Human Rights Reader 281

Rare are those occasions when those with their hands on the levers of power do the right thing without a great deal of determined advocacy. (R. Elliot)

In development work, ‘advocacy’ is a word in everybody’s lips. But what is it really?

1. Advocacy can be defined differently depending on the context it is being used-in. One of the most relevant definitions of advocacy is by the World Health Organization which defines it as a combination of social actions designed to gain political commitment, policy support, social acceptance and systems support for a particular goal or program. (WHO, 1995)

2. Advocacy in human rights work is a process that has different stages and each step requires different strategies. Some of the key steps that are involved in putting together an effective and well conceived advocacy/demanding campaign are:

• identifying an issue and understanding it in the proper local political context;
• building an evidence base and engaging others by building partner coalitions;
• elaborating a strategic plan; communicating its key message(s) and implementing its plans sequentially; and
• being accountable for all actions in the plan and monitoring/evaluating it as results of the advocacy campaign are shared (International Conference on Nutrition, 2008)

3. At country level, in order to achieve specific planned objectives, claim holders demanding involves working with complex institutional systems; no doubt. The advocating party will thus have to engage multiple constituencies  characterized by different interests, values, perceptions and levels of influence. This is indispensable in order to create a critical mass of support for human rights (HR) with the needed normative shift towards a) the respect (cannot violate), b) the protection (must prevent, must provide accessible redress and must ensure no discrimination); and c) the fulfillment of HR (must move towards the realization of HR and must create an enabling environment through the allocation of sufficient resources).

4. As such, claim holders demanding cannot but be seen as an inherently political process –which is what makes advocacy so challenging.  But advocacy also provides us with a good opportunity, precisely because the promotion of HR is a UN mandate in development work and advocacy is certainly central to that effect.  While working in sensitive political situations, without shunning controversy when needed, it is important to find the right balance between engaging in constructive dialogue with government duty bearers (on the basis of human rights and UN values) and respecting local (people’s) decision-making processes… And even more, proactively fostering grassroots advocacy/claiming work for policy change. In global advocacy, on the other hand, it is important to make sure that our HR work demanding changes is always supporting –and never displaces– the role and the capacity of engaged national civil society.

5. As we already know, it is social (class) divisions, inequality and exclusion that drive HR violations. This being so, issues related to human rights, gender, sexual diversity and the rights of people living with HIV, for instance, need to be addressed knowing that these are among the most sensitive issues often representing major challenges for us in term of how to approach them. Particularly, the legal environment presents significant challenges for sustaining and scaling-up effective responses, especially in HIV and AIDS work. *

*: To follow this example, let me point out that protective social and legal environments are essential to reach universal access to prevention, treatment, care and support for HIV carriers. Nevertheless, in the UN General Assembly Special Session on HIV (UNGASS 2010), nearly two thirds of the countries reported policies or laws that impede access to HIV and AIDS services for certain populations, including most at risk populations and minors. The lesson here is that leaders must be led to acknowledge how existing laws and law enforcement affect the HIV response: the law must work for the HIV response and not against it –and this requires substantive involvement in demanding.

6. For any HR demanding to be successful the following key steps must be planned well in advance:

• Framing the issues: Framing strategies is central to advocacy work. This includes a political framing and framing the language in which an issue is couched, i.e., the terms in which it is presented. This will determine the way in which it is being perceived and responded-to by the general public and by the policy makers/duty bearers. These messages should also be linked with relevant international commitments that each country has ratified to uphold.
• Ad-hoc research which is to generate the needed evidence: This implies figuring out what messages, ideas and concepts will influence the respective audience to change perceptions, behavior and/or choice. Generating evidence in support of these ideas, messages and concepts is very important.
• Working with the media: This implies developing a professional relationship with media representatives –coopting the media as a partner, not treating it as an adversary.
• Using social media tools: Using social media tools like Facebook, Twitter, Internet and other online tools will help to build and keep the momentum of advocacy efforts.
• Networking and working with other partners: Working with different partners on common goals will increase the impact of our HR work and will help us in achieving results. It also means working in a cross-sectoral manner, for example engaging different agencies and key partners in civil society, academia and within the UN system. This means engaging organizations working on health, gender, justice, finance, and other sectors.
• Lobbying to place our demands: Lobbying means applying the above tools to influence individuals who have the power to make the policy changes for which claim holder advocates are campaigning. While lobbying your target audience, getting the timing right, directly contacting the target duty bearers and being specific in our request(s) helps a lot. For example, this could mean supporting HR advocacy groups/networks to be represented at international conferences to lobby the government to take a stronger stand on human rights and related issues.
• Capacity strengthening of partners: Oftentimes, the leading agency on advocacy needs to build the capacity of its partners to bring everyone on the same level of understanding, as well as to share best approaches.

7. But not all is rosy. This work by claim holders also has everyday challenges that call for savvy, often improvised approaches such as:

• Moving from a general assessment of a HR violation to the analytical identification of concrete, politically- and technically-feasible steps to address it.
• Thinking about advocacy politically (i.e., first going through a thorough ‘horizon scan’ to assess duty bearers’ interests, values, perceptions, power relations, as well as best ways to change them).
• Identifying the most appropriate positioning needed within the context of conflicting government-civil society relationships.
• Adapting to changes among the major duty bearers particularly as pertains the turnover of government personnel.
• Reaching most at-risk populations, including drug users, sex workers and men who have sex with men, as well as other vulnerable and marginalized groups in society.
• Adopting new avenues for meaningful local participation in both the design and implementation of HR advocacy campaigns; entry points can be found in already existing ongoing campaigns.
• Integrating HR learning into existing capacity building activities to ensure that HR learning is not a stand-alone initiative.
• Adapting and utilizing different education modalities in order to reach diverse audiences taking into account which modalities will be the most appropriate for the learning style(s) of the target group(s).

8. Bottom line, advocacy involves collecting and structuring information into a persuasive case; communicating the case to decision-makers/duty bearers and to other potential supporters, including the general public, through various interpersonal and media channels, as well as stimulating actions by social institutions, organized claim holders and sensitized duty bearers in support of the goal pursued. (WHO, 1995)

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

Postscript: Advocacy has to do with convictions. Are you prone to stick to your pre-existing personal convictions? or are you open to new ideas? The former are rigid and block your wider reflection; the latter force you to think and reflect –to question your convictions when so called for. (A. Gomez)

Food for a neglected yet needed thought

Human Rights Reader 280

-Good economic times are especially conducive to the illusion that bad times will never return.  (A. Dixit)

-There is a long, long tradition of development professionals offering development recipes that do not work. Not being facetious, in ongoing development work, the main cause of the problems encountered is the solutions so far applied; wouldn’t you agree? Remember: Neither charity nor a romantic sense of ‘social responsibility’ are sustainable.

1. We have a tremendous underutilized accumulated knowledge on the past and ongoing ‘development processes’ that, for the most part, have been human rights-blind. Allow me just a few examples. For instance, we know that:

• When roughly 80% of the world’s population has no access to social security, a commonly prevailing myth is that economic growth does automatically imply an extension of social protection. It does not!

Economic growth strategies have no regard for distributional and  environmental consequences. Period.

• The Northern-led (or pushed?) development drive has never distributed resources and wealth evenly, and has taken our finite environment for granted. But it became even more uneven with the advent of capitalism as the latter:
  • extended private property relations,
  • further skewed the distribution of income and the systems of social, economic and political power and authority,
  • gave free reign to the market system with negative consequences for the environment,
  • limited the capacity of the State to restrict markets,
  • reduced regulation, taxation and public expenditures, as well as

unfairly opened-up national economies to international

operators (D. Tarantola), and

• relentlessly pursued self-interest and profit which gets in the way of serving the poorer groups in society. (M. Yunus)
• Although achieving real bottom-centered development requires justice and equality, the commitment to human rights (HR) is merely rhetorical on the part of the Bretton Woods institutions and of other external lenders and donors.* (Development in Practice) [On the other hand, we also have to be aware that it is easier to bitch against the demon of the North than to mobilize the interests of the South… (A. Gomez)]

*: Let me ask you: From a HR perspective, does not our failure to proactively denounce:

• World Bank country policy advice and influence that has led and leads to the destruction of the livelihoods of millions,
• the non-regulation of destructive operations of transnational corporations, and
• the signature and implementation of international trade agreements that inhibit/restrict access to food, to health and to needed resources for vulnerable groups

make us, to some extent, accessory to these consequences?

