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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times>Human
Rights Reader 53 <o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<H1 style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal"><FONT
face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=3>[I have the satisfaction to report that the
new book by Paul Farmer (PATHOLOGIES OF POWER: Health, Human Rights, and the New
War on the Poor, with a foreword by Amartya Sen, University of California Press,
Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2003) sees human rights along the same lines this
Reader has been doing for almost two years. Dr Farmer’s human rights “iron laws”
can be paraphrased as follows (parentheses
added):]<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></H1>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=VNI-Times> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>HUMAN
RIGHTS ARE UNIVERSAL, BUT THE RISK OF HAVING ONE’S RIGHTS VIOLATED IS
NOT.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=VNI-Times> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>Rats
and roaches live by competition </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>under
the law of supply and demand;</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>it is
the privilege of human beings </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>to
live under the laws of justice and (rights).</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times>Wendell
Berry.<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>1.
Utopian ideals are the bedrock of human rights. Human rights are the birthright
of everyone: no one has the right to deny them, and everyone has the right to
fight for her or his own rights.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>2.
Human rights are respected when everyone has food, shelter, education and health
care (--and the poor effectively claim these rights). </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>3.
Most victims of ‘structural violence’ do have rights…on paper. (Voting in
elections is a very weak and almost symbolic act of people exercising their
rights as claim holders). The right to vote has not protected the poor from
dying (preventable) premature deaths. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>4.
The right to survive is being trampled-on in an age of great affluence. Human
rights violations are not<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>accidents; they are not random in distribution or effect; they are
symptoms of deeper ‘pathologies of power’ and are linked to social conditions
that determine who will suffer abuse and who will be spared.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>5. In
each local context, it is thus the social forces at work that structure the risk
of most forms of human rights violations.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>6.
Far too many human rights violations are committed in the name of protecting and
promoting some variant of the free market ideology. Because of that, the weekly
harvest of human rights violations undermines the best of optimisms.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>7. It
is astonishing how ideology is used to conceal or even justify assaults on human
dignity…and such assaults are not haphazard.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>8.
Human rights violations somehow fail to draw on our deeper understanding of the
social (economic and political) determinants of the wide variety of ills (and
abuses) we see --this lending them a random appearance when, in fact, they are a
highly predictable set of outcomes.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>9. So
far, human rights scholarship has largely been more the province of lawyers and
judicial experts than of academics; (mostly) legal documents and legal
scholarship have dominated the human rights literature. But it is difficult to
find a (positive) correlation (between the) steep rise in the publication of
human rights documents and a statistically significant drop in the number of
human rights abuses.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3></FONT></SPAN> </P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>10.
It is the present social and economic structures that foist injustice and
exploit people; so the question is: since laws designed to protect human rights
are not neutral at all, what additional measures have to be taken?</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>11.
The struggle to impose a human rights (development) paradigm is one measure;
searching for the mechanisms and conditions that generate human rights
violations is another. (But these are not the only ones).</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>12.
The task at hand is to identify the forces (and individuals responsible for each
major) human rights violation (--and these are weighed differently in each local
setting). In this context, analysis means bringing out the truth, no matter how
embarrassing. Merely telling the truth often calls for extensive research.
Telling who did what to whom and where and when indeed becomes a complicated
affair.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>13.
In the past, the human rights community has defined its mission narrowly; some
issues are (selectively) ignored; the gaze, for example, is too often diverted
from structural violence; (outside observers) look away from its (root causes
and) effects, avoiding to look at power issues to understand human rights
abuses. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>14.
(But the plain truth is that) no honest assessment of the current state of human
rights can omit an analysis of (the root causes of) structural
violence.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>15.
Human rights abuses are best understood from the point of view of the poor. It
is mostly them who are the victims and they have too little voice, let alone
rights.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>16.
The poor are not only more likely to suffer; they are also less likely to have
their suffering noticed. The more there are suffering human beings, the more
neutral their suffering appears. A wall between the rich and the poor avoids the
poor ‘annoying’ the rich; they die in the silence of history. (Pablo
Richard)</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>17.
Only through a careful analysis of the growing international inequalities will
we understand the processes that structure social and economic rights locally.
Human rights are, (first and) fundamentally, transnational in nature.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>18.
To explain human rights, one has to embed them in the larger context of culture,
history and the prevailing political economy. We must not fail to study human
rights abuses; but we cannot study them out of context. We thus have to move
beyond good (proximal or outcome) analysis. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>19.
We (simply) cannot avoid (participatorily) examining the political economy of
the human rights violations we investigate. (This is easier said than done,
because) the institutions we work-in put sharp limits on (any type of)
activism.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>20.
Invoking ‘cultural differences’ is one of several ways to explain away assaults
on dignity and on human rights. As may be expedient, oppressive practices are
said to be part of ‘the local culture’.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>These are analytic vices we have to combat.<SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Culture only has a very limited role in
explaining the distribution of human rights violations. Culture per-se does not
explain human rights violations --it may, at worst, furnish an alibi.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>21.
