PHA-Exch> Food for the anniversary of a great thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 193



*IN THIS, ITS 60TH ANNIVERSARY, THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS
STILL A KIND OF CONSCIENCE OF THE WORLD --OR EVEN MORE-- TODAY IT CAN BE
CONSIDERED CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW.*



Many of you may feel a sickening sense of impotence about the widespread
situation of injustice the world over; yet if these feelings of disgust
could be united into common action, something effective can indeed be done.
(P. Benenson).



1. In order for human rights (HR) to be actually claimed, the HR framework
has to first be made better known, i.e., only when people know their rights
can they actively claim them. This very essential yet difficult task can
only be achieved through a quite massive institutionalized HR learning
initiative with a bottom-centered approach.



2. Launching, keeping-up and overseeing these indispensable learning and
training activities is, therefore, of utmost importance, precisely because
we need to set up a long-term-empowering-monitoring system and a
long-term-effective-advocacy system for HR that can coalesce into a
veritable social movement. A vital responsibility is thus placed on (y)our
shoulders: to become a mentor and a monitor of HR learning.



3. What this means is that only by getting international conventions off the
pages of UN covenants and into the heads of those affected by HR violations
will progress be made.



4. But this is not all in this 60th anniversary; HR also have to be made to
become guiding concepts in the common legal order.



5. To overcome HR bottlenecks found in so many laws, policies and budgets
that govern the actual use of government resources, we need to look at these
systematically and with a critical eye (setting up a veritable 'HR balance
sheet'). This will allow us to we make sure the plans we develop to
strengthen the realization of HR have a realistic chance to succeed --quite
more so if backed by the legal system.



6. Ultimately, and in the medium term, changes will be needed in national
laws in order to bring them into compliance with international HR
obligations.  This, because limits and standards that fall under the
non-derogable clauses of international HR law can and must constitute a
minimum level below which societies and their citizens fall into intolerance
and oppression, i.e., into the violation of HR…and such discriminatory
actions need to be made clearly sanctionable by law.





7. What it is all about, then, is to use the HR framework as a tool for
social transformation. Why? Because it is by putting the HR framework to
use, i.e., by becoming active claim holders, and negotiating with duty
bearers, that people will eventually address the HR problems in their daily
life. This calls for actually inventorying and identifying the HR
realizations and violations in each national context in a way that leads to
the elaboration of a strategy that then translates into a plan of action.



8. To achieve all the above, we need to go from an era of an intellectual
commitment to HR to an era of their actual implementation (K. Annan);

from fighting for the respect, the protection and the fulfillment of HR in
various scholarly fora (…like this HR Reader) to the enforcement and the
practical realization of HR.



9. This all will require our developing and joining a whole new political
culture based on HR (N. Mandela).



10. The use of a 'mobilization of shame' or a 'name and shame' strategy,
mainly achieved with the help of the independent and progressive media, can
be very effective.



11. As Kofi Annan also said, we will not enjoy development without security;
we will not enjoy security without development and we will not enjoy either
without respect for HR. (…HR as birth rights, Boutros Ghali added).



12. In this day and age, does it sound plausible to the reader, then, that
the protection of HR has to be a part of the struggle against terrorism? So
many just don't seem to get it….



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 W. Benedek et al, Understanding Human Rights: Manual on Human
Rights Education, 2nd Edition, European Training and Research Centre for
Human Rights and Democracy (ETC), Graz, Austria, May 2006.
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