• Most poor communities have various levels of poverty, even if they all look relatively poor to the uninitiated outsider. People in them are often overwhelmed-by and suffer the consequences of both local and global economic designs. Nevertheless, they still seek ways to engage-with and act-upon the issues that concern them most directly. True, people prefer visible development realizations over invisible operating mechanisms and policies. But they are, without a doubt, motivated to act as protagonists for positive social change. Let us not forget this! (L. Schultz)
• Somehow, academics and more traditional development practitioners do forget this. They have problems more seriously considering the power relations that ultimately influence outcomes in the development process. Development is just not party to the ‘neutrality principle’ these colleagues purport regulates the same process; rather, there is always a political objective. In that sense, the social sciences/scientists can only open up possibilities for development; social action at the community level is indispensable to eventually accomplish fair and just development objectives. **

**: The intellectual development worker in her/his ivory tower does not interest us for what s/he does, but for what s/he does for us [--for HR]! (S. Carmichael)  Intellectuals ought to commit suicide as a group if they avoid confronting the social reality that is all around them. (Che Guevara)  The qualities of leaders are not irrelevant for the desired results, but they are also not the sole and decisive factor. (Trotsky)

2. But to HR-proof development plans, we also know what we need-to and are-not doing. Allow me just a few examples here too. For instance:

• We do not distinguish between what is branded ‘complex’ and what, in reality, is not wanted by the (powerful) Establishment. (A. Katz)
• We do not make sure that development policies address both interests and values –in equal measure!
• We do not formulate our development challenges as HR issues, thus ensuring development is people-focused.
• We do not make sure that human development is complemented by a conceptual framework that shares similar underlying motivations, even if these have different emphases, but ultimately add to the respect and fulfillment of HR. (S. Alkire)
• We do not shift development from service-delivery-as-a-primary-focus to building-the-people’s-capacity-to-actively-claim.
• We do not make sure that every relevant decision is taken at the lowest possible level (subsidiarity principle).
• We do not involve local officials in decision making; they do not only have a more objective understanding of matters local, but they are also more used than us to think in local terms.
• We do not pay more attention to the processes of how outputs, outcomes and impacts are achieved, and
• We do not, once-and-for-all, make sure a shared vision of the centrality of HR in development work ‘sinks-in’ by implementing much bolder HR learning measures at all levels.

3. Although these lists are just an arbitrary sampler from my end, two special additional issues fall in the realm of ‘need-to-do’, namely:

Accountability

Bureaucratizing morality  gives us a sense that we are exerting close control….this really is nothing but a superstition. (D. Weinberger)

4. Since the issue of accountability is the key to effective development, getting it right can and will unlock progress that is otherwise stalling. Too often, accountability is seen solely as a set of complex tools for auditing and incrementally improving development in its current configuration within the old paradigm. (A. Litovsky)  But in HR work, accountability is really to settle about-nothing-less than renegotiating the global social contract, i.e., to‘civilize power’! *** (T. Burgis) With HR violations well assessed, we have to mobilize claim holders to demand duty bearers are kept accountable.

***: A caveat here: When accountability is built on myths of precision (becoming rather too picky), the important systemic, structural failures are missed; this has been called  ‘accountabilism’.

Development budgets

In a way, government budgets and their execution are a truer measure of their commitment to the realization of human rights than are its (on paper only) policies and plans.

5. The role of government budgets in causing and potentially resolving an issue is considered crucial in HR work. Budgetary items relating to economic, social and cultural rights should be (and more often are not) prioritized in all government budgets.

6. The UN Convention of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) prohibits the diversion of resources that ought to be devoted to HR covenant-related issues. Also of UN concern, is the non-utilization of budgetary items earmarked for social expenditures since these funds should be fully spent.

7. Governments have the obligation to ensure people participate in defining the problems and the solutions related to access to social services that governments seek to resolve through their budgets. The problem is not the budget figures themselves, but people’s exclusion from the budgeting process and from full access to budget execution information.****

****: Never forget: When fifteen things need to be done, doing three of them is not going to get you 20% of the way there. It is going to get you much less. You will need to get 15, or at least 13 or 12 of them done, before you start to see any big effect; we call this strategic complementarities –and the budget implications of this should be clear.

8. How the budget discriminates can be easily spotted by calculating per capita allocations or, better even, per capita expenditures, for example, for ethnic minority groups; or, by checking whether the government has allocated adequate funding to allow HR regulatory bodies or agencies to operate in an effective way.

9. Let us remember here that States are obliged to ask for international cooperation if domestic resources are insufficient to assure the fulfillment of HR.

Which then are the HR-in-development priority challenges?

10. The response to this question depends on which HR are unfulfilled or being violated and on the causes of the local development failures that have been collectively identified; it also depends on who selects the priority challenges.  But beware, defining development challenges as a lack of something here and something there risks focusing on overly simplistic solutions that prevent further analysis of the structural causes of the problems at hand. When searching for the linkages between levels of causality, the key cascading question to be asked over and over in the causality analysis is: Yes, but Why? After every answer, we have to keep asking this until we get to the bottom-of-the-bottom causes. (D. Werner)

11. If everything in the current approach to development was bad, solutions would be easier. The difficulty is in identifying and countering the bad which has been based on way-too-much ‘professional knowledge’ and endless failures in  application. For instance, we see failures when providing support to groups of population that do not need it so badly while withholding the same support from people who need it more badly; costly errors are generally made when  doing so. Conversely, fostering the HR framework makes development most-vulnerable-people-centered. (A. Mulley)

12. Bottom line, the human rights-based approach rights-proofs development plans by struggling for social justice through all-inclusive, participatory development policies.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

____________________

Adapted from D+C  36:9, Sept. 2009; D+C, 36:12, Dec. 2009; D+C 37:9, Sept. 2010; D+C, 37:10, Oct. 2010; D+C 37:12, Dec. 2010; F+D, 47:2, June 2010, F+D 47:4, Dec. 2010; The Broker, Issue 24, Feb/March 2011, Development in Practice, 19:8, 2009; FAO: Budget work to advance the right to food 2009; and UNFPA  A HRBA to Programming: Practical implementation manual and training materials, 2010.

Postscript: It is rightly said that we are what we do. But we should add that we also are what we do not do, what we say and what we choose not to say. (A. Gomez)

Human Rights Reader 279

-These days, we do not say or do anything that does not have numbers attached (statistics); judgment comes from the latter (so this can be called the ‘politics of data’). More numbers, more graphs, more histograms with a % on the top and history thrusts forward defying anyone who contradicts…

-Beware: Indicators only indicate, they do not explain; they can be seen as snapshots of a small part of the reality.

1. Over millennia, we have progressed from hunter-gatherers to [uncritical?] information gatherers. (M. McLuhan) There has simply been an exponential increase in often profoundly disruptive information. Too bad, because right now, statistics have often become “human beings with the tears wiped off”. (I. Selikoff) Information may be power, but it is not knowledge, it certainly is not wisdom. (The Lancet)

2. One of the barriers to progress in our human rights (HR) work, I contend, has been that statistical agencies around the world are run by economists and statisticians… and they are not always people who are comfortable with human beings or with HR. The selected national measures they employ tell us a good deal about the economy, but almost nothing about the specific things in people’s lives that really matter to them. (A. Michalos). We thus have to stop acting as if just more/better ‘any-data’ will make a difference in HR.

3. As opposed to people’s direct testimonies, data represent people only to a certain degree. [Also, keep in mind that, occasionally, small numbers tell a big story. (M. Soussan)]. On the other hand, the plural of testimonial evidence is not ‘data’…but, I insist, live anecdotes indeed complement ‘tears-wiped-off’ statistics and, many times, we will have to do with just testimonies until  better information is available. This, because, as said, available information covers only a fraction of the relevant HR-related factors in any particular location.

4. What I am saying here is that one cannot expect quantitative indicators to tell the whole story. Moreover, even where we do have local data, we will always need an intelligent analysis of the broader context –and the perceptions of those directly affected is key for such an intelligent analysis!

5. As this Reader has insisted before, in HR work, we should actually use indicators in their negative connotation, i.e., what is the percentage of those whose indicators fall below the norm, i.e., whose HR are thus still being violated.* In other words, HR activists are not out there just to document impact, but impact pathways, impact processes and shortcomings.

*: For instance, when the vaccination coverage rate of <1s is 85%, we should say that the right to immunization of 15% of the <1s is till being violated.

6. So, the evolution of indicators-as-data is supposed to be monitored, right? Yes, but I argue that we too often fall into the trap of monitoring what-has-been-done (in HR parlance corresponding to equality of opportunity) when we should be monitoring what-has-been-achieved (corresponding to equality of results).

7. Setting verifiable and time-bound benchmarks of any kind may indeed be necessary, but not sufficient for the progressive realization of HR. That is because we really need benchmarks to monitor progress in disparity reduction (the more accurate HR term for poverty alleviation and for the fulfillment of the HR of all). Such monitoring is to be done in conjunction with, perhaps, already ongoing monitoring efforts.**

**: Let us further note that, during times of crises, monitoring efforts have to be redoubled.

8. It is widely considered best to have one body in charge of HR monitoring with a clear mandate. (FAO) Only then will monitoring processes help ensure the most marginalized groups get involved and contribute to a genuine HR programming process. The selection of indicators and their  monitoring must thus be participatory. As needed, existing indicators must be ‘tweaked’ to be first and foremost more disaggregated (gender, race, age. religion, etc), as well as HR-based.

