PHM-Exch> Food for an oversold thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 282



*AS A HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST, EVERY DAY, I BELIEVE LESS IN FORMAL
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY.*


                                          -In human rights and in
development work, dreaming is OK, but
     being naïf is not.


*[Human rights and democracy go hand in hand like dignity goes hand in hand
with free speech. One cannot find instances where human rights (HR) are
respected in undemocratic societies; if these instances exist, we should
speak about privileges-given-from-the-top rather than
rights-acquired-by-social-struggle. This is why I devote this Reader to
democracy].*



Political pressures from the powerful and the abuse of public office affect
a government’s commitment to human rights. This is especially true in the
arbitrary world of autocracy (the antonym of democracy). In fact, if a
government thinks that people are the abstract and the laws it has
unilaterally passed the concrete, we find ourselves at a dead end.


  The more I think about it, our pathetic faith in *formal representative
(Western) democracy* has ended up in frustration and a sense of having been
cheated. We live under the illusion that ‘the social’ and ‘the moral’ *
eventually* *prevail* in such democracies. But neither are clearly
adhered-to priorities in existing formal representative democracies
--so, ‘*eventually
prevail’* is pure wishful thinking.


To access the full Reader, go to

http://wp.me/plAxa-1xY

Claudio
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