PHM-Exch> Food for a non-rhetorical thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 219



*DEVELOPMENT POLICY (..AND HUMAN RIGHTS WORK) IS NOT ABOUT (ETHICALLY
MOTIVATED) ALMS FOR THE POOR.* (H. Wieczorek-Zeul)

Development has become hostage to finance. Finance has to serve development and
not, as it is presently, the other way around. (Y. Tandon)



1. Under neoliberalism, the prevailing development paradigm has, in good
part, deplorably led to exacerbated social-fault-lines between capital and
labor, between town and country, between the religious and the secular, as
well as to overplaying ethnic backgrounds. I simply refuse to be depressed
about this; there ARE growing hopes we will break the barriers of this
ruling paradigm.



2. Conciliatory apologetic speeches abound proposing amendments to this
ruling discourse. But do these speeches point in the direction of really
needed fundamental changes?  *[No].*  And if yes, what do such changes
propose? Anything in the realm of human rights (HR)? *[No].* I must say that
I do not find the analysis in most of these speeches very profound.



3. To argue that we must put an ethical dimension into markets seems
pathetically insufficient --if not coming 200 years too late.  First,
markets work on the basis of profit, not ethics, so just how on earth are we
to introduce morality into the world financial system?  Second, it is all
fine and good to say that the rich and their governments should behave in a
moral way, but just how do we make that happen?



4. On the other hand, if some of these pronouncements honestly mean real
change, do they offer HR activists possibilities of joint action and
alliances?  *[Probably not].* Would such alliances be promising? *[From a HR
perspective, most probably not].* Would they simply (re)produce the
proclamations of yesteryear? *[Probably yes].* Do they have the potential to
lead to meaningful progress in HR? *[I am pessimistic].* These
pronouncements would, most probably, just represent a change in rhetoric.



5. So, have we come to a point where enough-is-enough?  I think we are all
for a translation of rhetoric into practice. (M. Anderson)  So, (what we can
call) the Anglo-saxon paradigm of the-freest-possible-market is simply
neither a win-win model of economic policy…nor a model fit to reverse HR
violations.



6. What this means, is that the business logic cannot be applied to
development cooperation and to HR work.  In HR work, whether some measures
work or not fundamentally depends on embracing the HR framework, something
the ruling paradigm does not do beyond lip service. Simply put, there is a
fundamental failure on the part of too many political leaders with the power
to influence events in development work to see HR violations as a grave
problem that undermines often at-first-sight-well-intentioned development
efforts.



7. If the ‘engineering approach to development’ (that often makes elegant
analyses, but on the wrong questions or premises) is devoid of the political
focus this Reader calls for, this basically reinforces the abundant evidence
we have that indicates that those who have the resources do not really care
enough about those who have the problems, i.e., those who are sick,
underfed, underpaid, discriminated against and, in short, overlooked. We
thus now have to alter our emphasis from political commitment to legal
obligation. (P. Hunt)



8. ‘Boutique interventions’ imported from the rich countries tend to mask
the real disconnect between those that have the power and those who have the
problem. Let us not fool ourselves in a way that conceals the real
challenges that need to be addressed: If we do not look at this disconnect
in a straightforward and honest way, we are not dealing with the realities
that need to be addressed, i.e., we must begin to focus on the intervening
social forces, their economics and their politics --and then find ways to
replace those structures that endlessly reproduce HR violations such as
poverty, preventable ill-health, preventable malnutrition and preventable
deaths. (G. Kent)



9. Through HR learning and through the social mobilization of claim holders
we thus need to organize local and national advocacy coalitions that provoke
changes in the awareness of leaders and, through the mobilization of claim
holders, sternly remind policy-makers of their HR obligations --thus
de-facto linking HR to national development. (T. Benson)



10. History is a political battleground; its writing has always been a
political tool trying to legitimize the views and rights of those in power
(strictly speaking, the past is thus not as clear cut as we are made to
believe… ‘orthodox history’ is a contradiction in itself). So, if the past
is open for reinterpretation, so is the present. Because life is lived
forwards, but understood looking backwards, I contend that what we learn
from critically analyzing a distorted history must make us activists in the
present --but activists departing from a new HR perspective that puts the
analysis of power relations at  the center --a position diametrically
opposed to ‘alms for the people who happen to be poor’.



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 Five Germanys I have known, F. Stern, Farrar, Strauss
and Giroux, New York, 2006, D+C Vol. 35, No.2, Feb 2008,  SCN News, No.36,
Geneva, mid-2008, D+C, Vol.35, No.11, Nov 2008, and  D+C No.1, Jan 2009.
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