Human Rights Reader 265

- When one leaves behind problems without solutions, one does not leave, one absconds.  (J. Koenig)

- A powerful interest of a few has the potential to sway the situation for many.

- The truth of the activists does not coincide with that of the ones that accumulate wealth. (Doing good for the cause of justice requires personal, unselfish commitment; doing good for any other cause requires incentives that buy commitment). The words of truth are not written with gold, but with blood, with tears, with mother’s milk and/or with excrements.  A society happy in its anesthesia does not need activists. Actually, such a society has found the way to silence activists. Activists are the denouncers of inertia –of no action on human rights. Human rights are thus an attitude. (C. J. Cela)

19. On the normative side, HR activists are expected:

• To stand behind two imperatives: a refusal to lie about what they know and a fierce resistance to oppression. (Albert Camus)
• To paint the big picture that conceptualizes and contextualizes reality.
• To recognize that everybody shares a responsibility for the human rights (HR) issues identified.
• To carry out seven key roles to address issues of equity, namely the roles of  educator, watchdog, resources broker, community developer, partnerships developer, advocate and catalyst. (R. Labonte)
• To fight for more equitable distribution of state resources to the historically marginalized groups.
• To detect violations or situations which pose a risk of HR violations.
• To realize that claim holders take a lot of things for granted –often myths that need to be debunked.
• To put pressure on duty bearers by aligning claim holders’ interests, identifying and working with ‘champions’ in the community and by going for early wins to reach tipping points –since delayed decisions have a cost.
• To assume a leadership role in their communities.
• To develop trust so that new roles and greater responsibilities are taken up by claim holders so that they come away with a different frame of mind regarding their ability to successfully claim their HR.
• To oversee the implementation of the collective decisions arrived at.
• To channel people’s demands into veritable people’s movements.
• To provide some key answers, and to oversee the implementation of actions agreed upon –including the placing of concrete demands and the negotiation of needed time frames. (Remember: Action unites, words and procrastination divide).
• To negotiate agreements between competing interests and to act as brokers allowing the community to solve their differences and to take the initiative in pushing them to demand their HR.
• To assess the state’s HR efforts in terms of its legal structures (constitution and laws).
• To assess the measures taken and not taken by the state in the realm of HR (what is being done) and to assess outcomes (what has been actually achieved).
• To choose areas for their own further learning and engagement*, and
• To co-opt important allies ** (the middle class, the media, political parties, trade unions, public servants) and to neutralize opponents of the HR-based framework.

*: Often, the training of HR activists is not necessarily based on a reflection generated by what they read in history or social sciences books, but is based on their own personal history; their thinking can be said to be ‘anecdotally-analytical’. (A. Gomez)

**: But by interacting with new allies, they also risk being co-opted themselves or losing direction or momentum. Or, otherwise, their positive motivation can fast turn into frustration.

20. HR activists are further expected to determine:

• Whether any HR elements have been incorporated into the country’s development agenda and whether additional elements still need to be introduced.
• Whether HR elements are being implemented by the state at all.
• Whether implemented HR actions are making progress as quickly as possible.
• Whether specific HR policies are being effective and have eliminated prior HR violations.
• Whether non-discrimination is being universally ensured and how.
• Whether international cooperation is playing a positive role in fostering HR.
• Whether victims have the possibility to assert their rights and have access to mechanisms of redress.
• Whether what should be getting done is not being done.
• Whether what is being done is done incorrectly and/or inadequately, and
• Whether steps are being taken towards progressively realizing specific HR with appropriate benchmarks being achieved.

What are the determinants of success of human rights activists in implementing human rights reforms?:

21. Normally, the content of a reform is less important in determining whether or not it receives policy and/or legislative approval than, among other things: the timing of the proposal; the way in which the reform proposal is presented; the discussions that are spurred between those with roles of claim holders and of duty bearers; the power relations between these two groups; the existence of appropriate HR-watch institutions to support HR reforms from decision to implementation to monitoring.

22. When demanding reforms, it is important for HR activists to keep in mind the following:

• The expected impact on, and the reactions of those affected by the reform.

• The content of the reform agenda, its timing and its expected effect on other policy areas, and

• The support received from international organizations to sustain the reforms.

23. A number of stages in the demanding-for-reforms-process need to be covered before the demand can be placed successfully; failure in one of them will generally lead to failure of the reform.

Issues particular to the health sector, for instance, include taking into consideration:

• The position assumed by the professional monopolists in the provision of health services (physicians and their associations).

