PHA-Exch> Food for a thought held hostage

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 182



*WE DO NOT NEED MORE PHILANTHROPY AND PATRIARCHY; WE NEED MORE EMPHASIS ON
HUMAN RIGHTS.*



Rich countries still think the West is the center of the world and that
salvation must (patriarchically) come from that quarter.



1. Can we muster the power of conviction and of mobilization to decisively
pursue the human rights-based development path --and what cannot go without
it-- pursuing a more just and equitable new international economic order
(NIEO)?  This we ask because, dispassionately looked at, the corpus of human
rights (HR) instruments is really also a tool for people to struggle against
what in fact is the-disdain-for-HR-of-the-neoliberal-path-to-development. Is
this an overstatement? No, not at all: Consider for a moment a) how elites
defend the Universal Declaration of HR (UDHR) only half-heartedly and
ambiguously, b) the fact that the 1986 United Nations Declaration on the
Right to Development (RTD) (*) was not allowed to become a binding
convention by the advocates of neoliberalism, and c) the collapse of the WTO
Cancun (*) talks where the obstinate opposition of the G8 and others led to
the failure *of making trade a genuine vehicle for development.*

[*: Be reminded that the Declaration on the RTD explicitly calls for the
promotion and protection of HR to be accompanied by efforts to establish a
NIEO and for the eradication of all social injustices; it states that
development cannot be reduced to the satisfaction of material needs only,
and that all efforts are to strive for an equitable distribution of income.
In the pursuit of all these goals, the Declaration requires governments to
take sustained action. Be further reminded that the rules of the WTO only
reinforce the position of the strongest countries -- i.e., the hegemony of
market forces-- leaving HR, equity and social justice slip through the
cracks.]



2. As here proven --together with other HR covenants--, the Declaration on
the RTD also sanctions the fact that HR can and *do* constitute a
significant moral and legal reference for social movements. Therefore, civil
society can and should use this reference when reminding governments of the
solemn commitments they have entered into --especially now, when signing any
agreements with the WTO, the World Bank, the IMF or with transnational
corporations (TNCs).



3. As we have said many times in these Readers, the *major obstacles* to the
respect of human rights in general, and the respect of economic, social and
cultural rights (ESCR) in particular ( *and* of the RTD) among other are:

·        Foreign debt and structural adjustment programs (SAPs) imposed by
international financial institutions (IFIs);

·        unequal terms of trade and economic policies favoring TNCs;

·        the unequal distribution of wealth, capital flight and tax evasion;


·        the privatization of the world's national resources and social
services;

·        misdirected and non-performing international cooperation;

·        corruption and a lack of genuine participation by people;

·        dependence on the export of basic commodities and skewed trade
rules;

·        obstacles to market access for countries in the global South;

·        the non-respect of the exception clauses in the WTO agreements (
e.g., TRIPS);

·        embargoes, unilateral coercive economic measures and imposed
conditionalities;

·        the marginalization of the South in global decision-making
processes and the non-respect of the self-determination of nations;

·        armed conflict and the arms trade;

·        the brain drain process…

…*all these have serious negative HR consequences. *



4. No wonder, then, that this Reader is skeptical of the intentions of the
Development Establishment…: In a puzzling accommodation, its members now
also (as we did long ago) criticize SAPs as having slowed development in
poor countries  --only to, then, entrust current development policies again
to the same institutions that imposed those structural adjustment programs
in the first place.



5. This is why, through this Reader, we are promoting a development process
that allows *the realization of all human rights as an explicitly stated
process with explicitly related HR outcomes.*



6. You can thus be reassured (yet again) that your concern-for and work-in
HR overrules all economic arguments by bodies that unquestioningly support
the current international economic order; this, because their policies are
not based on equity and thus deepen the already existing inequities at the
root of the shameful violations of HR that are intimately related to
poverty.



7. In the same current international economic order, rich countries get
involved in a somewhat cynical dialogue of the deaf; they quite predictably
refuse to take HR-responsible-measures at the international level and
instead keep invoking the responsibilities of the poor countries to
integrate HR -- without committing themselves to anything like-it in return.
Furthermore, even well established, previously upheld rights are being
flagrantly disregarded. The indifference towards the respect of HR in poor
countries is literally entrenched in the leadership of most rich countries
--as much as grandiose statements try to say the opposite; otherwise, they
would put their money where their mouth is…



8. Simply stated, politicians in the North (and also in the South) cannot,
on the one hand, pretend to support HR while, on the other, implementing
economic, financial and trade policies that go against these same rights.



9. Bottom line, neoliberalism has proven *not* to be a
true-development-model, but rather a
domination-model-with-moralizing-rhetoric.

Its social disasters and its human dramas are well known and do not need to
be repeated here. Its ideological anti-state dogma and calls for good
governance aim neither at true direct democratic participation of
individuals in decision-making processes nor at the respect of their RTD,
but rather at state-sponsored-market-deregulation.



10. So, what this Reader is mostly about, is to combat the current impunity
of the numerous violations of HR and in this way help the communities,
social groups and movements victimized by these violations to be heard, to
gain influence and to obtain redress where it is (over)due.



Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan at phmovement.org

[All Readers can be found in www.humaninfo.org/aviva   under
No.69<http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva%20%20under%20No.69>
]

Adapted from The Right to Development, Human Rights Program booklet series,
CETIM, Geneva, June 2007.
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