Let us be clear: More data for the usufruct of the few does not help the human rights cause.

The root of the word evaluation is value! It is supposed to measure change –positive change– but what is considered positive is usually left to interpretation. (Not often enough considered in evaluations are questions like: Did the intervention(s) reach many or few of the right/intended people? Which social class benefited most and which the least…?).

9. An increase in the number of reported HR-violations-as-an-indicator will clearly indicate regression in the realization of HR. This is self-evident, isn’t it? –and additionally, regression is an absolute taboo for any state. (FAO) But such an indicator is rare if not inexistent: It is not in the interest of the powers-that-be. (Moreover, you and I know politicians always pick the data that suit them best).

10. In last instance, ‘what we measure affects what we do’, and better HR-based measurements will lead to better decisions, or at least different decisions. (J. Stiglitz) To begin with, gaps in HR-based indicators have to be established in each case so that their adoption can help direct information gathering activities and ultimately commensurate corrective actions.

11. It has been said that the right information and statistics are a powerful tool for creating a culture of accountability and for realigning HR (Human Development Report 2000). The question is: What information…? This flies in the face of the generic argument that (any) measurement will lead us to better decisions.

The ultimate challenge is to translate the power of numbers into the power of action in the direction of human rights.

12. Much of the academic and official research that generates statistics primarily focuses on excellence, on method, on reputation and on ranking and not on its social relevance. The challenge for us is to translate social research and surveys*** into appropriate HR measures, e.g., field-adapted, affordable and accessible models of health care, land reform, income generation activities for youth, etc.

***: Don’t surveys more often deform than really measure public opinion…? Think about it.

13. What this boils down-to is that we must use indicators that will provide us with evidence:

• of involvement of marginalized groups;
• of fair and equal representation of claim holders and duty bearers;
• of technical assistance that has been provided to traditionally excluded groups in building their capacity to participate in decision making;
• of the percentage of resources spent on making information accessible to excluded groups (e.g., money spent on translations to local languages);
• of public expenditure on the neediest groups; of strengthened capacity of claim holders to claim their rights and of them actually claiming them (same for duty bearers, in terms of their capacity to actually fulfill their duties).

14. Furthermore, what this boils down to is translating the sense of awareness and knowledge of people into them understanding the structural issues behind inequity and inequality, and then into them getting actively involved in claiming.

15. Bottom line, at  the risk of being accused of courting controversy, as you see, it is not about yet further interpreting the reality [we observe through statistics]; it is about changing and transforming it. (Marx)

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi  Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

[You can find the HR Readers in a website at www.humaninfo.org/aviva under No. 69].

_____________________________

Adapted from D+C, 35:6, June 2008; D+C, 35:11, Nov. 2008; D+C 36:1, Jan. 2009; SCN News, No.36, Geneva, mid-2008; The Broker, Issue 9, Apr 2010; The Broker, Issue 15, Aug. 2009; The Broker, Issue 24, Feb/March 2011; Understanding Human Rights: Manual on HR Education, W. Benedek Ed., ETC, Graz, 2006; UNFPA, A HRBA to Programming: Practical implementation manual and training materials, 2010; and F+D, 47:4, Dec. 2010.

Postscript: To me, documentation work is always very important, not least than to be able to unmask those who knowingly lie (A. Gomez) and when lies become fact, compromise is compromised, neutralizing the truth. (J. Koenig)

Human Rights Reader 278

-“Man is a social animal. Therefore he is a political animal as well”.

-Members of society who depend most upon an acceptable theory of justice are its poorer, marginalized and less powerful members. It is for them that a just society is most crucial.

1. Mind you, we have duties towards people we never know… and they have similar duties towards us. The human rights framework thus basically looks at people in societies with attention to claims they have on each other in the form of rights and duties, as well as with attention to their demands for justice * and equality.

*: Justice: The balance of public interest and individual rights, the fair sharing of the available goods of society and the fair restitution of victims.

2. As this Reader has said before, politics is in a continuum with morality; our political duties and obligations are thus often congruent with our moral duties and obligations. Human rights (HR)** are typically defended on the basis of moral principles although it may as well be on legal and political grounds. This is not to say that all politics or all politicians are moral; but it is to say that our politics are constrained and indeed determined by our sense of morality.

**: Rights: Demands that a member of society is entitled to make upon his society.

3. From the HR perspective, a person or a group may very well disrupt the smooth operations of the government if it is convincingly demonstrated these operations interfere with the overall public interest. There must always be a balance between the public interest, on the one hand, and private interests on the other. HR basically carry within themselves the power to bring individual interests in line with public interests. HR firmly contend that the function of the state is and has to be to protect the public interest, protect equity, protect equality and protect justice.

4. If a group of people or a social class have been historically deprived of their adequate share, because of their income, the color of their skin, their ethnicity, their religious beliefs, their sex or age, they should be given more than their proportionate share in compensation. This is not to be construed as an injustice to other people and/or groups. If the distribution of privileges and of power are equally important, why shouldn’t all members of society be able to expect equal treatment and respect, not only by the law, but in every conceivable social situation by every conceivable social institution?

All of the above are concerns of justice. But what is justice? Who decides? And how?

5. For us, in HR work, the elements of what is just is enshrined in a set of covenants. It is the practices applied primarily, but not only, by the state that are to be judged from the HR point of view as per said covenants and their corresponding General Comments.

6. Already for Plato, millennia ago, equality meant that all men and women are equal just by virtue of their being human. I do not need to tell you that this is not a belief that was always accepted by everyone since then. We stand with Plato and do believe everybody is equal.

7. Conservatives say people are to be equal in opportunities alone, without having any actual right to social services. Conversely, a just society considers the welfare of the worst-off members of society as an obligation.

For liberals, justice does not equate with a fair distribution, but with an equal distribution. The question this begs is: Is equality the primary concern of justice? In HR, we are compelled to set up systems of fair distribution.

If justice means equal then a legitimate state is bound to maximize equality. Conversely, if justice only means everyone in his or her proper place (a conservative outlook), the state will be legitimate if ‘harmony and working together’ are smooth.

8. Governments are legitimate only because their citizen agree (or have tacitly –or under duress– accepted) to be ruled by them. Often, an implicit or an explicit social contract exists in the form of an agreement among people to share certain interests and make certain compromises for the good of all people. But perhaps as often, no such social contract exists and the interests of a minority are imposed on a majority. This is where HR are most sorely needed.

Going back to the history of philosophy, much of the world is divided and ruled according to rival political  ideologies.

9. Marx’s emphasis on people’s rights hardly needs to be restated here. He reminded us that many people take more than they can use personally and use their excess possession merely as a means to manipulate other people. This, while many more people are still more concerned with putting food on the table and do not have enough protection under the law to prevent them from being grossly exploited and underpaid for unrewarding and painful labor.

10. For Marx, freedom of speech does not go together with freedom of economic exploitation, i.e., freedom to a decent dignified life. Marx also turned his attention from the supposed right to private property to the abuse of private property. He rejected the accumulation of wealth that someone has personally amassed when it serves only as a means for getting richer at the expense of other people, i.e., when treating workers as a commodity.

11. Freedom of speech, he said, is meaningless in the face of the minimum economic necessities that worry most people everyday. We need more than just freedom to speak out (a civil right). We need freedom from the economic exploitation that keeps workers in dire circumstances (an economic right). “People need freedom from material need. The means to achieve this are already at hand; what is needed is simply a more equitable form of  distribution”. For Marx, this meant no private property. The revolution he called-for was thus not so much a political revolution, but an economic one –a revolution he felt was inevitable and had/has been in the making since ancient times, sometimes hidden, sometimes in the form of an open struggle.

12. Freedom-from-want is as much a battle for freedom as the traditional liberal battles for freedom of speech have been, he tells us. When HR violations are condoned by political (and religious) authorities, such conditions of oppression bring about new forms of struggle, for instance, attacks against the instruments of exploitation used by these authorities who are part of the bourgeoisie. So, when pushed to the limit, popular agitation due to protracted HR violations becomes a distinguishing feature…and each step is accompanied by a corresponding political advance.

13. Numbers of protesters increase, mass movements strengthen, the interests of claim holders are made heard more and more; they form permanent associations and their struggles take more and more the character of collision-between-two-classes.*** Here and there, riots break out. Immediate results are not the important for Marx, but instead the ever expanding union of claim holders. He foresaw the expansion of the various local struggles into national struggles with groups in the bourgeoisie stepping over to the cause of the claim holders as they increase their social consciousness. We know how this panned out in later history…

***: Political power, for Marx, is merely the organized power of one class to oppress another. Claim holders, for him, are thus compelled to organize themselves as a class doing away with the old oppressive conditions.