• The role of available information on right to health violations, whether disaggregated or not and who has access to it.

• International comparisons with the functioning of HR-compliant health systems in other countries.

• Matching the design for the proposed HR-based health R-nbasd HR-basedreform with a clear, realistic diagnosis of the actual violations of the right to health in the country.

• Taking advantage of political ‘windows of opportunity’.

• The engagement of both claim holders and duty bearers –especially of those duty bearers holding veto power.

• The use of incentives, to align the interests of all affected by the reform.

• Securing sufficient resources to ‘oil the wheels of change’.

Epilogue:

24. After chronicling over two Readers about all the nice attributes of HR activists, the truth is that the biggest chunk of our work is still to be done. So, paraphrasing the Communist Manifesto, I say: Proletarians of the world, forgive us.

Claudio Schuftan in Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

All HR Readers from 1-211 can be found at www.humaninfo.org/aviva under No.69

_______________________

Adapted from Development in Practice, 19:8, 2009; A. Gomez, Ultimo Patio, Ed. Turmalina, Buenos Aires, 2009; D+C 37:7-8, July/Aug 2010; F+D, 47:2, June 2010; and A. Gomez, Despojos y Semillas, Editorial Belgrano, Buenos Aires, 1997.

Postscript: The tactic used by the strategic enemies of HR is to demoralize, to put-down the self-confidence of claim holders. Depressed people do not win fights against social injustice. This is why HR activists face the challenges ahead cheerfully. Nothing big can be achieved in a sad mood. (A. Jaureche)

Human Rights Reader 264

In dedicated human rights work, it is not about being a bit more leftist or a bit more centrist than others, but it is to offer a viable and better perspective for the future –one in which human rights activists are willing to engage-with actively. Activists do thus dare to boldly and fearlessly presenting the problems at hand, as well as presenting the fairest and most equitable way to solve them. This often implies adopting a matching ideology* This is why good human rights activists are feared more by their foes than by their followers. 29

*: In human rights work, there is no zone of an ‘ideological zero’.

[Note: These two Reader do not intend to be ‘self-congratulatory’ by aggrandizing the image and the role of human rights activists. I here only explore what human rights activists do, can-do, have-to-do and need-to-do --adaptable to the specific settings they work in].

1. As human rights activists, we do engage in combating the inertia rooted in many of our fellow development workers (including those that do not believe in anything, or that believe that everything is useless). But at the same time, in our work, tolerance wins over rigidity and over personal interests. [Note here that tolerance should not mean or be understood as indifference, but as an attitude, one not avoiding conflict (B. Sarlo)].

2. We all do strongly feel we have to act in the name of a vision that is motivating, that goes along with our moral duty, that is not rooted in any dogma. We all also strongly feel that we cannot just cross our arms and do nothing.

3. We further do call on supporters of the idea of human rights (HR) to change their own rules of engagement by switching the political outlook of their work.  For example, turning a researcher into a HR activist involves a reorientation towards a social and political engagement rather than towards academic achievement; it also requires the researcher acquiring new skills, such as building multidisciplinary HR teams and pursuing a different range of civil, political, economic, social and cultural processes and outcomes. For this to become a reality, researchers have to, first, stop being embarrassed of exposing damning evidence.

4. The challenge we do face every day is to try to share the HR belief system that better interprets the shortcomings and injustices of our contemporary world ….and using the HR framework we can do (and do) this by using the HR language in the logic of the possible. (R. Piglia)

5. As HR activists, we do have the ambition of power for the HR movement; it is not enough to complain all the time; we do always project to the future and do aim at surpassing any limited universe of action that does not change power relations and their reproduction. (Not being facetious here, tactically speaking, “between divorce and divorce, it is sometimes OK to be married with power”). Things are complex, but that does not push us to work in small little corners; our horizon is the future… (A. de Negri)

6. We do thus create circumstances for change –circumstances in which, for a change, somebody else now wins and somebody else now loses.

7. We also sometimes do assume the role of proxies for active citizens groups or individuals –advocating on their behalf, particularly on behalf of those who must remain invisible.

8.If we do underestimate people’s no-nonsense intelligence, HR principles will never be respected in society –our own ideas will then risk working against the realization of our ideals. That is why not departing from where people actually are is a grave mistake.

9. As HR activists, we do not deny the complexity of the political and social facts behind what we are struggling for; we also do not believe that ours is an absolute truth. (We do admit that error is always possible). What we ask for is for people to look more lucidly and less arrogantly at the bleak,  discriminating social and political reality that surrounds them.

10. We do not pretend to be ‘illuminators’ by defining the objectives to be pursued in HR work. But we do aim at performing a protagonist’s role in the search for ways out.

11. We do not fear confrontation. Confrontation has been with us for time immemorial: confrontation between force and weakness, between the future and the past, between unity and disintegration, between good and evil.

12. And finally here, we do not confuse obfuscation with firmness.

13. Overcoming many barriers and being humble about what the HR-based framework can deliver, HR activists still need to find a way to primarily fight the reluctance (or incapability) of many to understand that their Welt-Anschaung needs to change towards a HR perspective. Despite all the barriers, policies can be steered towards HR principles **.

**: But HR activists are also keenly aware that policy change does not always lead to actual change.

14. The ‘climate’ or outlook in policy-formulation-processes is constantly changing, so HR activists need to continually adapt their strategies in response to this, especially as donors are under increasing pressure to justify their spending –and even sometimes to adopt the HR-based framework in their ODA/aid. This requires active negotiations and partnership building. It is a necessary investment to engage with ongoing processes and to make sure the funding available is channeled in a HR-responsive way. Therefore, HR activists need to make the monitoring-of-opportunities-to-influence-policy a full-time job. This said, in a way, the role of HR activists is one of ‘advocate-guardians’. But, beware, being advocate-guardians may cause tensions for HR activists arousing the ire of local authorities. (M. Clarke)

15. Furthermore, to increase their understanding of HR issues, HR activists need to work on developing personal bonds in the direction of becoming globally connected***. To raise awareness, develop common agendas and joint solutions, as well as to plan needed collaborations, they need to develop skills of leadership, of personal expression and of communication; they need to listen and learn more about/from  people’s ideas to intimately understand their needs so as to integrate them into a HR-based process. Furthermore, to make action plans together with claim holders, they need to foster this group’s self-esteem by fostering action-oriented HR working groups that can start placing demands, can set agendas for further learning, and can actively engage in mobilization activities in their own communities and beyond.

***: Global issues do have a local and individual dimension. Claim holders must understand they can have an influence on global issues and vice versa; they need to know what they can learn from and contribute to the global experience –and how.

16. Finally here, HR activists need to know when to blend-in as opposed to taking an adversarial role any time it is needed (e.g., when state responsiveness is weak or non-existent).

17. Among many other, here are some practical tips human rights activists can follow in their advocacy:

• Invoking the principles of ideology, enthusiasm, commitment and of social justice without emphasizing good organization, is not enough.
• The use of compelling human stories/testimonies that present current concerns using personal examples is of prime value in HR work.
• Placing demands on online web platforms and on email products have proven to have an impact as have framing messages in ways that better suit target audiences, making presentations in public fora and partaking in petitions or special drives.
• Also, messages are to reach duty bearers through multiple routes and channels.****

****: For instance, periodic lunches with journalists, with legal activists, with parliamentarians, with members of HR commissions, with members of the judiciary, of traditional, of religious and of women’s organizations, with civil society coalitions and with the media are a tactic to be considered seriously.

18. Bottom line, as HR activists, we all the time keep asking ourselves: what are we doing here? What have we done so far? What do we need too do better? …and we keep thanking those anonymous voices that keep driving us.

Claudio Schuftan in Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

_______________________

Adapted from A. Gomez, Tiempo de Descuento, Editorial El Fin de la Noche, Buenos Aires, 2009; A. Gomez, Despojos y Semillas, Editorial Belgrano, Buenos Aires, 1997;  Health Insights, IDS, Issue 78, Oct 2009; D+C, 36:12, Dec. 2009, Development in Practice, 19:8, 2009; and Z. Acevedo Diaz, La Dama de Cristal, Fondo Editorial Casa de las Americas, La Habana, 1999.

Human Rights Reader 250

WHY HUMAN RIGHTS WORK IS TO BE SEEN IN THE REALM OF POLITICAL ACTION.

-We will succeed inasmuch as we display the capacity to mobilize collectively behind human rights as a political goal independent-of and often opposed-to the goals that motivate the state and/or the market.

-Political action and activism are badly undervalued in our community of professionals and intellectuals. It would seem that in it, pretending is more important than being.

The symptoms

1. In a mood of ‘active pessimism’, our peers too often go for the status-quo and procrastinate; the best known way to do that is to get involved in what has been called ‘paralysis in analysis’.

