PHA-Exch> Food for getting a better grip on a thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 179



*WHY HAS THERE BEEN NO WIDER PUBLIC DEBATE ON HUMAN RIGHTS?*



1. The more well-known human rights, like the freedom of speech or the
freedom of assembly protect individuals from assault by the state. Economic,
social and cultural rights (ESCR), on the other hand, define a claim to
entitlements such as food, health, water, education, housing and other.



2. The rights set-out in the United Nations (UN) Covenant on ESCR require,
among other, the 'state' (in general) to perform certain functions and to
provide certain services. It is thus much more difficult to pinpoint exactly
who within the state is responsible when such rights are not being met. UN
bodies are presently working on getting a better grip on such issues.



3. Governments which discriminate in the provision of health care --or even
use it to apply political pressures-- are guilty of violating the human
rights (HR) they have signed-on-to. Furthermore, it has been clearly
established that states have a duty to protect their citizens from, for
instance, health hazards.



4. Therefore, to comply with their solemnly acquired obligation to
progressively realize all HR, governments *have to*:

·        take concrete, direct actions towards respecting, protecting and
fulfilling these rights --indeed including ESCR,

·        use available resources on an appropriate scale to implement the
actions above (distinguishing inability from unwillingness to use these
resources is key),

·        implement the respective HR provisions at the various branches of
government (executive, legislative, judiciary and administrative), as well
as centrally and locally, and

·        establish effective and credible mechanisms for monitoring
progress.



But the question is: *Have they really*?



5. Under the influence of donor governments, poor countries have, instead,
for long now, promoted a welfare-state-type-social-safety-nets-model that
has only served (if at all) the middle-lower class --too often at the
expense of further marginalizing the already most disadvantaged. Among
other, this has clearly detracted from focusing the public debate on the
actual rights of many under-represented (and under-empowered) groups of
people.



6. We thus need to explode the myth that the promotion of safety-nets using
overseas development assistance funds can bring about a huge leap forward in
HR terms in poor countries (remember the failed
'Structural-Adjustment-With-A-Human-Face' pushed by UNICEF a couple decades
ago?).



7. At present, development aid is hardly the vehicle capable of helping to
overcome the structural barriers behind HR violations. This, even if much
more cash is made available --as the infamous Jeffrey Sachs/WHO
'Macroeconomics and Health Report' called for a couple years ago. The same
was an example of how the public health institutions of the rich countries,
on whose expertise the international funding agencies draw-upon, are set to
reshaping national health debates and strategies all over the world to suit
*their* vision of the global order in health --an order that matches
*their*vision of the global economic order.



8. The needed leap-forward in the public debate and in the ensuing actual
implementation of the legally-based-UN-HR-framework depends crucially on
more aggressively pursuing human-rights-capacity-building. This HR Reader
promotes an international dialogue (…or a monologue…?) that seeks just that
…but this is just a drop in the ocean.



9. In the absence of an open public debate, an under- and mis-informed
public can hardly participate in any critical public HR debate. An educated
general public is thus a prerequisite for any meaningful debate on the
HR-based framework; only then can claim holders act as such and influence
duty bearers by bringing pressure on them.



10. *Adopting the HR-based framework should be an outcome of social learning
* that is rooted in the experiences of the so many injustices that people
know intimately. In practice, this means that the HR-based framework has to
make ultimate sense to the grievances perceived by the majority of the
people. (S. Koenig)



11. The question, of course, is why has this public debate been so overdue?
Evidently, our priorities must be somehow wrong…



Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan at phmovement.org

[All Readers can be found in www.humaninfo.org/aviva under No.69]
Mostly adapted from D+C, 33:12, December 2006; D+C, 34:3, March 2007; D+C,
34:6, June 2007; HAI News No.141, HAIAP, Colombo, April-June 2007; and  the
document 'An Alternative People's Health Plan', National People's Health
Assembly II, People's Health Movement, India, Bhopal, March 2007.
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