14. What it all boils down to here is that we cannot serve the public interest at the intolerable expense of injustice. Serving every individual’s interest has to recognize a primary concern for justice — distributive justice, i.e., of everyone receiving his or her fair share.**** Public interest is important, but respect for every individual’s rights is even more important.

***: For instance, concerns over land ownership, over just wages and fair prices are all matters of distributional justice.

Bottom line, what is at issue for us is the concept of justice?

15. People ought to be treated equally since they have human rights that no one can take away from them. People ought to equally share the material goods of society (this is and has been the subject of constant debate and sometimes of wars and of revolutions). How much should the state serve the people and how much the people serve the state? (J. F. Kennedy) What constitutes a good state? And when, if ever, do people have the right to overthrow the state or a particular government, or a particular law? There is no way in which we can avoid asking these questions. The Spring Revolution and the Occupy Movement are budding “ought-to” movements. We now need to imbue them with HR principles and standards that go beyond mere protest and the expression of repressed anger!

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi  Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

_____________________________

Adapted from R. C. Solomon, Introducing Philosophy: A Text with Integrated Readings, 4^th Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.

Postscript: I have always believed that activism pays off: Do the right thing, confront unfairness and selfishness, stay true to yourself…one day it all works out. I do not know if, so far, people who are wronged eventually get their justice because of our activism; it may not work all the time. But I do think one day we and they will get our/their reward. (adapted from A. Verghese)

Human Rights Reader 277

Historically, it is actually the organized pressure from minorities and from women on ethical grounds that have often given us the equal rights and the non-discrimination we now take for granted.

[I will here attempt to bring-in the history of philosophy on ethics to support the concept and practice of human rights. I do not want to philosophize with you here, but to help you to consult your own moral inclinations by interpreting what you read below].

Good moral rules help us act in the most rational way possible.

1. Human rights  (HR) tell us we should take into account others and not only our own interests when deciding what we ought to do. The best way of satisfying everyone’s interests is through being consequent with ethics. HR are seen as needed in order to make us human.

2. HR appeal to principles that distinguish values (ought to do) from facts (what actually is). It is imperatives with a-moral-ought in them that are tied to what we do in HR work.*

*: Ought is the verb most often used to express moral duty or obligation; sometimes, perhaps more appropriately, must or have-to is used when HR enter the political arena.

3. In HR work we thus justify the morality of our actions by appealing to the good consequences our actions have for others (and for ourselves).

HR are about respect for living in society and about the promotion of the public good.

4. We remain convinced that applying moral rules achieves the greatest good for the greatest number of people. But the hitch here is: we actually choose our own morality. ‘Thou shalt, thou shalt not’ consists of commands that rule our decision making. Even if we can escape all punishment, we are absolutely forbidden to kill; we are indoctrinated by these moral ‘commands’. We can also be blamed if we have not done what we should have done, i.e., we stand under obligation to give our neighbors their due.

5. We thus have to decide for ourselves what laws of morality we are willing to accept. Is what our conscience commands us good? Consciousness is simply the internalization of the moral teachings of our parents and of society. So, should we accept or reject what we have been taught? Our conscience may disagree, but we must still decide whose conscience and which rules of conscience we ought to obey.

Morality is not just obedience though; it is doing what is right.

6. For Kant, morality was the ability to think and decide for oneself what is right and what is wrong; whom to obey and whom to ignore; what to do and what not to do. If we try to tie morality too closely to our society, it looks as if there is no room for autonomy, no way in which we could disagree. We actually have to be critical and admit that some of these sets of commands are or may be false. But if something is morally reprehensible to us, it should be true to us even if the society in question does not agree with that moral principle.

7. ‘Moral relativism’ has always been a threat to established morality (it has been said it is a result of the crumbling of belief in the dogmas of religion). It was Kant who said we have to agree to at least the basic principles of a universal morality. So that key moral principles hold for every society.

What is right is distinct from what people merely think is right; yet what is right is right everywhere, and is always the same, he argued.

8. In sum here, it is indeed possible (and necessary) for us to act in the interest of others and be concerned about their welfare. Altruism says that people ought to act with each other’s interests in mind. Only if actions are motivated by a concern for others’ interests do we call them truly moral actions.

We sometimes think that we are moral, just because we believe in moral principles. But believing is not enough; action is required.

9. There is a natural principle of benevolence in wo/man (gender correctness added) which is in some degree to society what self-love is to the individual. Some of our desires are desires to serve someone else’s interests. (The satisfaction that accompanies good acts is itself not the motivation of such acts though! As Kant said, moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect expected from it).

10. Plato, much earlier, told us that justice** is not a private good (as charity is). Charity just gives the giving individuals a sense of satisfaction and peace of mind. Charity makes the giver feel self-righteous (an act of psychological egoism?).

**: Justice here is meant as the need for lawful-and-fair treatment of other people (which does not mean equal treatment…).

11. Later, Aristotle went further and said that there is no real distinction between ethics and politics and that the proper end of ethics is politics. (Am I thus an Aristotelian…?) ***. For him, justice has much to do with one’s role in society –and ‘respect’ is an ingredient of it. “It is by our conduct in our intercourse with other wo/men that we become just or unjust”. *

***: I wonder if that is why Aristotle though that the passion of our youth is sometimes more virtuous than our rationality in established maturity.

[We note here a caveat: The morality for Aristotle depended upon rules embedded and learned in an elite society of privileged Greek males. Conversely, modern ethical conceptions are universal, not restricted to a particular society].

12. For Kant, every person can find for her/himself what acts are moral; there are thus individual, i.e., personal demands for morality. Not so for D. Hume for whom the end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duties and engage us to embrace them. Hume felt that what is morally ‘fair’ for all will animate us to embrace it and maintain it. “Render wo/men totally indifferent to morality and there will no longer be a chance to regulate our lives and actions”.

13. For J. J. Rousseau, the morality of our actions consisted entirely in the judgments we ourselves form with regard to them. The first reward of justice is the consciousness that we are acting justly. There are though wo/men insensible to all that is right, he posited; they bypass any notion of justice when it is to their own advantage.

In human rights work, we do not speak the voice of remorse, but the voice of outrage.

14. In HR, when we see any act of injustice, it stirs in us an instinctive anger which bids us to go to help the oppressed. But we are restrained by a duty to laws that often hamper our drive to protect those whose rights are being violated.**** Ultimately, what our consciousness decrees is based on our judgment and gut feelings. The power that moves us is consciousness –which is derived from the moral system we adopt in relation to our fellow wo/men. As soon as our reason perceives social injustice, our conscience impels us to pursue it with the voice of outrage that passes judgment on what is evil.

****: Basically, a HR violation occurs when a person treats another primarily as a means to his or her ends, making the violated an instrument of the violator’s purposes. Violators are thus those who pursue the fulfillment of their desires without a concern for any good but their own. In short, violators of HR are ultimately ‘consumers’ of persons ….and the violated persons are the consumed. (W. Gass)  That is why the piling up of violations reaffirms our every day struggle with the violators. Because it makes a difference in what context and in-the-service-of-what-particular-and-specific-interests the distinction is made between manipulative and non-manipulative social relationships, what we constantly seek is to distinguish between manipulative and non-manipulative social relations so as to decisively counter the former. (A. MacIntyre)

15. Kant rejected all attempts to base morality on feelings; it must be based solely on reason, he argued. For him, morality’s central concept is duty –and duty subjects itself to rational principles. He further argues that reason, by its very nature, must be universal. Kant insisted in the independence of morality from society. Morality, for him, consisted only of rational principles. He was concerned with what makes a person morally worthy. “Act as duty requires, but not because duty requires”; “to be beneficient when we can is a duty”. So, retain: Duty brings about the necessity of acting in HR work.

[We note here another caveat: It was conformity with the law what Kant used as the central notion of duty. Not so necessarily for us in HR work since laws often harbor HR violations].

16. Kant indirectly actually says that HR are necessary of-and-by themselves without reference to another end; “they are objectively necessary” he says.

He goes on to say that, as relates to moral imperatives, there are universal laws of reason that tell us what to do: “Imperatives of duty to others become imperatives of principle”. Talks of sympathy and good will betray the rights of wo/men and actually violate them. “Moral principles are necessary, essential to human nature and they hold for every human being”. The maintenance of our humanity-as-an-end in itself depends on respecting HR. One should contribute anything to the dignity of others. Therefore, acting according to universal laws of reason and morality is obeying rational principles. “Morality is a product of our rational will”.

17. For J. Bentham, the interest of the community is the most general expression in the realm of morals; nevertheless, this meaning is often lost. It is in vain to talk of the interest of a community without understanding that it reflects the interest of its individual members though. Bentham thus first looks at one person whose rights seem to be violated and then takes account of the number of persons whose rights are compromised…a methodology we can well use in HR work today.

18. For John Stuart Mill, morality was not a question of applying a law to an individual case. Morality must be deduced from principles even if they are scornfully rejected by some. Key for him was the sense of dignity which all human beings ought to possess in one form or another. For him, morality encases the rules and precepts of human conduct.