2. Not that the above matters too much, the way things are right now. Why? Because our political leaders are more surrounded by publicists and image makers than by development thinkers. As a result, in an effort to manipulate rather than to solve, they too often try to dress their lies or half truths with the robes of the full truth. (Do not overlook the fact that, in order to lie, one has to know the truth). *

*: If only this lying from our self-serving politicians would cause no harm to human rights…

3. The main problem lies less in the policies the political establishment eventually comes-up with than in the processes that lead to carrying out these policies. Public policies are not simply items on a menu that policy makers pick and choose. Rather, they are first cooked-up by numerous political actors and must then be implemented and sustained over time. At each stage of the process, each of these political actors brings his/her personal interests to the table and is pressured by others as they defend their own respective interests. The quality of the outcomes in the policymaking process thus depends as much on how these different actors interact as on the merits per-se of the policy being promoted; it is the political and the economic context that ultimately shapes both the opportunities and the constraints in its implementation. Therefore, to put it differently, the issue is not only with the nature of the interventions pursued by the state (“producing”, “regulating”, or “distributing”), but also with the institutions that constitute the state, i.e., their incentives, the rules that govern their day-to-day functioning and –in our case– their till-now absent human rights accountability…..” (E. Stein and M. Tommasi, Interamerican Development Bank)

4. Politics also influences how decision-makers use evidence. It should come as no surprise to you that they can and do ignore evidence –notably, in our case, the evidence of ongoing human rights (HR) violations. Moreover, the roles they play in policy making depend on specific moments or windows of opportunity –politics is always time-bound; there is no in-temporal politics.

5. For this Reader, it is not merely questioning whether policies are (or end-up-being) pro-HR, but about opening formal political processes in which claim holders use a political approach with an accent on power analyses so as to promote a firm pro-HR and pro-democracy strategy. **  Hence, using the HR-based framework, claim holders are collectively empowered to exact accountability from duty bearers. Ergo, accountability without people’s voice and influence is nonsensical.

**: Remember: In HR work we call for direct democracy, including a) the collective action that historically has allowed poor and excluded groups to make their voices heard; b) the way in which the-condition-of-being-relatively-powerless can become internalized; and c) the ability to negotiate and influence decisions by engaging with the political system. (D. Green)

6. But beware, just bringing-up the political origins of the long-drawn-out disregard for human rights from a historical perspective to explain the current state of affairs is necessary-but-not-sufficient as a political input in HR work. Additionally, opposing-truth-to-power remains the ultimate cornerstone to succeed in our work. We thus have to understand power –including our own! …and that is political. (D. Walker)

7. The powerful take their power for granted, as if they had been born with it….and that is political.  The three key questions this raises are: Do they have that power by themselves or because we give it to them? Without us, would they really have any power? Are we then not the powerful, since it is us who confer that power to them?  Food for thought here.

8. The Neoliberal Era we live-in inherited its transcendental values from the previous era of Capitalism; these values have persisted to the extent that they are not even discussed or questioned –especially as relates to certain rights of individuals such as the right to private property and what comes with it, i.e., the market economy and its excesses, marginalization, the lack of equality in front of the law… But, even if for now a winner, neoliberalism, is dying –no matter how much its proponents try to keep it alive.

The latter proponents will one day have to pay dearly for the trickle-down-redistribution-fiasco they tricked us into believing. A course correction of a-turn-mistakenly-taken by humanity is a must!

9. Actually, neoliberalism is perhaps the worst explanatory system of the world we live in. ***  To survive, the neoliberal myth of progress has for decades now had to take-on the onslaught of the news about appalling social outcomes, the deterioration of the environment, of countries’ debt… Neoliberalism is (and has been) clearly useless as a global analytical tool and, as such, has probably distorted history. There simply are realities that stubbornly resist its interpretations. It is ultimately its ambition that will bring it to its feet. The toolbox of Adam Smith and David Riccardo is not made to explain the world with its uneven power relations and the conflicts the same bring about.

***: More than what we think, ideologies are alive and well, despite the current rhetoric about their death.

10. The central question though is not only to end the grip of neoliberalism, but also to put in place the HR-based system that will follow. For now, a mid-term strategy for this is missing, primarily because this requires a confrontation between social forces the world over.