So, we need to ground our understanding of human rights violations in the
broader analyses of power and social inequality. Human rights violations are, as
said, the result of pathologies of power.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>22.
Injustice (in the world) goes too deep to be responsive to palliatives. Hence we
speak of liberation, not of development, not of modernization. In that sense,
many quests for rights by the poor have been quests for power sharing, for
social-justice-for-all.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>23.
The human rights arguments are most powerful if we really believe that all human
beings are equally valuable. Once we believe this, we are less likely to accept
second-rate interventions. (But we all know that) social inequalities have
always been used to deny some people a ‘fully human’ status.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>24.
In health, we cannot simply worry about poor or lack of access to health care;
we have to link that to social and economic rights in general. This, because, as
health workers, our work takes place at an intersection of medicine, social
theory, philosophy and political analysis. For too long, health has been only
peripherally involved in work in human rights.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>25.
Medicine and public health benefit from an extraordinary universally accepted
‘symbolic capital’ that is, so far, sadly underutilized in human rights work
(and is largely untapped). (In a way, this is paradoxical since) health offers a
critical dimension to the human rights perspective; (the hurdle to be overcome
is, therefore, an ideological one). </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>26.
The concept of human rights may at times (seem to) be used as an all-purpose
tonic (--it just isn’t). Originally, it was developed to protect the vulnerable,
those most likely to have their rights violated, i.e., the poor and otherwise
disempowered. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>27.
(So, to pretend that the vulnerable are being protected,) human rights has
become mainstreamed into the foreign policy rhetoric of most Western liberal
states. But human rights is not just an additional item in the priority policies
of states.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times><FONT
size=3> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times
size=3>28.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Just passing more human
rights legislation is not a sufficient response either, because those in charge
already disregard many of the existing, but non-binding instruments. Laws alone
--without enforcement mechanisms (triggered and controlled by the people)-- are
not up to the task of relieving the immense suffering already at
hand.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=VNI-Times>29. States honor human rights laws largely in the breach
--sometimes intentionally and sometimes through sheer impotence. The chief irony
of human rights work --i.e., that states will not or cannot obey the treaties
they sign (of free will) -- can either lead to despair or to cynicism.
(Ultimately), laws are normative ideology and are thus tightly tied to the
prevailing power relations. Under </FONT><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'">neoliberalism, policies erode the right
to freedom from want. The other irony of human rights laws, therefore, is that
they consists largely of appeals to the
perpetrators…<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'"><FONT size=3>30. (Under such
circumstances, states (are not) able to help their citizens attain
(internationally recognized) social and economic rights --even though they do
often retain their ability to violate human rights. </FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=VNI-Times> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>(A
couple notes of caution): </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>31.
In human rights work, moral relativism is not acceptable. (There are no
half-rights).</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>The
diffusion of the human rights culture can thus be perceived as a form of moral
progress. (Michel Ignatieff)</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=VNI-Times>32. We too can be implicated-in and benefit from the increasingly
global structure that is actually violating human rights. (If we stay in our
ivory towers), human rights can reduce us to seminar-room warriors. At worst, we
risk standing revealed as hypocrites. (Why?) Because, in human rights work,
research and critical assessment are insufficient. No more adequate is
denunciation. Knowing carries obligations.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>33.
To confront ongoing abuses is to be faced with a moral dilemma: do one’s actions
help the sufferers or do they not? </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>34.
So, to speak of inalienable rights and to wait decades to see them vindicated is
NOT what it is about.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=VNI-Times> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>(A
couple notes on action):</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>35.
(De-facto) engagement to relieve human rights violations IS relevant even if not
in possession of a tried and true remedy. </FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>36.
To work on behalf of the victims of human rights violations invariably means
becoming deeply involved in pressing for social and economic rights. This, since
the absence of social and economic power empties political rights of their
substance.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>37.
The fact that we have failed to enforce human rights does not imply that the
next step is to lower our sight; rather, the next step is to try a new
approach.</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT
face=VNI-Times> <o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times
size=3>38.(Our intellectual recognition of all the above) is only a necessary
first step towards pragmatic solidarity, that is, towards taking a stand by the
side of those who suffer most from an increasingly harsh and unfair new world
order. (But is this enough?)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">
</SPAN>(Perhaps) the world’s best hope is to elicit the (proactive solidarity)
of the oppressed for their (fellow) oppressed. (Bertolt Brecht)</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times
size=3>_______________________________</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><FONT face=VNI-Times
size=3>Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City</FONT></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><A
href="mailto:aviva@netnam.vn"><FONT face=VNI-Times
size=3>aviva@netnam.vn</FONT></A><FONT face=VNI-Times size=3>
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