19. Friedrich Nietzsche was called the anti-moralist: To him, all people were to be judged by the same moral standards, the standards of duty; there are no elites, he argued. “What does your conscience say? “You should become  who you really are”. “Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual”.

He complained that the morality of the ruling classes is foreign and irritating to present-day taste in that it insists primarily that one has duties only to ones equals. Supposing that the abused and oppressed moralize, he went on, what will  the common element in their morality be? Probably a suspicion and a condemnation of man. “The slave has an unfavorable eye for the virtues of the powerful; he (rightly) has a skepticism and distrust”. Therefore, “power resides in the evil which does not know it is despised; The evil man thus arouses fear”. Moreover, the slave’s desire for freedom and of liberty also necessarily belong to her/his morality.

Knowing is creating, creating is law-giving; truth is power.

20. Under this guise, Nitzsche attacked absolute moral principles of reason that are the same for everyone. This point he made was maliciously taken up in the 20^th century in an attempt to destroy universal moral codes. In Sartre’s philosophy, the idea of universal morality is also completely rejected, because, for Sartre, our values are a question of personal commitment. In response to any question about morality, the only ultimate answer is “because I choose to accept these values; this is what I choose mankind to be”.

21. In J. P. Sartre’s writings, wo/man is responsible for what s/he is. Not only for her/his own, but for all wo/men. “Nothing can be better for us unless it is better for all; in fashioning myself, I fashion wo/man”. No rule of general morality can show you what you ought to do, he argued. To say that it does not matter what you choose is not correct.

What is not possible is not to choose.

22. Sartre went on to tell us “If I do not choose, that is still a choice”. “When I confront a real situation, I am obliged to choose my attitude towards it and, in every respect, I bear the responsibility of that choice. Wo/man makes her/himself by the choices of her/his morality and s/he cannot but choose a morality”.  “It is through my actions that I commit myself to values, not through principles I accept a priori or rules that are imposed on me by society; if you refuse to choose, you are coping out”. What counts is, therefore, simply our choice of actions and values together with their consequences –whatever they are. For Sartre, morality is those values we choose to follow through our actions: He basically thus exhorts our responsibility.

23. Where does all this put us, then?: What we want to know from ethics teachers is not only how people use the word, not even what kind of actions they approve. (G. E. Moore) Why? Because we can encourage and persuade one another to accept certain ethical positions, but the positions themselves are merely matters of personal attitude –rationally justified or not.

If statements of value are to be significant, it is indeed human rights’s business to pass judgments on what is right.

24. Human rights express, if not objective, at least impersonal ethical judgments; no question about that. But note that statements of value are unverifiable. It is notorious that what seems intuitively certain to one person may seem doubtful or false to another. The HR covenants are key to us since they provide some tested criteria of negotiated and agreed validity. In last instance, HR law is an objective rule that is binding whether we accept it or not so that implicit or explicit recognition of these judgments is at the center of every day HR practice.

25. Bottom line, what matters for HR is the construction of a civility that can be sustained. Moral decline gives and has given justification to worrisome misjudgments, policies, actions and HR violations. The barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time!

26. Commitment can be said to be a freely chosen adoption of moral principles which one thereby vows to defend and apply in practice. Our commitment defines what we are morally bound to do. What are you bound to do?

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi  Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

_____________________________

Adapted from R. C. Solomon, Introducing Philosophy: A Text with Integrated Readings, 4^th Edition, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989.

Human Rights Reader 276

The human rights-based framework opens our eyes to the outdated traditional model of aid. Since the new human rights narrative focuses on global justice and on pluralism, it criticizes international development agencies as ‘a cosmopolitan elite that is wrongfully embracing Globalization’ and it challenges the latter’s supremacy.

_________

*: Also referred to as foreign aid, development aid or overseas development cooperation (ODA).

For foreign aid to be effective in reducing poverty it must first and foremost be disbursed in good faith for that purpose –without political naiveté or double talk.

Unfortunately, aid is still seen as ‘temporary assistance’, a sort of noblesse oblige on the part of rich countries (whose riches, to begin with, derived in good part from the impoverishing exploitation of many of the present aid-dependent countries). (S. Taylor and M. Rowson)

1. The notion that today’s aid dependent countries can, with the right macroeconomic framework and new trade rules, grow into fiscal independence within an ethically-defensible-time-frame is simply mistaken. (S. Taylor and M. Rowson)

2. The evidence that foreign aid presents to us, namely that mostly technology will save the world is, these days, less and less plausible.**

**: Take two examples:

i)The UN-sanctioned human right to nutrition is often –but should not be– interpreted as the right to food aid. It is communities that have to decide their own food policies thus exercising what is referred-to as food sovereignty. (M. Arana-Cedeno) From that perspective, the right to nutrition should also be understood as an economic right, a cultural right, as well as to include the right to safe water, the right to participate, the right to information and the right to a sustainable environment. (D. Alhindawi)

ii) As regards the human right to health, foreign aid investments on quality health care services and on actions that tackle the social determinants of health (SDH) are not alternative pathways; they are indeed complementary. In the case of AIDS, this means that HIV is more than a virus; as someone said, AIDS is about power relations in the bedroom and in the boardroom of both donor and recipient governments. (M. Sharma)

3. Actually, foreign aid disarticulates the state from the citizen; governments listens to the concerns of donors rather than those of their own citizen.

4. Foreign aid cannot work when it is donors who identify the different needs of people rather than letting the people concerned actually articulate their needs. So donors must get away from doing so much of the talking and moving more towards listening. (A. Vaatz)

5. What is essentially missing in development cooperation is for it to consistently strengthen the people’s understanding of democracy and of their rights as individuals and as communities.

6. Therefore, for foreign aid to work, it needs to move towards a convergence of different, but compatible interests between donors and end-recipients (claim holders)…and, so far, human rights (HR) are not part of those converging compatible interests.***

***: Moreover, too often, politicians and civil servants have interests at odds with ODA.

7. Furthermore, to comply with foreign aid conditionalities, governments make administrative reforms as required by the donors rather than in response to the civic and political struggles of its citizens.

8. Let’s call a spade a spade: Donors have a clear political presence in many a country; they seek to influence change in that country through their financial leverage. In that effort, there are intense internal political struggles. Donors thus exert patronage through networks of clients within and outside government.**** This, because aid officials need to demonstrate to their head offices that they are having a tangible influence on the local scene. ****: If needed, donors use informal ‘shadow conversations’ that are at odds with government policy. (R. Eyben)

9. Putting many foreign and national experts in a room does simply not guarantee that one will get the best answers. [Not unless one starts by asking the key right questions… which is more important than knowing all the answers]. The same applies for guru-like experts and jet-set consultants that are regularly brought in from the North.

10. Development agencies purport they know the solutions to given problems… and others should benefit from that. For instance, the World Bank considers itself a ‘knowledge bank’; it thinks progress is intrinsically linked to knowledge and knowledge transfer is supposed to be the key to accelerate progress in poor countries. This raises expectations in the latter: People there hope-for and expect advice and expertise from outside.

11. The recipient country ownership rhetoric only hides the fact that the donors continue to pull the strings. Donors do not want to make themselves superfluous. Period. The talk of ownership is thus a lie; wouldn’t you agree? (A. Vaatz)

In human rights work, we put our money where our ideals are…i.e., where the risks are.

Human rights activists oppose aid more because it is borne out of compassion than because it is ineffective. (G. Garcia Marquez)

12. Donors have a continuing obsession with project management tools –prominently so with the logical framework matrix (or logframe for short). This allows them to pin everything down from the outset. Logframes are  primarily used in an effort to (narrowly) demand and interpret accountability. Ask yourself: How much detail can/should a logframe contain? With too much detail it becomes cumbersome and, over time, inaccurate. From the HR point of view, the most important part of it is the rightmost column which lists the Risks and Assumptions –most of them falling under the structural causes of underdevelopment.*****  In that case, the logframe’s Objectively Verifiable Indicators (OVIs) should then measure changes in structural conditions and in HR principles (rather than measure the achievement of sectoral objectives and activities).

*****: A typical example, of an assumption with structural implications would be: “The government will be actively responsive-to and will complement project-launched activities by, alongside, investing its own resources and demanding a participatory decision-making planning and implementation”.

13. How can a logframe address HR accountability then? The project implementation process must be focused on overcoming the structural ‘risks and assumptions’ and this requires continuous active engagement of both claim holders and duty bearers. For accountability purposes, the challenge is to identify and move to change the constraining structural conditions thus fulfilling all HR principles. (D. Curtis)  Given the inadequacies (and abuses) of the foreign aid system, the corollary to this is that the actual processes that foreign aid sets in motion must be more important than its volume. This additionally means that, when providing technical assistance or policy advice, donors must be guided by both HR principles and standards.

Foreign aid: Can human rights impacts be foreseen?

