PHA-Exch> Taking stock of 4 years of HRRs: An Inventory (part 2)

[Claudio Schuftan]

132+133. If a state has ratified a treaty, it is legally bound to implement
it: a reiteration.

134. Human rights and the corridors of power.

135. “Bread and health for all before cake and circus for anyone”.

136. In human rights work, cliché thinking in terms of good and evil is not
helpful at all.

137+138. The human rights-based approach: A distilled inventory of its
essential attributes.

139. Human rights questions I wish I had concise answers for.

140. Many still think human rights are about political prisoners and street
demonstrations.

141. It is not an exaggeration to say that the human rights-based approach
is in a different league than other approaches to development: it is the
‘make or break’ issue of our time.

142. Human rights are no longer a-preoccupation-that-is-best-left-aside for
‘others’ to worry about.

143. Power makes even the ugliest look handsome.

144. Programs for the poor most often are poor programs: reducing the income
gap between the poor and the non-poor is the real challenge for human rights
activists.

146. Group rights and collective rights are not the sum of individual
rights.

147. Because of their universality, sovereignty must sometimes come second
to human rights.

148. From the human rights perspective, power imbalances underlie health
inequities.

149. Moral progress does not exist; we are not more moral today than what we
were a hundred or a thousand years ago.

150. Free trade agreements, millennium development goals, and human rights:
working at cross-purposes?

151. Human rights have to be a core component of the promotion of democracy.

152+153. Jonsson’s credo.

154. Human rights have to be transformative rather than just simply easing
human suffering.

155. Public health brings a counterbalance to the individual-centered view
of human rights.

156. The rich have power because of their money, and the poor have power
because of their numbers and their potential for organizing around human
rights principles.

157, 158, 159+160. Exploring a critical, systemic approach to health rights.

161. Human rights obligations rich countries are not honoring.

162. Human rights and poverty alleviation.

163. Human rights have to go from the conceptual, to policy to action.

164. From a human rights perspective, public health stands at a crossroad.

165. Human rights activists are not social engineers; they are public
mobilizers.

166. It is only when potential individual benefits are seen more clearly as
being high that people are more willing to actively engage in work leading
to the realization of their rights.

167. The recognition of human rights such as they are expressed in
international instruments is not enough for their realization.

168. Do statistics serve the human rights cause well?

169. The lack of funding to carry out national or local human rights
assessments should not delay us in launching them!

170. The respect of the right to health is a reflection of a society’s
commitment to equity and justice.

171. More iron laws that affect human rights: use them!

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.

173. Human rights violations are no longer a private affair, because they
now have a political dimension.

174. Gender equality is not just a women’s issue, but a development and a
human rights issue.

175. The human rights discourse is globalization-skeptic and IFIs*-skeptic.


176. The human rights discourse is also MDGs-skeptic.

177. In some cases, the human rights discourse is religion-skeptic.

178. Of claim holders, duty bearers and agents of accountability.

180. Social progress has always depended on public pressure.

181. In the development debate, the perception of poor people as people in
need rather than as people with legitimate rights puts them totally out of
step with the rights-based framework.

182. We do not need more philanthropy and patriarchy; we need more emphasis
on human rights.

183. Clarifying the responsibility of the different levels of government is
at the center of the dialogue between claim holders and duty bearers.

184. In human rights work, we cannot wait for political will --we need to
generate it!

185. When we stand naked before the unvarnished mirror of truth, what we see
is what we really are. Often what we are is what we civilize ourselves to
disguise (or what we choose not to be outspoken about).

186. International NGOs demand more funds from donors but, with those funds,
they often do not address crucial problems such as those related to
deplorable local human rights situations.

187. The purpose of freedom from want is to create it for others.

188. We hear endless appeals-to and laments-about the lack of political will
to address human rights issues. An active engagement by civil society means
we no longer have a need to resort to the concept of political will!

189. In human rights work, when you deal with symptoms you generate
sympathy, when you deal with causes you create social change.

190. Corporate social responsibility does not revolve around human rights
concerns or charitable intentions; it revolves around business interests.

191. Corporations need clear, binding human rights rules.

192. Human rights: while small success stories are certainly possible,
needed global reforms are being hampered.

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.

194. Keep in mind: in human rights work we are in a struggle not only for
accountability, but also against impunity.

195+196. The human right to health care process revisited.

197. The human right to health and to adequate nutrition in a structurally
unequal society.

198. To define yourself as a human rights activist means initially going
against the current.

199. Human rights violations are not only ‘social regrettables’.

200. A human rights-based poverty line is possible:  It is one that points
to the income level at which human rights are fulfilled in practice in every
particular context.

201. The human rights-based framework is here to put right avoidable wrongs
worldwide.

202. In the spirit of the Paris Declaration on Development and Cooperation
the improvement of foreign aid is not seen purely as a technical matter of
better harmonization, but as a political quest to more decisively focus
development on human rights.

203. Something has gone terribly wrong with the promotion of democracy: Our
elected leaders are far from treating (and not only looking at) poverty as
the most important underlying condition of human rights violations.

204. The preamble of WHO’s constitution unequivocally states that the
enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the
fundamental rights of every human being: is WHO living up to its mandate?

205+206. Health sector reform measures: have they worked?... And where do we
go from here?

207, 208+209. Health care as a right: what you need to know.

210+211. Human rights are part of a never-ending human struggle to improve
people’s lives and to prevent reoccurrences of past abuse.



*All these Readers can be found in the same numerical order in
www.humaninfo.org/aviva  under No.69 in the table of contents.*

**

**
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://phm.phmovement.org/pipermail/phm-exchange-phmovement.org/attachments/20090413/e14d927a/attachment-0001.html>