PHM-Exch> Food for matters outside our thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 214



*ACTIVISTS’ ACTIONS ARE NORMALLY MORE ENDURING WHEN DRIVEN NOT ONLY BY
SELFLESS INTEREST, BUT ALSO BY A CERTAIN SENSE OF SELF-INTEREST.* (A.R.
Ghatak)



Most of us are passionate about what we do. But the truth is that a good
part of what we do does not matter to what we are passionate about...and
matters little to those we are passionately working for or with.

Activism is about taking direct action to achieve an end….a social and
political end in our case.



1. At the highest level, the debate on our role as activists has to be
centered around the premise-that-interests-us-most, namely, the explicit
acceptance that dignity has to be a human right (HR) available to all human
beings. Period. (J. Saramago)



2. Keeping this in mind, we need to be keenly aware that palliative
solutions are ultimately more costly than more radical action. (Rudolf
Virchow)  [As a rule, actions towards the realization of HR that try to
please every-one while displeasing no-one my lead to rather ineffective
results. (A. Shukla)].



3. To ‘matter’ more, we thus actually need to slot-in more quality time to
engage in reversing the current ‘invisibility’ of the HR paradigm at the
grassroots level; this is the absolute prerequisite of human rights learning
*. Many say that such an engagement requires each of us to amass sufficient
creative anger so that we de-intellectualize the HR discourse and politicize
its praxis: not a bit, but quite a lot, I daresay.

Our appropriation *and* our teaching of the HR discourse are thus intimately
*linked and should be inseparable tasks.*

*: Note that we here insist on HR *learning*; education needs no personal
commitment; learning does. (J. and S. Koenig). Setting up such HR learning
in a meaningful way thus involves translating HR information into a language
that is understood by different groups, different sectors and country
leaders (duty bearers) without losing the essence of the HR message that is
being conveyed. (FAO)



4. As this Reader has argued before, what this means is that, in these
times, being only a passive observer is unacceptable. Or put another way,
conformism is a senseless form of life. You simply have to give your
dissatisfactions a channel of expression --and the HR framework is an
exciting universal channel to do so.



5. Among other, we are also supposed to monitor the duties to respect,
protect and fulfill HR using appropriately disaggregated data and suggested
benchmarks --of which we have more than enough if we look for them in the
literature: Google them. But the question is: Is this ‘desk monitoring’
worth much without social mobilization?  Without our active involvement in
the latter, as monitors, we risk becoming mere
chroniclers-of-human-rights-violations…



6. We cannot, therefore,  passively ‘wait-for’ in the expectation that the
State will ‘soon’ enforce HR. So, where does that put us?  Squarely back
into promoting an informed social mobilization --ergo propagating HR
learning a thousandfold.



7. Dr V. Chokevivat of the MOH in Thailand speaks of “*the triangle that
moves the mountain*” as diagrammed herebelow:



                      Political commitment







        Knowledge                         social support

       of the evidence

    (about which we should

      feel passionately)



8. To move the mountain, he is of the opinion we do not do enough in all
three corners, and gives as examples the following:

·      we do not meet enough with union and congress members (both those pro
and con our HR cause),

·      we do not establish an ongoing dialogue with them (we ought to be
soft spoken yet firm in this dialogue, he adds),

·      we do not call press conferences with the results we achieve in our
dialogue with these and other important duty bearers,

·      we should be more proactive, e.g., publish letters to the editor,
send open letters and/or prepare a white paper highlighting key contentious
issues.



9. He reminds us there is a difference between denouncing HR violations or
being anti-HR-violators (i.e., when violators are accused and exposed as the
enemies) and promoting the principle of no-HR-violations (where violators
can be brought in as allies).



10. So,  this Reader thinks you cannot continue keeping a distance on these
issues; you have to engage. (…and this is not what some belated socialist
may be demanding --it is the stand of all those who care about dignity being
a HR available to individuals in all social groups).



11. It is thus morally wrong to just have a ‘bias-pointing-towards-hope’
without contributing your grain of salt to make hope a reality.



Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan at phmovement.org

[All Readers can be found in
www.humaninfo.org/aviva<http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva%20%20under%20No.%2069>
under No. 69]  Note that the website was updated in March 2009

_____________________
Partly taken from J. Saramago, Las Intermitencias de la Muerte, Alfaguara,
Santillana Ediciones, Buenos Aires, December 2005 and  Five Germanys I have
known, F. Stern, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2006.
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