Food for a marginalized thought (3)
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A related Comment on HRR 122
A RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH TO THE MDGS
Yifat Susskind[*]
(excerpts)
1. The MDGs do create opportunities for advancing women's human
rights, but only if we are able to participate effectively in
the process of realizing the goals.
2. The MDG's progress is measured by a set of technocratic "tar-
gets" and "indicators" that are limited in scope, contradictory
in approach, and more concerned with statistical change than
with creating the structural change that is crucial to improving
the lives of women and their families worldwide.
3. Take Goal 3, for example (promoting gender equality and em-
powering women): its "target" is to eliminate gender disparity
in education. Yet it will take much more than girls' education
to combat the deeply entrenched violence, discrimination,
stereotypes, laws, and customs that generate grave violations of
women's human rights in every country of the world. The indica-
tors intended to measure progress towards this goal are equally
problematic. They include: a) the ratio of girls to boys at all
levels of schooling (with no regard for the quality or content
of education and without addressing the social forces that keep
girls out of school); b) the proportion of seats held by women
in national parliament (without regard for the more crucial
question of whether these women respect human rights); c) the
share of women in non-agricultural sectors of the workforce
(without recognition of the need for decent wages, working con-
ditions, and public services such as day care, health care,
clean water, and transportation that ease the time burden of
women who are expected to work outside the home and fulfil their
responsibilities within the family).
4. As we can see, the MDGs call for change, but not for creating
the conditions to make real change possible. To address the root
causes of the problems that the goals are supposed to rectify,
we need to grapple with precisely those phenomena that the MDGs
take for granted! These include policies that have increased
poverty and inequality around the world (such as free-trade
agreements, wage freezes, and hostility to worker organizing)
and subordinated human rights to "national security" as defined
by the Bush Administration. In fact, at a moment when the rights
of both women and men have been badly eroded by such policies,
we can see clearly the limitations of pursuing gender "equal-
ity." To whom should women be equal? Should women in Colombia
demand "equality" with male co-workers who are being killed for
union organizing? Should Rwandan women who are HIV- positive
seek "equality" with Rwandan men who are denied high-priced AIDS
medications? The real goal is not equality, but justice; and one
of the best ways we have of ensuring justice is the fulfillment
of human rights.
5. But the MDGs fail to even mention sexual and reproductive
rights, women's labour and property rights, or one of the most
fundamental obstacles to ensuring these rights, namely, violence
against women.
6. Women's human rights advocates have pointed out that sexual
and reproductive rights are central to achieving at least four
of the MDGs: women's equality and empowerment (Goal 3); reducing
child mortality (Goal 4); improving maternal health (Goal 5);
and combating HIV/AIDS (Goal 6). Moreover, since human rights
are indivisible, empowering women is crucial to realizing all of
the goals. Conversely, none of the goals can be realized without
ensuring that goal.
7. In fact, the MDGs infuse neo-liberal priorities into develop-
ment policy using the language of human rights. They seek to
"eradicate extreme poverty and hunger" (Goal 1), but rely on the
discredited notion that economic growth at the national level
(GNP) can eliminate poverty; and they assume that privatization
of services is a strategy-for rather than an obstacle-to eco-
nomic development. At the heart of the MDGs beats a fundamental
contradiction: poor countries are expected to meet the MDGs by
implementing the very neo-liberal economic policies that have,
in large measure, caused the crises that the goals are intended
to address. These policies include cutting government spending,
privatizing basic services, liberalizing trade, and producing
goods primarily for export.
8. The income-based measurement of poverty (1 US$/day)obscures
the experience of millions of people, for whom poverty is not
primarily a function of income, but of their alienation from
sustainable patterns of consumption and production. In indige-
nous communities, for example, human rights (namely, govern-
ments' recognition of collective indigenous rights over land,
natural resources, and traditional knowledge) are key to fight-
ing poverty.
9. But the MDGs do not recognize that poverty is a function of
human rights violations (such as the right to an adequate stan-
dard of living, the right to freedom from discrimination, and
the right to development). Indeed, the MDGs posit housing,
health care, and access to food and water not as non-negotiable
and universal rights, but as "needs" to be met. By extension,
the poor are not seen as autonomous subjects demanding that gov-
ernments meet their legal obligations, but as a passive "target
group" of policymaking. Sustainable development --which depends
on broad civic participation, social justice, and a fundamental
shift in the balance of power -- is sidelined by this failure of
the MDGs to operate within a human rights framework.
10. Human rights standards are a useful yardstick for evaluating
the MDGs. They reveal that the MDGs are not a spontaneous ex-
pression of governmental goodwill. Rather, the MDGs constitute
pre-existing international obligations, some dating back more
than 50 years.
11. Ultimately, for the goals to be a tool for advancing women's
human rights, they must be treated not as a technical process,
but as a political process. We need to push for a rights-based
approach to the MDGs that goes beyond improving statistical in-
dicators to addressing root causes of human rights violations.
[*] Yifat Susskind is associate director of Madre. This article
first appeared on Madre's website at
http://www.madre.org/articles/int/mdgcritique.html