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<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Human Rights Reader 198</font></span></p>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><b><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">TO DEFINE YOURSELF AS A HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST MEANS INITIALLY GOING AGAINST THE CURRENT. </font></span></b></div>
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<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 3in"><font face="Times New Roman">Right now, for the oppressed to "become" and to "be", they can use our help as activists. (M. Benedetti)</font></p>
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<div style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt 3in"><font face="Times New Roman"><b>We</b> are the ones we have been waiting for. (Health Care Now).</font></div>
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<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">1. The so many times eagerly accepted wisdom of time --the one that tells us that there will always be a tomorrow to solve<span> </span>the problems-or-dilemmas-that-today-seemed-to-have-no-solution is a fallacy. "Better to do nothing", say the optimistic philosophers, "problems of the future, the future will solve"… The bad thing is that the future is already today!<span> </span>[What actually characterizes true dilemmas is that their final resolution is not always the same. Outcomes will depend on what we do or do not do. Therefore, "we better do something"!].<span> </span>(J. Saramago)</font></span></p>
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<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">2. But beware! Depth of your own feeling about the need of adopting the human rights framework is not enough; passion alone may nurture bias of its own. As human rights activists, we need, first and foremost, to master the principles of this framework. For four years plus, this Reader has attempted to help activists do that.</font></span></p>
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<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">3. This begs the question: What have we been doing, not doing or doing wrong? As members of civil society, have we influenced decision makers to adopt the human rights-based framework? Have we reached out enough to <span> </span>communities to do the same?<span> </span>Whatever the answers, we cannot start our response with (yet more) excuses.</font></span></p>
<p><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">4. An often overlooked point in our striving to get where we want to get-to is that we do not make a clear distinction between <i>human rights education</i> and <i>human rights learning</i>. This is not to diminish human rights education, but to understand that reaching possibly 1% to 2% of the communities in the world will <u>not</u> bring to grass roots communities the holistic changes deemed needed. Unless we understand human rights as a powerful tool in the hands of people --everywhere in the world-- human rights will stay captive in the hands of experts, teachers, and professionals, but will not find its way to be relevant to people's daily lives --for, let's not forget, it is people's lives to which human rights are primarily directed to. </font></span></p>
<p><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">5. So what are the arguments about the difference between "education" and "learning"? The word "education" has been co-opted by those who determine what is to be taught to whom --not just schools, but any authority who has control over information. The purpose is usually to get people to believe-what and think-as the "education authorities" want them to. Learning has not yet been so co-opted. Learning can still be what happens to those who are presented with ideas, issues, values and queries about problems. It is through reflection and cycles of assessment, analysis, action and evaluation of actions taken that people come to understand and hold independent ideas about their societies and about the world. Education has become mainly inputs; if and when it has any authentic output it can be learning, but mainly education is about socialization-to-conformity-and-indoctrination. </font></span></p>
<p><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">6. Authentic learning happens in (and at the will of) the learner. Human Rights learning is more consistent with the fundamental purpose of human rights concepts and standards. It begins with giving the learners the right to decide by themselves what they will believe; it then develops means through which the learners can acquire information while forming their own opinions and determining their own course of action. </font></span></p>
<p><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">7. We note there are still some places in which education is centered on learning, but these are few. Education, provides basic information: agreed. So, for the reflective person who can resist indoctrination, it can be the beginning of learning…and where people have no other tools of acquiring information, it is better than nothing. (B. Reardon).<span> </span><span> </span></font></span></p>
<p><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">8. We live in a world where a multitude of organizations work to solve the enormous problems humanity faces --one project at the time, in a compartmentalized way. We believe that the human rights framework is more encompassing, and if known and internalized by women and men at the community level, does hold the promise for a meaningful and more holistic, positive change. Local groups and organizations simply have to learn to look at the whole range of social and economic justice issues affecting their lives. Such two-way learning programs have to be developed to encourage people to participate in the decisions that determine their lives. People's critical thinking is needed so they can differentiate between symptoms and causes* of everyday issues such as lack of clean water, violence against women, poverty, poor education, food insecurity and unemployment. These are issues that can be solved if the decisions made by <u>communities are guided by</u> the human rights framework. </font></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><font face="Times New Roman">*: We must distinguish between <b>symptoms</b> such as violence against women, discrimination against minorities, low wages, unequal access to services and <b>overarching basic causes</b> such as patriarchy, <span> </span>globalization, poverty and a non-viable, discriminatory economic system.<span> </span>We have to look at symptoms as an opportunity to create solidarity and understanding; then, by analyzing the causes, the people have to be mobilized to bring about the needed economic and social justice changes, step by step, free from fear and with international human rights law fully backing them. </font></span></p>
<p><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">9. A human rights educator thus is a person who is capable of evoking such critical thinking and, in a two-way dialogue, carrying out systemic analyses covering political, civil, economic, social, and cultural concerns with a gender perspective and guided by the human rights framework which invariably leads to action. </font></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><font face="Times New Roman">…Only dead fish cannot go against the current. (J. Hightower)</font></span></p>
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<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span lang="IT" style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><font face="Times New Roman">Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City</font></span></p>
<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 8pt"><font face="Times New Roman">[All Readers can be found in </font><a onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)" href="http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva%20%20under%20No.69" target="_blank"><font face="Times New Roman">www.humaninfo.org/aviva<span> </span><span style="COLOR: windowtext; TEXT-DECORATION: none">under No.69</span></font></a><font face="Times New Roman">]</font></span></p>
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<p style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"><font face="Times New Roman">In part adapted from Shulamit Koenig, PDHRE, New York.</font></span></p>