
for participation in the making of such decisions.



8. [We also need to be permanently reminded that the debt has already been
paid-back many times over and that its continued existence is a political
choice. Many see foreign debt as a political lever used to enslave the
people of the South. (CETIM) That is why the international NGO *Jubilee 2000
* calls for debt relief for poor countries to be determined on a
case-by-case basis in an international 'Insolvency Court' overseen by the UN
Secretary General. This, to avoid creditors set the rates and terms to
collect the debt without any regard for the rights of poor people in the
debtor countries].



9. With this just being a sampler of the many objections to the MDGs raised
in the literature, is it thus surprising that the human rights discourse is
MDGs-skeptic?

[While we discuss all this, if current trends continue, by 2015, 3.7 million
more children in Africa will suffer from malnutrition than today (SCN)].



Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan at phmovement.org

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

Adapted from D+C, Vol.33, No.10, October 2006 (*), D+C, Vol. 34, No.5, May
2007 and D+C, 34:9, September 2007.**
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20071112/4335d821/attachment-0001.html>