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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<H2 style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt 14.2pt"><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">MORE ON THE
POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS <o:p></o:p></SPAN></H2>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt 72pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<H4 style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt">Human Rights Reader 61</H4>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><B><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">PROJECTS DREAMED UP IN A
SOCIAL VACUUM MUST PLAY THEMSELVES OUT IN THE REAL WORLD OF INJUSTICE AND
CONFLICT. </SPAN></B><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">(Part 7 of
16)<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">64. The objective
consequences of many a development project may turn out to be different from
their original subjective intent.<B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">
</B>We<B style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal"> </B>need human rights (HR)
activists who are strong and elastic enough to ask the right questions rather
than sell the wrong answers. In this context, intervention strategies can,
therefore, be classified in three categories according to the principles that
govern them: <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">‘<U>comprehensive
strategies’</U> that are multidisciplinary in nature and call for multisectoral
cooperation --assuming that this meeting of minds sowed differently will solve
all problems; <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">‘<U>improvement
strategies’</U> that put-the-needed-spare-parts-to-the-system by assuming that
only some things can be changed now; and <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">‘<U>transformation
strategies’</U> that call for radical changes of the environment and/or the
social system. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">The bottom line is that only
those strategies that somehow (and at some point in time) include the latter
optic have any long-term potential.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">65. The problem with HR
activism is that, too often, we try to find reducible solutions to irreducible
problems. Technological fixes are the answer to reducible problems, but many
hoped they would solve the irreducible problems as well. Misjudgment of the kind
of problems and type of solutions needed actually compounds the
problem.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">66. Good young people
respond to the seduction of technology. “It’s more independent of experience and
you don’t have to know much”. But technology is not the origin of change; it
merely is the means whereby society changes itself. Technology comprises not
just tools and machines, but also skills and motivation. The wrong technologies
have for too long been destroying genuine community life and have thus led to
maldevelopment.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText2 style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">67. Technology dilutes and
dissolves ideology. Political revolutions always have motives --a W<U>hy</U>.
Great technological changes, on the other hand, do not have a <U>Why</U>.
Technology, unlike politics, is irreversible. We may be able to develop a new
strain of wheat and so cure starvation somewhere. But it may not be in our power
to cure injustice anywhere, even in our own country, much less in distant
places.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">68. The obvious question,
then, is: Why not changing our order of thinking rather than trying to reverse
hunger and malnutrition, for example, by the use of technology? Technology is
basically improvisational. It treats the symptoms; it provides no lasting cures.
Moreover, technology is part of the problem. New policies will thus require a
patient and possibly painful re-education of us all. A technocratic utopia is
the most banal of all utopias.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">69. Technical pragmatism by
men of good will can build national, regional and global strategies with no
political sensitivity, appealing to all reasonable men and capable of being
implemented. So, faith in technocratic warriors developing the world, remains
unshaken. This leads an outsider to see a picture of general harmony of
interests. It also leads to incoherences. We need to drop the fallacy of this
universal harmony of interests.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoBodyText2 style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">70. The real challenge in
our present world is not to maximize happiness (in practice interpreted as
maximizing economic growth, GNP, or the quantity of goods and gadgets), but to
organize our society to minimize suffering. Human happiness is undefinable;
human suffering is concrete; it manifests itself as hunger, sickness,
unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, ignorance and the whole host of other HR
violations.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"><SPAN
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">71. The power of new ideas
needs to be mobilized through the communications revolution which is upon us.
New forms of learning, education, awareness creation and ‘conscientization’ (P.
Freire) need to be pushed in this endeavor.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">72. Conflict is common where
there are competing interests. Therefore, avoiding it --as we often do-- is no
solution. Conflict is not necessarily violence. Conflict is a necessary means to
attain true dialogue with people in authority. The poor do not achieve this
until they have shown they are no longer servile and afraid. They need to move
from the culture of silence to a position of dignified
persons.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
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style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt">73. Success in HR work means
liberation. Any action that gives the people more control over their own affairs
is an action for HR, even if it does not offer them better health or more bread.
But this approach needs to be built from the bottom up. If this does not take
place, one has Social Darwinism: the ones who survive and whose rights are not
violated are the richest, the most powerful, the whitest and the
malest.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
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style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-RIGHT: 0cm; BORDER-TOP: medium none; PADDING-LEFT: 0cm; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0cm; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 0cm; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<H4
style="BORDER-RIGHT: medium none; PADDING-RIGHT: 0cm; BORDER-TOP: medium none; PADDING-LEFT: 0cm; PADDING-BOTTOM: 0cm; MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt; BORDER-LEFT: medium none; PADDING-TOP: 0cm; BORDER-BOTTOM: medium none; mso-border-bottom-alt: solid windowtext 1.5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0cm 0cm 1.0pt 0cm"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh
City<o:p></o:p></SPAN></H4></DIV><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt; FONT-FAMILY: 'Times New Roman'; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA"><A
href="mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn">claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn</A></SPAN></DIV></BODY></HTML>