14. In a way, HR impact assessment (HRIA) overlaps with poverty and social impact assessment exercises. The three of them offer empirical evidence on the likely social consequences on the living conditions of different social groups in society. The information that comes from them has the potential to foresee and thus mitigate negative consequences or even prevent them. These impact assessments determine whether measures are politically feasible by considering existing power relations and possible opposition to the new measures. They open up space for dialogue among claim holders and duty bearers. But unless policy makers take into account the results of HRIA exercises, even the best analyses will be useless. HRIA ownership thus matters greatly. Findings usually support the position already for long held by large parts of civil society. They provide claim holders with a negotiating platform with donors. HRIAs are best if implemented by independent teams.

15. Economic partnership agreements (EPAs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) simply must have HR impact assessments and audits. To us in PHM, this is non-negotiable.

Foreign aid: wrong focus?

Often trapped in a ‘growth-only’ delusion, development cooperation vows to focus on poor people, but instead primarily focuses on poor countries…The HR-based framework definitely focuses on poor people –everywhere.

16. This is most important, because 72% of the world’s poor live in middle income countries (MICs). And there, the ratio of bilateral to multilateral aid is 2/3:1/3.

17. MICs can, in principle, support and emancipate their own poor people, but their poor lack power (are not empowered) and their governments lack any real determination and commitment to end poverty.

18. Mind you, even if –with foreign aid– the MDGs are met, there will still be one billion poor people by 2015… almost ¾ living in MICs.

19. Donors complain of unresponsive governance there; they consider ‘bad governance’ the most dangerous trap. They purport to address it face-on. The question is: What changes do they insist on? For them to engage in debates on frontally tackling inequality should not be considered an infringement on sovereignty, but a step towards HR. But do they?

20. If rich countries purport to provide poor countries with development resources, it is not at all against their own interests to do so. Otherwise, why would they do it? Much more ‘real aid’ would be for them to:

• cut subsidies to agriculture in the North,
• forgive the overpowering foreign debt of the South,
• not steal the resources (both human and material) of the poor countries,
• not dump their cigarettes, their toxic waste, their genetically modified seeds… on the countries of the South,
• not sell weapons and train the South dictators’ armies, etc.

But this would be too costly, drastic and inconveniencing for them.  Traditional ODA is just a more cozy niche to be in…

21. Does the reader really think any of the above is ever going to happen in our rich-countries-dominated-unfair-world?

22. Any time people start talking about development aid, I just automatically assume they are on the wrong side of the horse, no matter how well intentioned they are. (M. Anderson)

23. Bottom line, donor governments have been and are very selective in their support for HR (focusing mostly on civil and political rights –especially in their conditionalities). The selection of HR which donor governments choose to address (mostly chosen by narrow self-interest considerations) more often than not ignores addressing economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) and its principles (participation, non-discrimination, rule of law, etc.).

24. But the violations of ESCR destroys social relationships, the social fabric, social cohesion and overall trust. Donors can indeed contribute to stop these violations and thus prevent these tensions from flaring up –which seems to me is in their long-term interest. But the million dollars question is: Will they?

25. After all the above is said and done, consider: A domestic fair progressive taxation system and other redistributive policies (including decisive action against capital flight) are, in last instance, more important than ODA.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

_________________

Adapted from Contact, WCC, Issue 186, Nov., 2008; Development in Practice; Globalization and Health: Pathways, Evidence and Policy, R. Labonte, T. Schrecker, C. Packer and V. Runnels Eds, Routledge Books, 2009; D+C, 36:12, Dec.2009; D+C 37:5, May 2010; D+C 37:7-8, July/Aug 2010; D+C, 37:10, Oct 2010; The Broker, Issue 19, Apr 2010; The Broker, Issue 23, Dec.2010/Jan2011; and The Broker, Issue 24, Feb/March 2011.

Food for a very disquieting thought

Human Rights Reader 274

DO WE DEFEND HUMAN RIGHTS OR DO WE DEFEND OURSELVES FROM THEM?

P. T. Delgado Palacios

This is not my text. The original is in Spanish. I have to confess though that, although in a small part fallacious, it raises some uncomfortable and disturbing questions for which I only may have some answers. At  the risk of being accused of courting controversy I share this with you.

1. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 assumes humankind agrees with the institutions of a bourgeois society. According to the Declaration we are entitled to protection under the law (Art.7). Of what law?  Laws made by whom? Aren’t the owners of power and of money the ones who make the laws according to what is convenient for them? So, do those who question the law attempt against human rights (HR)?

2. The Declaration also says that every person has the right to property (Art.17). How necessary was it to insert that Article to protect the patrimony of those who already had amassed a fortune? So, do those who attempt to take something away from the latter attempt against HR?

3. People are needed to work for the benefit of the owners of capital. Then, we have to remember that every person has the right to work and to a salary (Art 23). So, does anyone who tries to set up an alternative and different system to neoliberalism attempt against HR?

4. What are we supposed to do so that everybody supports the ideology of those who organized our world in their own favor? Easy! Every person has the right to education….To that education that reproduces the system? Does s/he who does not accept this attempt against HR?

5. Can this all mean that oppression is actually used in the name of HR? Are we supposed to defend all the rights that justify and consolidate the neoliberal system? Are we going to defend these rights knowing that, in their name, the owners of power and of the money have invaded all spaces and have defended their own interests?

6. Where is the right to rebel and to resist to be found? Where is the right to live an alternative life without interference left?

7. These reflections and questions take us to think about drafting a proposal for a Declaration of HR from another angle, from the perspective of poor people, of the invisible, of the excluded. Actually, new rights are being proclaimed coming from different corners of the world: poor people’s  rights, poor women’s rights, indigenous people’s rights, poor black people’s rights, people with special abilities rights, poor young people’s rights, poor children’s rights, the rights of nature and of the environment… What counts is to continue opening spaces in which all voices merge, and from which a new declaration can be proclaimed, one that brings together the common aspirations of the have nots.

8. We cannot turn away from the term Human Rights; what we have to do is to give it a new content, one that acts as a liberating force.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

Postscript

I pick material from here and there, i.e., those sentences that I agree with –not to store them in my memory, because my memory is faint –but to bring them to this Reader in which what you read is as mine or belongs to me now as much as it belongs to their original authors. (adapted from Montaigne).

The point of these Readers is to just present you with issues and let you arrive at your own individual conclusions. These conclusions should be discussed with your friends and colleagues. The ultimate purpose is to encourage everyone to think for her/himself. The Readers are ‘a source’; everything in them is to be taken as a cause for further elaboration. They do attempt to sway you towards human rights and thus present basic problems together with powerful arguments to enable you to think for yourself. This is what the Readers are ultimately about: letting you think for yourself about the basic issues of social justice.  Most of us are concerned with the same basic problems, but do not necessarily use the same arguments. Readers give you varied arguments with the not unreasonable demand that you confront them with your own arguments. The Readers thus are an introduction to the problems of development and HR and the various ways in which they have been rightfully or wrongfully answered. Although the language of HR is specialized and sometimes difficult, the Readers clarify jargon and special terminology –terms are carefully introduced. The Readers are perhaps valuable to help you find your place in history. (adapted from R.C. Solomon)

So remember, some things you have for long considered evident turn to a doubt as you reflect deeper about them.

[All Readers can be found under No.69 in www.humaninfo.org/aviva under their respective numbers]

Human Rights Reader 273

Integrating human rights is not simply a technical matter resolved by adequate training; it requires negotiation, adapting and working within the local culture. Moreover, developing capacity in human rights will have little impact if, to start with,  laws, institutions and policies fail to de-facto recognize human rights prerogatives.

Background

1. On December 10, 1948, 48 countries signed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The rest is history –history not to be taken lightly since human rights (HR) are just not any rights. They are specifically laid down in treaties. Treaties are contracts between governments. This means they are legally binding on the States that are party to them and call for compliance with the principles and standards contained in each instrument. Not so well known is the fact that signing these treaties already creates an obligation in the period between signing and ratification, i.e., states agree to refrain, in good faith, from acts that would defeat the objectives and purposes of the treaty.

2. Governments are actually required to harmonize their national legislation with international HR standards. For that, they need to examine their domestic legislation accordingly and carry out an analysis of existing policies; also, to refer to constitutional and domestic legal standards, as well as the government’s signed and ratified international HR obligations.*

*: We constantly need to remind governments that, at the 2005 UN World Summit. they did re-commit themselves to integrate the promotion and protection of HR into their national policies. As civil society, we can give them technical assistance to meet those commitments, but comply they must.

3. The above is often hampered by HR still being viewed with suspicion, as an external conditionality or the latest development fad or donor import. These concerns are not infrequently voiced in good faith (but out of ignorance) **, although sometimes they mask a desire to avoid HR obligations.

**: Just think how many of us have been or are unintentionally complicit with HR abuses committed by our or other governments. There simply is no such a thing as unintentional discrimination!