The actors and the actions

11. We often call on civil society as our strategic partners in HR work. What we call civil society is a cultural and social (more than a political) construct born over many decades. Now, to get actively involved in HR work, civil society organizations partnering with us need to adopt the political stand we are talking about here; some already have, some not yet.

12. It is evident to me that, for HR to become entrenched, civil society organizations taking up HR work have to shed those ‘recurring errors of interpretation’ we have seen them falling into over-and-over again –and I am not saying this is easy. The turn-around process will require a favorable breeding ground so that the faulty perceptions people bring with them from very early-on and from previous work experiences can be changed. Therein lies our challenge.

13. We can simply no longer be bogged down with the reformist attitudes of many civil society organizations somehow linked to the motivations of the more formal, mainstream institutions of politics and of the state that lead them to adopt a ‘sanitized’ role in the realm of civil societies. The normative expectations of those civil society organizations and their dubious buy-ins in projects of the prevailing top-down system should be a warning call for us in the HR movement. In the realm of HR, we need political unity and consensus among progressive civil society organizations. ****

****: Currently, manifest divisions exist that are marked by different political allegiances detracting from the potential collective strength civil society could have.

14. Civil society organizations are to both reflect and respond to the contingencies in the prevailing global and local political environment. They have to visualize the possibilities for their HR action in such an environment –and the HR framework provides the political vision for that. (N. George)

15. As this Reader has said many times, HR relies on direct civic engagement in exacting accountability (much beyond voting). This, since the electoral route represents perhaps the weakest route to accountability. It therefore becomes a must that accountability be transferred so that the collective will of communities can be heeded (see direct democracy above). Accountability without people’s voice and influence is nonsensical. *****

*****: The attributes of accountability are: calling those responsible to account (making them answerable); requiring accountable action (may include sanctions); obtaining redress/compensation, when due.

16. Just to remind ourselves: HR accountability consists of notions that are central to justice such as equity, power…and addressing the impunity of the powerful. ****** As such, it has to generate information to be held and used by claim holders, to be fed back to duty bearers and to be used in advocacy, in negotiating key issues and in demanding government and non-governmental actors’ responsiveness.

******: When emphasizing only social and not political accountability, we can rightfully be accused of not taking the political determinants of HR violations seriously enough.

17. In this sense, citizens engagement via public commissions and public hearings are but two ways HR work can proceed and has proceeded. Moreover, an import task in exacting HR accountability is to involve traditional local leaders, as well as local elected representatives.

18. Bottom line: As HR activists, our challenge is not only to remedy the various political problems in the prevailing top-down/HR insensitive decision-making, but also –through human rights learning activities– to actively combat the widespread political apathy and/or resistance to change when it comes to HR.

19. Because acting politically is the way to reach ‘ground zero’ in HR work, as activists, we have to look for new engagements with progressive political parties and civil society organizations and with labor unions and women and youth movements to really create a durable political front for HR.

Perhaps the biggest challenge here…

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org

___________

Mostly adapted from A. Gomez, Tiempo de Descuento, Editorial El Fin de la Noche, Buenos Aires, 2009;  Health Insights, IDS, Issue 78, Oct 2009; Development in Practice, 19:8, 2009; and C. Fuentes, Adan en Eden, Alfaguara, Santillana Ediciones Generales, Buenos Aires, 2009.

1. You may often have asked yourself as to whether your individual contribution in the field of health and/or nutrition makes or is making any difference.  This, of course, depends.  Alone, each of us is indeed helpless to change very much.  Standing alone to-right-the-world’s-wrongs is a false ideal. We have thus plenty to learn from the lessons of mutuality or even of militancy.  Individual concern (let alone compassion…) is just clearly less powerful than organized solidarity. (Tikkun)   Or, to use an old adage, ‘divided we beg, united we demand’.

2. Sporadic, collective grassroots-organized acts are happening all the time   –mostly the result of non-political and personal leadership initiatives. To make these acts really count and add-up to something, they need to be progressively channeled into new patterns of higher political meaning and political impact. Human rights activists are needed to lead the way in such a transition.  This, because without continuity and follow-through actions, popular struggles will remain a heap of toothless words. (S. Ophir)

3. In the human rights (HR) context, two questions arise here: Are the fields of health and nutrition legitimate and good ports of entry for HR activism? And if the answer is yes: Are we ready for such a challenge?

4. If the answer is again yes, new forms of progressive HR learning and HR action are then needed in our line of work. Actually, to act effectively in the time before us, we need to first develop a more widely shared strategy that unequivocably points in the HR framework direction.  When adopting such a strategy, we cannot merely denounce; we must also announce a new order –an order with more empowering-health-and-nutrition-alternative-actions.  We must thus strive to become proactive, not merely reactive.

