PHM-Exch> Food for a thought on the excluded

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 216



*SICK, UNDERFED, UNDERPAID, DISCRIMINATED AND OVERLOOKED, THE EXCLUDED ARE
AT THE CENTER OF HUMAN RIGHTS WORK.*

                                                  Human rights work is about
first greatly

                                                  reducing --and then
putting an end--

                                                  to the dynamics of
exclusion.



1. In human rights work, we see exclusion as no longer being the problem
only of particular segregated groups, but as a man-made mechanism that in
many varied ways negatively affects the entire population living below the
poverty line. This, since large sections of this population --some more some
less-- are constantly being put at a disadvantage by both formal and
informal processes. For example, the media do not report their views, and
their organizations do not really have voice in the everyday polity. In
short, in most of our societies, social interactions are organized in a way
that --*not* by a ‘regrettable oversight’-- prevents marginalized people’s
true participation:  We thus have to forcefully fight the ‘misfortune’
attitude we too often see towards HR violations. (A. Shukla)

Existing programs are simply not targeting specific groups to fight poverty
using the ultimate bottom-line process, i.e.,  one that includes real income
*transfers* and the reversion of multiple human rights (HR) violations.*

*: Mind you, many existing transfer programs do attempt to boost incomes,
but HR violations and the forces perpetuating exclusion stay in place: We
thus have to become intolerant of exclusion. (L. Ramalho)



2. Social cohesion (and the fulfillment of HR) can only be achieved if
governments pursue policies which promote social inclusion, and if they do
so, it must be with broad popular support. Such support has to become
evident through across-the-board increases in the trust in public
institutions and services, in a growing mutual sense of belonging in society
and in the rapid acceptance of HR-based social norms.



3. In this context, it is *not* policy makers who have to give disadvantaged
and excluded groups influence: the latter have to empower themselves and
take their fate into their own hands by staging collective actions and
placing concrete demands. Ergo, importantly, HR work is about providing
access to new avenues of change, to needed political involvement and to
politically effective self-organization.



          4. Incidentally, in HR work, we actually prefer to speak
about *people-that-happen-to-be
poor* to emphasize the fact that it is
ongoing-social-and-political-processes that create and perpetuate poverty…
as a very central HR violation.



5. We have to always keep in mind two things: a) that
people-that-happen-to-be-poor live in a harsh reality and not in the reality
we place them in (…and, further, what we too often see are “rich men’s
prescriptions” for the poor), and b) that there is no such an explicit thing
as a right-to-complain-about-being-poor. (P. Alston)



6. Furthermore, among us-the-richer, ‘liberals’ stand for *giving
opportunities* to achieve potential greater equity**. ‘Socialists’, on the
other hand, stand for *achieving outcomes and results* to achieve greater
equity.  HR work is *more about the second***. **(U. Jonsson)***

**: For them, 'equitable distribution of wealth' accepts and defends the
fact that some are much richer than others, somehow because 'they are worth
it and/or deserve it'. (U. Jonsson)

***: For us, 'equity' is an ethical concept, based on what is called the
'principle of distributive justice'. We therefore are more for achieving
outcomes and results.



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]

_______________
Partly adapted from D+C, Vol.35, No.4, April 2008, Five Germanys I have
known, F. Stern, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, New York, 2006, and SCN News,
No.36, Geneva, mid-2008.
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