4. Therefore, to ultimately succeed, the challenge is to use HR in ways that people can identify-with and can internalize in the context of their own lives. Why? Because people have to reach a consensus on the causes of HR violations before they even consider demanding action to end the same.

Some further precisions are probably called for at this point:

i) On progressive realization

5. Often, governments use never-ending progressive realization tactics as an excuse for deferring or relaxing their efforts. ***

***: Remember: Civil and political rights have immediate effect (right to life, right of association, right to equal access to justice). Conversely, economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) are to be implemented progressively, except for core obligations that have to be implemented immediately. In ESCR, of immediate implementation are: no discrimination, no regression, taking concrete steps towards the full realization of rights, monitoring progress and the availability of mechanisms of redress before a competent court or other adjudicator. [Key here is a) that aggrieved claim holders are to have the opportunity for recourse where duties are not met and b) that cultural claims cannot be invoked to justify HR violations].

6. One important way to keep track of progressive realization is paying attention to the impact of governments execution of budgets on different social groups. For instance, gender responsive budgeting does influence the rights of women.

ii) On General Comments

7. Treaty bodies have produced General Comments that clarify HR standards and give guidance on what these standards actually mean in practice for each specific codified right; they interpret the respective treaties and clarify their scope and meaning. ****

****: GENERAL COMMENTS ADOPTED BY THE COMMITTEE ON ESCR: General Comment No. 1: Reporting by States parties; GC No. 2: International technical assistance measures; GC No. 3: The nature of States parties’ obligations; GC No. 4: The right to adequate housing; GC No. 5: Persons with disabilities; GC No. 6: The economic, social and cultural rights of older persons; GC No. 7: The right to adequate housing; GC No. 8: The relationship between economic sanctions and respect for economic, social and cultural rights; GC No. 9: The domestic application of the ESCR Covenant; GC No. 10: The role of national human rights institutions in the protection of economic, social and cultural rights; GC No. 11: Plans of action for primary education; GC No. 12: The right to adequate food; GC No. 13: The right to education; GC No. 14: The right to the highest attainable standard of health; and GC No. 15: The right to water.

iii) On the roles of claim  holders and duty bearers

8. During the identification of those with the role of duty bearers*****, we have to ask four key questions upfront: Who are they? What are their duties? Who of them is a violator? Is there a need for remedy?

*****: Duty bearer roles are always defined in relation to claim holders.

9. Identifying pertinent duty bearers depends on which rights are being violated or are not being fulfilled and who the claim holders are in that case.

10. For those with the role of claim holders, we have to ask: Who are they? What are their claims? Which of their rights is/are being violated?

11. Claim holders must have the triple capacity of exercising their rights, formulating claims and seeking redress. When formulating a claim, claim holders must know what they are entitled-to, know how to ask for it and know who to ask for it. Seeking redress includes seeking compensation for an unfulfilled obligation that can be either positive or negative. Remedies can be sought at either judicial, administrative and/or political level.

12. Processes that empower claim holders and duty bearers in their respective roles lead to more sustained results. For this to materialize, both claim holders and duty bearers must be ongoingly involved in monitoring and evaluation.

13. At  the end of the assessment of these roles, we are left to identify 4-5 claim holders and 4-5 key duty bearers and 1-2 of the most important rights/duty relationships that need to be addressed as a matter of priority.

iv) On capacity analysis and gaps

14. Capacity gaps found both in claim holders’ and duty bearers’ respective roles have to be assessed, i.e., gaps: in knowledge, in responsibility, in motivation, in leadership, in authority and in access to and control of resources.

15. As pointed out above, the respective development of capacities to follow cannot only be a technocratic process; it also must entail engaging participants in needed social, political, legal and institutional changes.

16. The HR-based outputs aimed-at must thus, first and foremost, contribute to closing the capacity gap of claim holders, of duty bearers, as well as closing the gaps in the local legal, institutional and political frameworks.

17. Working with claim holders only, to empower them in their capacity to claim their rights, will not be effective if similar efforts are not made with duty bearers in an effort to muster their capacity and their commitment to ensure the right services are in place to respond to people’s entitlements.

v) On the human rights-based approach (HRBA)

18. The HRBA lifts intersectoral barriers and facilitates addressing common social and political hurdles that are behind capacity gaps of claim holders and of duty bearers in all the different sectors. It also shapes the type of relations with partners in other sectors by applying a holistic lens that looks at the big picture.

19. We do not deny the HRBA is time-intensive; it primarily requires devoting time to both claim holders and duty bearers capacity building; in other words, setting up ongoing, sorely needed, HR learning opportunities.

20. Furthermore, it is very important to gather information on good practices on the adoption of the HRBA so as to build up the evidence base needed to show effectiveness.

vi) On the HR results chain

21. As you know, the levels we aim-for in the development results chain are outputs, outcomes, impact and sustainability. In HR work, outcomes seek changes in development conditions and improvements in the performance of claim holders and of duty bearers (e.g., changes in their respective behavior). Impact is reached when the specific rights selected for fulfillment are finally realized. Processes are important, because, for us, the how is just as important as what is finally achieved.

22. Rights-based outputs close capacity gaps of claim holders and duty bearers; they create conditions for them to perform their respective roles.

23. Rights-based outcomes improve claim holders’ and duty bearers’ performance, i.e., they bring about positive changes in their individual behavior and that of the organizations they work in.

24. Rights-based impacts actually mean rights are realized and duty bearers are meeting their obligations.

vii) On HR principles and standards

25. The HRBA entails consciously and systematically paying attention to HR standards and principles in all aspects of development programming work.

26. Principles provide the playing rules for de development process.******

******: We talk about process principles (universality and inalienability, individuality, interdependence and interrelatedness) and content principles (participation and inclusiveness, equality and non-discrimination, accountability and rule of law).

27. Standards provide the minimum normative content of a right or entitlement, i.e., the types of claims and obligations that the right implies at the minimum, in practice. Standards correspond to the minimum level of policy an programming actions/activities necessary to make sure a right is being fulfilled. They are the minimum content of entitlements and obligations against which duty bearers, especially organs of the state, can be held accountable for. Examples of standards are articles in the HR treaties, in General Comments, in national legislation and in constitutions, as well as HR standards of the Right to Food that are found in Art. 11 of the CESCR and in GC 12. For the Right to Health, minimum standards are adequacy, access availability and quality of services (3AQ), as well as access to clean water, to food, to care and to shelter.

28. A key question to ask here is: Are national standards for positive discrimination or affirmative action recognized and applied?

In closing

29. Some tactical tips flow from all the above, namely:

• If government officials resist, turn to religious leaders, to elders, to parliamentarians, to national HR institutions, to national civil society organizations, to international and local NGOs, to UN agencies, to labor unions, to women’s and youth organizations…leaving no stone unturned.
• If the language of HR causes resistance, choose alternative ways of phrasing things without changing the content of what needs to be achieved. (Do not use HR language if it is not appropriate).
• Knowing the opposition you are facing (where they are coming from) is key to successful negotiations.

30. Bottom line, HR stand to define the content of the development objectives. They delineate the playing field in which development is to take place. One would want to think that it is clear to development workers what this means. But there has been limited operational guidance as to how HR are to be best integrated into development programs –thus the challenge for a massive worldwide HR learning effort. [This Reader operates in this realm and contributes its grain of salt to that].

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

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Adapted from UNFPA,  A HRBA to Programming: Practical implementation manual and training materials, 2010.

Human Rights Reader 272

The GNP/capita ratio between rich and poor countries is 1:100; the difference in health expenditures among the same is 1:1000. (L. Chen)

1. While health and human rights advocates have, from the start, taken a global perspective on the causes of ill-health, social medicine and particularly social epidemiology have been slower to catch up. This is not an  assertion to be taken lightly. This, simply because advancing global health and health equity against the odds of a wide variety of threats –including abusive non-caring actors, unjustifiable reasoning and procrastination, and plain complacency of those who have the power to make a difference– requires the adoption of a perspective that puts human rights (HR) and the human right to health at the center.

2. “Achieving health equity within a generation* is possible, it is the right thing to do, and now is the right time to do it.” This statement in the Report of WHO’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health is not meant to be hollow rhetoric. Why? Because the human right to health presents a compelling case for action on health and on the social determinants of health. It implies that if individuals have a right to health, then they also have a right to the determinants of health being overcome.

*: What is meant by closing the gap in a generation is that the goal of social action is to flatten the social gradient in health by leveling up health outcomes across the social spectrum in the next 30 years.

3. There is a more than sufficiently plausible causal chain that links political decisions and social action geared at meaningful changes in the health of entire populations and especially on the health of the lower socioeconomic groups. Despite this plausibility, social epidemiology has chosen to primarily look at biomedical causality chains instead.