5. Today, together with the victims of health and nutrition rights violations, the inescapable challenge before us is to redefine the strategies we use in order to combat preventable ill-health, preventable malnutrition and preventable premature deaths. This invariably entails (simultaneously at the global, national and local levels) addressing and combating the social, economic and political determinants of the violations of the UN-sanctioned Right to Health and Right to Nutrition.  Only thus will we be able to overcome the present crisis in overall development thinking and praxis we now are stuck-in in these two domains.  (R. Boyte)

6. As an avant-garde, we not only need to reflect on new institutional ways of supporting grassroots HR initiatives, but we also need to become more proactive in organizing them, as well as helping generate new forms of HR knowledge and of practices-of-direct-democracy in local government. In the process, we also need to reassess the pertinence and the role of foreign aid and of private (non-official) international development cooperation in the fields of health and nutrition. This, to either reject both or to help redefine them so that they, once and for all, fit the demands of local communities.  (S. Padron)  If the latter cannot be done, yes indeed, it is high time poor countries begin considering turning down foreign aid.

7. Still proactively, we first need to help create a shared critical awareness of the immorality of the prevailing social, economic and political system responsible for the violations of the Right to Health and the Right to Nutrition we are basically left to deal with as health and nutrition professionals. For this, among other, we need to bring people both in the rich and the poor countries to a point where they become more vocal in their demands to change the mechanisms that lead to the conditions perpetuating ill-health, malnutrition, poverty and injustice. And this can only be achieved by creating a growing discontent that leads to a ‘constructive anger’ and to commensurate actions that address such injustice. Action along these lines is desirable (preferably preemptive rather than reactive), and should even be made an inescapable outcome of effective health, nutrition and development learning. The HR activist/educator thus has a key role in our midst.

8. If we are to be consequent with effective people’s empowerment, we will have to foster an authentic people-centered development (in our case using health and nutrition as a port of entry to HR issues). For this we will have to further:

i) move away from coercive or top-down practices involving any kind of ‘acceptance-as-a-fait-accompli’ (e.g., in family planning?), and move into consensus-building practices involving legitimate beneficiaries’ approval; ergo, do things departing from the-way-people-see-them in their own environment;

ii) revolutionize people’s expectations helping them to move away from fatalistic outlooks;

iii) help define a new type of collective, community sense of responsibility that replaces the prevailing individual identity;

iv) help legitimize and enforce all UN-sanctioned people’s rights;

v) increase the negotiation and bargaining capacity –or at least the defense capacity– of claim holders;

vi) as needed, aim at overcoming constraining local political structures (formal and informal);

vii) concentrate on changing the local inter-generational dynamics when required, and very specially concentrate on changing the role of women (our main contact in health and nutrition work) in overall development work;

viii) work with people towards the goal of ultimately controlling their own community resources, fighting for the resources they need from outside, and taking initiatives to shape their own future through a strengthened, militant organization;

ix) make sure people get access to relevant information, especially the type of information that will help them hold their government officials accountable; *

x) help redefine the roles and methods of so-called ‘participation’ shifting them towards methods of ‘empowerment’ –in our case in health and nutrition;

xi) constantly re-gather groups becoming marginalized, trying to make sure their special interests are accommodated in the general strategy;

xii) secure concrete short and long-term positive results for claim holders (with an initial emphasis on short-term results to foster self-confidence);

xiii) together with claim holders, monitor and evaluate said results, especially with regards to the degree of  popular empowerment being achieved, as well as probing the equality of the benefits accrued; and

xiv) promote self-education with the aim of achieving faster results.

*: Information given to people for use through the fashionable ‘social marketing’ approach is definitely not the type of information conducive to any meaningful participation; social marketing simply does not bring about the needed sustainable structural changes –at best, it allows people to tolerate and cope-with an unjust situation. Social marketing tells people what to do, but not what for  and why…

9. Only through the constant practice of such people-centered development activities –often through trial-and-error– will we overcome the limits of existing flawed development models and theories. (L. Padron)

10. In short, starting with/from our work in health and nutrition, we should all contribute, to the best of our abilities, to generate popular alternative development strategies with the corresponding set of tactics to implement them.  But to make a difference, remember that standing alone changes little; so: Network with other like-minded activists in the HR field!

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org