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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Human Rights Reader 181</font></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal">IN THE DEVELOPMENT DEBATE, THE PERCEPTION OF POOR PEOPLE AS PEOPLE IN NEED RATHER THAN AS PEOPLE WITH LEGITIMATE RIGHTS PUTS THEM TOTALLY OUT OF STEP WITH THE RIGHTS-BASED FRAMEWORK.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 2.5in"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Together with Dennis Kucinich, </font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 2.5in"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">the </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">US</span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"> presidential candidate, </span>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 2.5in"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">we see poverty as a weapon of mass destruction.</font></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">1. Is poverty reduction per-se an independent, stand-alone goal in the human rights-based framework? The answer to this question is a resounding no! Consider, for instance, that poverty is going down in much of
</span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">Asia</span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt">, but inequality is on the rise... </span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"></span></font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman"><span><font size="2">2. Poverty reduction actions must thus also importantly invest* in 'organizational capital' so that the latter can be used as a spring board to forcefully demand the respect of all human rights (HR). Poverty reduction and the promotion of HR are not the same, but
<u>two mutually reinforcing principles.</u></font></span></font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><font face="Times New Roman"><font size="1">*: Essential in this investment is to train and deploy voluntary extension cadres who can and do address the wide range of social and political constraints that poor people struggle with --including HR violations and general legal matters.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">3. Ultimately, at the global level, poverty reduction will depend on the replicability of many small successful structural and institutional changes made in many small places. Small is OK.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">[But you have surely noticed that donors (and some NGOs) get stuck in the pilot phase of too many a 'successful' (though selective) development project; these, more often than not, do not set up scalable changes of the type needed and do not really give the poor access to the tools and opportunities they need to work their own way out of poverty and out of the human rights violations they are subjected to structurally; the structural causes of poverty can simply no longer be considered as givens-about-which-we-can-do-little when scaling-up or replicating successful local interventions].
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">4. One of the biggest challenges we face in HR work is that policy makers are generally unfamiliar with (or flatly write-off) the approach to poverty reduction that, at the same time, is geared at alleviating HR violations; sector-specific-thinking predominates and integrated-socio-political-approaches are regarded with distrust.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">5. The policy makers position towards HR is influenced by their political, social and economic interests --which leads them to misuse their political power in a way that they use public-resources-under-their-control to pursue their own priorities. Once chosen, the latter development priorities often become part of the established pattern of violations of HR.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">[No wonder people are rightly beginning to perceive sector-specific policies, as well as laws and the judiciary in general, in good part, as instruments of power politics].
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">6. Policy makers are surely faced with many options with respect to choosing development strategies; many of them move these policies closer to their personal-and-class-objectives so that the actions that go with them have a better chance of being selected.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Consider, for instance:</font></span></p>
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<span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">On average, the poor receive a less-than-proportionate share of social spending benefits,
e.g., outlays are higher on higher education and on hospitals than on primary education and primary health care.</font></span></p>
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<span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">More often than not, social spending in poor countries benefits those at the middle of the income ladder more than those at the bottom. As a result, social spending has had a limited effect in reducing poverty and in shrinking the large gap between rich and poor.
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<span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Poorer regions and rural areas keep falling further behind and ethnic minorities are not participating in economic growth.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></span>[Actually, more than ¾ of the global inequality in living standards is due
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">7. So, since the HR-based approach requires cross-subsidies (or redistributions) of various types, mostly from richer groups to poorer groups, the political dynamics and the broader social and political influences that affect these policy makers are determining in the choice of strategies they make --and this, without active claim-holder demands, is holding back the chances of any real progress being made in the HR front.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">8. If anything is to change, it is thus a must for claim holders to change this political dynamics by exerting social and political pressure on policy makers for the strategies to be selected to unequivocally move towards addressing poverty
<u>and</u> the HR violations that go with it. </font></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">9. Ergo, restructuring social spending --most of which, as we said, bypasses the poor-- will be a key political challenge. This is really one of the big challenges for HR activists who should avoid the problem of the drunk who lost his keys and searched only around the lamppost, because that's where the light is.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman">[If we continue to-round-up-the-usual-suspects we indeed won't make much progress. We need to look outside our comfort zones].</font></p>
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">10. Even if a good part of the HR problems are at the local level, HR activists must also help prepare the communities they work-with to push governments to come-up with solutions to the problems of national wealth distribution and decentralized social services delivery by:
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<span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">strengthening social cohesion so that societies stay strong and mobilized as their economies grow, and
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<span style="mso-list: Ignore">·<span style="FONT: 7pt 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span></span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">keeping the government on its toes so that it reinvests the economic-returns-that-accompany-growth-and-debt-reduction in alleviating poverty and in respecting, protecting and fulfilling HR.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">All these are every bit as much the obligation of HR activists as is their role as trainers and consciousness raisers.
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span lang="IT" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; mso-ansi-language: IT"><font face="Times New Roman">Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City</font></span></p>
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<span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><a href="mailto:cschuftan@phmovement.org"><font face="Times New Roman">cschuftan@phmovement.org</font></a><font face="Times New Roman"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span></font></span></p>
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<font face="Times New Roman"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 8pt">[All Readers can be found in </span><span lang="IT" style="FONT-SIZE: 8pt; mso-ansi-language: IT"><a href="http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US">
www.humaninfo.org/aviva</span></a></span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 8pt"> under No.69]</span><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"></span></font></p></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Mostly adapted from D+C, 33:12, December 2006, D+C, 34:4, April, 2007, D+C, 34:6, June 2007, F+D, 44:1, March 2007, and F+D, 44:2, June 2007.
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