4. A social environment that does not respect, protect and fulfill the social, economic and cultural rights (to health,  nutrition, education, shelter…) and to civil and political liberties can indeed be accused of having a role in the chain of causation and distribution of preventable ill-health, malnutrition and mortality.

5. So far, the problem with the social determinants (more formally so than in practice) has been on how to frame the rights associated with them if and when they are not explicitly identified in human rights law. In other words, how to reconcile an understanding of the dire health situation on the ground with the formal texts of human rights law has been a dilemma for hardnosed analysts. But, although it is true that HR law does not guarantee the right to be free of, for example, TB, a strong case can be made for it when interpreting the texts pertaining to the human right to health.

6. To carry things to an extreme: What if one believes, for example, that the provision of sutures is not only a reasonable and feasible means to prevent deaths, but that it should be seen as a human right? Although no explicit human right to sutures is stated in either the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, or in the Right to Health’s General Comment No. 14, the existing language and rights in these legal human rights documents can be interpreted to provide individuals with a right to such essential health care supplies as sutures, sterile drapes, and anesthesia.

7. To insist that the full spectrum of international HR rights law must be respected, of course, requires not only its respect, but also the means to enforce it, and mechanisms to hold individuals and institutions accountable for its violation.

8. What I am aiming at here is at proactively deriving health-related standards from human rights law ** to infuse them into health programs and to direct them to govern actions of individuals delivering health care services on the ground.

**: Note that this rises arguments for advancing human rights not only in health, but also in social action in other areas.

9. Although we may be working in health, we need to apply the broader definition of human rights that encompasses all economic, social and cultural rights. A more vigorous enforcement of these human rights will improve people’s living conditions, i.e., tackle the social determinants, leading to better health outcomes.

10. When and where it is clearly visible that the social structure –i.e., the social, economic, and underlying political conditions– is condoning or, indeed, directly causing avoidable disease and preventable deaths on a large scale, the human rights framework emerges as the only currently available and viable mechanism to fight back; in such a setting, HR act as an empowering tool for those who suffer unacceptable violations of their right to health –a tool to help them bridge the gap of inequality and deprivation.

11. Moreover, in the present era of increasing globalization, international human rights law is the best available instrument to address the ill-health caused by transnational actors who, in many cases, are more powerful than many a government.

12. As Dr Jonathan Mann once said: “A society that realizes the full breadth of human rights will produce healthier individuals and populations”.

13. It is only when it is accepted that the absence of the right to health is the cause of preventable ill-health and mortality, that the causal role and the importance of the right to health will stand firm and unopposed.***

***: We are reminded here that human rights are not natural facts or objects, but ethical and political assertions about claims, privileges, liberties, immunities, and powers in relation to various human capabilities. (A. Sen)

14. Unnecessary and avoidable misunderstandings result from attempting to deemphasize the importance of HR as direct causal components of the pattern and distribution of preventable ill-health, malnutrition and mortality. Actually, the health and human rights framework as a necessity supplements the analysis of the social causes, the distribution, and the consequences of preventable ill-health and mortality as done by social epidemiology.

Are institutions and health care professionals agents for a sustainable social transformation?

15. We have got to get health practitioners to embrace the fight against  entrenched orthodoxies in many health areas, as well as get them to champion the enforcement and the realization of people’s economic, social and cultural rights.

16. For the practitioner of social medicine, the primary aim thus is both to address avoidable ill-health, malnutrition and mortality through his/her healing art, as well as to contribute to the enforcement of economic, social and cultural rights, or any other right –for their own sake.

17. What is said here is that it is futile to try to reduce inequalities in health by acting on aspects of health care delivery only (i.e., acting on the supply side only).

18. In practice, what fellow practitioners need is to identify what is required in the form of social action to influence policies, regulations and laws, as well as actions on the ground. This invariably means addressing the social determinants of ill-health and health inequalities by influencing local and national deliberations so that decisions respect the human rights principles    (i.e., universality and inalienability, individuality, interdependence and interrelatedness, participation and inclusiveness, equality and non-discrimination, and accountability and rule of law).

19. When HR standards and principles are incorporated into health-related disciplines such as epidemiology, medicine and operations research, they do provide a plan of action not only for practitioners, but also for communities and for states –in other words, the human rights discourse also ought to become a community health planning tool. (L. Freedman)

20. It is thus unacceptable today to continue maintaining that the causes that are directly and indirectly (and unnecessarily) killing people are not a human rights concerns.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

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Adapted from The Right to Sutures: Social epidemiology, human rights, and social justice, S. Venkatapuram, R. Bell, and M. Marmot, Health and Human Rights, Vol. 12, No. 2 (2010).

Human Rights Reader 271

Accountability in foreign aid

The international legal regime established through the various human rights treaties is the existing global accountability framework which we should  be drawing upon much, much more.

1. Efforts to increase the type of foreign aid that strengthens human rights institutions and accountabilities should go in tandem with the actual disbursement of foreign aid funds. But is this the case?

2. As I had said earlier, mutual accountability is the least developed Paris Declaration principle that would definitely benefit from a human rights (HR) perspective so that civil society’s capacity to hold donors and their own (recipient) governments accountable needs to be strengthened.

3. A number of the deep-seated problems in the current foreign aid system stem from an imbalance of accountabilities –with ‘upwards’ accountability to donors prioritized over ‘downwards’ accountability to the poor countries and to the people aid is supposed to help. (ActionAid) Such an accountability towards the ultimate recipients of aid is simply missing.

4. Domestic accountability requires a certain level of democracy and of functioning institutions for individuals to be able to claim their rights and participate in decision making. In a democracy, this duty must be met by the  recipient government. But, as long as many governments are far from democratic, it is legitimate to expect the donors to take up such a duty.

5. In the donor countries, citizens can better hold (and have a history of holding) their government to account for the way their money is spent and by providing leverage for the negotiation of HR issues. So, through demanding greater legal accountability of donor agencies, leverage can be used to demand the respect of HR standards and principles in foreign aid, as well as the setting of annual benchmarks to measure progress in that aid.

6. The ever-present pressure on donors of showing results turns accountability further outwards on them instead of supporting the national inwards processes necessary for achieving ownership and domestic accountability.

Aid darlings and aid orphans

-We have to recognize the existence of aid darlings and aid orphans and must, therefore, improve the unfair global allocation of aid resources.

-On the other hand, aid is not the route to development anyway; it creates dependency and erodes self-reliance.

7. Many of the bilateral donor agencies and development banks use the phrase ‘respect, protect and promote’ instead of the correct phrase ‘respect, protect and fulfill’. The omission of ‘fulfill’ is deliberate (!), reflecting these countries rejection of the Right to Development which is seen by them as an acceptance of an obligation to provide development assistance. (As much as the very uncritical acceptance of the ‘aid effectiveness’ dogma which is widely prevalent, other rhetorical terms are also often used to avoid blatant existing contradictions). Development today must be seen within the realm of the HR framework and, in so doing, development assistance must now be seen as a right rather than an instrument of solidarity.

8. Ultimately, human rights work exposes the political dimension of aid and of poverty. This being so, it is claim holders who have to ensure that the technical assistance on offer through foreign aid is truly demand-driven. For this, both donor and partner patterns of behavior must change; but this will only happen if the underlying incentives shift. I had said earlier that country ownership of development programs should not be equated with government ownership. So, for example, if gender equality is not an explicit national priority (and in many cases it is not), the incentive is not there. The rhetorical question here is: Will gender equality then be entirely excluded from donor agendas …as HR in general are?

9. The emphasis in current (and past) foreign aid is (has) simply (been) too much centered on the ‘plumbing’ or ‘mechanisms’ of the aid delivery system and not enough on reducing poverty and inequality as called for by the Right to Development.

10. Under the pretext of making aid more effective, the aid effectiveness paradigm has become a form of collective colonialism by Northern donors when engaging with Southern countries that, through weakness, vulnerability or psychological dependency, allow themselves to be subjected to it.* (Y. Tandon)

*: The explicit recognition of the importance of South-South cooperation is another important issue and is not explored here.

11. There is simply no aid effectiveness without development effectiveness and the gender equality, environment and human rights perspective must be crucially incorporated to even have a chance to achieve this century’s development goals. (J. Cedergren)

12. In closing: The lessons learned from this Reader are quite dramatic. There is a need for more training. The fact is that there is a fundamental misunderstanding in multilateral and bilateral agencies, governments, NGOs and other civil society organizations; it is about the real need for training. The move from a traditional basic needs or human development program thinking to an understanding of the human rights-based framework to development and to development programming requires a total mind shift. This cannot be achieved by one or two four-day workshops; it requires at least such workshops several times a year for 2-3 years! No agency or government has come close to that, and it is exactly this lack of serious training that has hindered an accelerated adoption of the HR-based framework.

Claudio Schuftan in Ho Chi Minh City

cshuftan@phmovement.org

____________________________

Adapted from How to integrate and strengthen a human rights-based approach in program-based approaches, Urban Jonsson, February 2010.