PHM-Exch> Food for a non-absolving thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

 Human Rights Reader 220





*A VISION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS WITHOUT A WIDELY SHARED ACTION PLAN LEADS
NOWHERE. *



It is not incumbent upon you to finish the task, but neither are you free to
absolve yourself from it. Abraham Lincoln said: The probability that we may
fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we
believe to be just. (cited by M. Marmot)



Two things are indispensable here:

* *

*A. Leadership*

1. Effective human rights (HR) action has a particular set of preconditions.


Coming from different organizations, contributors to this action need to
explicitly identify their common interests, agree on a specific set of core
actions and agree to invest the needed quality time and a modicum of their
own resources (human, material, financial and organizational). These three
conditions do not arise spontaneously; they are made to happen only with
effective leadership --a leadership that can ultimately ‘flip the script’ to
consolidate concerted and ever-expanding HR work.

* *

2. Leaders may well be born with certain personality traits, but they can
develop a range of additional skills to become more effective. A leadership
team will be more effective if it draws upon the range of strengths from the
different leaders. Leaders in HR work have to function efficiently across
different domains: As committed advocates they need to fight for equity and
justice using leadership in all its forms including personal leadership *and
* team leadership --and do so at several levels (institutional,
community,  professional).




3. Their challenge is to find and project a common voice that can ultimately
exert influence. This, departing from what impacts people in their every day
lives so as to get them willingly organized and mobilized for the HR cause.
(Solutions have to engage people that are to be represented, i.e., promoting
a “let’s do it together” attitude).



4. To break a misunderstanding here, let us say that being soft-spoken (but
firm) in this endeavor *can* be powerful.



*B. Networking*

* *

Networking is based on a communion of responsibilities and interests between
individuals and groups connected by the ideal of justice, human rights and a
notion of cooperation.



When it comes to complex systemic challenges, any single organization is
normally too small to have a meaningful impact. (O. Schrammer)



* *

Other than clear and committed leadership, HR work further requires active
efforts to network:



5. For HR networks to work and to be enduring, key traits to pursue are:



i) Clear *governance **agreements* (setting objectives, identifying
functions, defining membership structures, and setting decision-making norms
and conflict resolution procedures).

ii) Since the *larger the numbers *involved in the network the greater its
political clout, *representativeness *is key and the ultimate source of
legitimacy and, therefore, of influence.

iii) The* quality of the HR evidence used *affects both credibility and
legitimacy.

iv) Intelligently *packaging of the HR evidence *is crucial for effective
communication.

v) *Sustainability and staying power, *especially during adversity, is vital
since persistence over a period of time is required to influence HR-relevant
policy.

vi) *Key individuals *in the network can boost policy influence. [But
beware, network players within can dominate in proportion to their economic
strength (or Anglosaxon and male base…)].

vii) *Informal links *can be as critical as formal ones in achieving network
objectives.

viii) *Complementing existing HR advocacy structures *rather than
duplicating them makes networks more effective.

ix) *Information communication technologies *have been recognized as one of
the main drivers of the expansion of networks, facilitating cross-border
communications and enabling convergent links with other ‘sister’ networks
(social, economic, political, women’s, environmental). (Perkin and Court,
2005)



6. Moreover:

x) Staff continuity is key.

xi) Networks embarking in mostly ‘anti’ causes are no good; they must also
‘stand for’ something --and something concrete, perhaps in the form of an
explicit shared platform with explicit benchmarks to monitor and  achieve
over time.

xii) Institutional inertia or constraints of network members are an
important blockage  …they need to be reversed/removed, the sooner the
better.

xiii) Delayed or absence of needed decision-making plays into the hands of
formal or informal opposing forces. (D. Woodward)



7. Finally, HR networks have, as one of their primary goals, to proactively
(or better pre-emptively) counter the prevailing negative attitude towards
HR that is justified by HR opponents by asserting that international HR
networks pursue a-bunch-of-moral-principles-that-are-not-legally-binding and
thus not a legal obligation. (CETIM)



8. To close, it is fitting to paraphrase Vicente Navarro when he says:  What
has been happening in the world in the last 30 years is the forging of an
alliance among the dominant classes in the rich and the poor countries, an
alliance that has promoted neoliberal policies that go against the interests
of the dominated classes of both the North and the South. There is thus an
urgent need to develop similar alliances among the dominated classes of the
North and the South. As HR workers, we simply have to facilitate the
development of such alliances. (IJHS, 39:3, 2009).



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]
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