PHM-Exch> Food for the ultimate thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 224

* *

*THE DILEMMA IN HUMAN RIGHTS WORK: WHEN ARE SERVICE DELIVERY, CAPACITY
BUILDING, ADVOCACY AND SOCIAL MOBILIZATION REALLY EMPOWERING?*

*                                                                        *

Disclaimer:

i) The empowerment of some entails the dis-empowerment of others --usually
the current holders of power.

ii) Empowering people can well trigger repressive actions by these current
holders of power.

* *

Empowerment is a continuous process; it provides people with choices and the
ability to choose; it expands the 'political-manouvering-space' in and of a
community.

* *

1. *In the delivery of services, empowering means, or is, or are actions
that tend towards:*

·      Making sure the provision of services is gender-sensitive and
culture-sensitive.

·      Using existing local human resources.

·      De-facto incorporating community representatives in the decision-
making process about the services to be or already being delivered.

·      Basing the training of staff importantly on the Human Rights
Framework; making training competence-based and in-service, and aiming it at
behavioral change, as well as always following training up with regular
support supervision.

·      Making sure beneficiaries cease to be passive recipients of services
and demand responsibility for themselves; for this, they need to get trained
in human rights (HR) and to take an active role in both the decision-making
process and in the delivery mechanisms (including management issues).

* *

2. *In capacity building, empowering means, or is, or are actions that tend
towards:*

·      Through the use of the HR Framework, enabling individuals/communities
to continuously upgrade their ability to analyze and understand their
situation, i.e., people themselves collecting, interpreting and using
information for action.

·      Also sharing with them the Conceptual Framework of the causes of
their problems that categorizes these causes by level, i.e., immediate,
underlying and basic/structural causes.

·      Exposing people to relevant information, especially about the UN HR
covenants that guarantee their rights, about international HR law and about
the real causes behind their problems.  (Includes warning people about the
'misinformation' they are exposed-to so as to replace it).

·      Raising people's social and political consciousness so that their
claims are legitimized.

·      Changing people's perception of their potential to forge a new
reality where HR become a way of life.

·      Increasing people's awareness of what in the prevailing social system
is ‘unfair’ to them.

·      Building growing networks and constituencies for the spread of
people's rights-based strategies.

·      Emphasizing the provision of practical skills that lead to community
ownership of the interventions undertaken.

·      Giving high priority to overall literacy and to HR literacy,
especially for women and girls.

·      Boosting women's negotiation capabilities and thus their
self-confidence.

·      Raising consciousness about the natural environment (i.e., “the rights
of nature or Earth Rights”).

·      Emphasizing the training of local leaders; teaching  them to carry
out HR impact assessments and social and political mappings that point to
the current power structure in the control of resources; teaching them to
carry out decision audits (about who currently makes what decisions). [For
example, they need to find out who decides what training is given to
community animators/’validators’ that are supposed to  act as our local
strategic allies to introduce the HR Framework in the community].

·      Giving people a better income capacity by creating new  employment
opportunities and democratizing access to credit, as well as setting up
income generation activities for women.

·      Providing people with access to available support systems including
the capacity to seek redress when denouncing HR violations to appropriate
and relevant existing bodies.

·      Building the ‘mental preparedness’ for social mobilization, i.e.,
preparing people to press-on with needed claiming, needed advocacy and
effective lobbying.

* *

3. *In advocacy, empowering means, or is, or are actions that tend towards:*

·      Using the appropriate persuading methods when dealing with
duty-bearers at different levels.

·      Increasing people's de-facto claims to demand access to quality
services.

·      Emphasizing work on measures to eradicate poverty. (what we are
really talking about here is ‘*disparity reduction* measures').

·      Going all-out to demand more economic justice and making every effort
to decrease the skewedness in the distribution of income and wealth.

·      Advancing actions that decrease the workload of women and give them
options for birth spacing.

·      Promoting the shifting of the explicit control of resources more to
women.

·      Promoting a more local control of resources.

·      Addressing minority equity issues, including those of migrants.

·      Demanding active people's participation in informed decision-making.

·      Raising people's consciousness about what their HR are and
translating them into specific claims.

* *

4. *In social mobilization, empowering means, or is, or are actions that
tend towards:*

·      Going from people's felt needs to concrete demands and from these to
making specific claims so they can actively struggle for their rights (i.e.,
mobilizing their social power).

·      Mobilizing people's own resources as needed.

·      Organizing people to effectively use and progressively control
external resources.

·      Networking with others to achieve a critical mass of concerned people
(locally and externally) and, in the process, building coalitions.

·      Collectively identifying the problems at hand, placing them in the
Conceptual Framework of Causality, and searching for the best solutions for
implementation at the three (immediate, underlying and basic) levels.
[Acting at one level or at one main cause only may be considered necessary,
but is NOT sufficient].

·      Giving people power over decisions thus increasing their self-esteem
and self-confidence.

·      Increasing local democracy, with people (especially women)
participating more actively and vocally in local government.

·      Decentralizing decision-making, including shifting control of
finances to the local sphere, i.e., a genuine devolution of power.

* *

5. Here, then, you have a non-exhaustive list of the challenges you face
when  you, sometimes lightly, speak about empowering the people and groups
you work with. You can use it as a preliminary checklist…



Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chhi Minh City

cschuftan at phmovement.org
[The full set of Human Rights Readers can be found in
www.humaninfo.org/aviva under No. 69].
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