Food for a historical thought
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MORE ON THE POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS WORK
What should drive human rights (HR) activists in their daily
work? Why choose HR and not another field? Why the appeal of
working, either locally and/or globally, to alleviate the suf-
fering of those whose rights are being violated? Are HR activ-
ists more aware of the political implications of their daily ac-
tivities both as professionals and as concerned citizens (two
inseparable spheres of action)? Can anybody working in develop-
ment evade the responsibilities that these questions bring with
them?
The following series of Readers explores what the political
awareness of HR activists entails, what the political implica-
tions of their daily activities are, and further suggests the
actual key role they are expected to play henceforth in the
global fight for the respect, protection and fulfilment of Human
Rights.
Over the next sixteen Readers, then -- in short, punctual page-
or two page-long pieces -- I will explore different aspects of
the politics of HR work; all of these Readers together still are
but an incomplete (admittedly subjective and thus controversial)
attempt to set the political infrastructure of the new Human
Rights-based approach to development. Reactions are thus wel-
come; I promise to post those to all the current recipients of
the HR Reader series.
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn
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Human Rights Reader 55
HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS ARE PART OF A SOCIAL DISEASE WITH HIS-
TORICAL ROOTS. (Part 1 of 16)
1.It is the prevailing determinants of the social and economic
conditions of a society that lead to the violation of the rights
of a sizeable sector of the population; these we consider to be
the basic determinants. The more proximate causes resulting in
the host of human rights (HR) violations we see on a daily basis
we consider to be immediate determinants.
2. Basic (structural) causes explain most HR violations in so-
cieties around the world.
They usually relate to the major dialectical contradictions in a
given society; they are not removed or even touched by tradi-
tional development programs or projects. Therefore, in the long
run, the fight against the violations of the right to food, for
example, becomes an eminently political struggle and not a tech-
nical one. Technology cannot achieve the fundamental structural
changes needed to end hunger and malnutrition...or, for that
matter, end most HR violations. Removal of a few (or even one)
of the main basic causes is more likely to secure the right to
food than acting on many immediate determinants simultaneously.
3. Nowadays, basic determinants are more frequently than not in-
deed mentioned and identified by development planners analyzing
specific situations, but the plans they devise seldom address
these determinants frontally.
4. Immediate determinants are more directly related to the ac-
tual conditions that result in violated rights. Among other,
they include health, nutritional, environmental, and educational
determinants, which are those most frequently identified and se-
lected for direct intervention by Western (Northern) development
planning approaches. In the past, emphasis on these technical
approaches has also justified the need for Western-trained ex-
perts who often come with ready-made analyses.
5. Taken together, any attack on the immediate determinants only
leads to a package of solutions or interventions that pretend to
be apolitical and free of ideological connotations or influence.
6. However, in the final analysis, one is either bowing to the
system or objecting to it, totally or partially. Any of these
are political stances.
7. Development planners keep inventing new "more comprehensive"
or "multisectoral" approaches to old problems as if these would
change the major contradictions and the distribution of power
within the system that is at the root of the many HR violations
to begin with.
8. The following are but some examples of national-level conse-
quences of basic causes: Low percentage of national income re-
ceived by the lowest 20 percent of the population (income mald-
istribution); land maldistribution; high percentage of landless
agricultural laborers; rural unemployment; urban migration and
urban unemployment; low minimum wage policies in all sectors of
the economy --not in tune with the cost of a minimum food basket
and not following food price inflation; low farm-gate prices for
food crops as opposed to their urban retail prices; agricultural
marketing boards' exploitative practices towards small farmers,
imbalance between cash and food crops (biased land allocation
and incentives in favor of the former); low percentage of for-
eign agricultural export earnings reinvested in agriculture;
food import policies contradicting national efforts to increase
local food production; neglect of the primary (agricultural)
sector with the share of agriculture in the national GDP slip-
ping in favor of the secondary (industry) and tertiary (ser-
vices) sectors of the economy; credit bias towards the modern
agricultural sector as opposed to the traditional agricultural
sector; lack of agricultural input subsidization for small farm-
ers, especially for food crops; foreign aid not reaching the
neediest; women left outside development programs with little
incentive to incorporate them in the money economy; little em-
phasis and scanty budgets for genuine community development and
for rural cooperatives; low primary school enrolment rates espe-
cially for girls; feeble efforts to increase adult literacy --
especially for women; and, scanty budgets for preventive health
services.
9. What is here being emphasized is that, in the same example,
malnutrition as a social disease cannot be cured through medical
interventions (not even in a wide comprehensive package) nor can
it be cured through the latter plus a package of agricultural
interventions: redistribution of resources and the consequent
increase in purchasing power of the needy masses is a necessary,
though not sufficient, solution to this problem so much at the
center of a host of HR violations.
10. Many development planners have artificially divided the re-
medial actions they finally propose into two groups: recommenda-
tions and interventions. The former, which often concern basic
determinants and the need to change or remove them, are worded
in very vague, general terms and have no specific implementation
timetable or budgets assigned; the latter, which often concern
immediate determinants, are prepared in more detail, have a
fixed implementation deadline, and are usually budgeted for.
11. The directness with which these planners state the need for
(and carry out) corrective measures directed at the basic deter-
minants will depend on the political environment in which they
work. Political and ideological constraints, as well as the at-
titude and commitment of decision-makers towards eradicating HR
violations of any kind, will ultimately determine how far the
planning team can go in its recommendations. (Do not assume that
decision-makers are rational, righteous and pious, and will ac-
cept hard scientific evidence in their decision-making.or react
to outrageous or more hidden injustice and HR violations!).
12. Human Rights work thus is as good an entry point as any
other (employment, health, nutrition, education, energy, natural
resources, ecology, etc.) for getting involved in questions of
equity in our societies. Any of these can lead to global and
structural considerations if they are not seen as isolated do-
mains.
13. The ideology and outlook on world affairs of the individual
searching for the determinants of HR violations (largely deter-
mined by one's social class extraction) play a vital role in
one's selection of the contents of the final in-depth situation
analysis one makes: ultimately, one only sees what one wants to
see...
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn