Food for our often fragmented thoughts
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MORE ON THE POLITICS OF HUMAN RIGHTS
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 or globally, to alleviate the suffering
of those whose rights are being violated? Are HR activists more
aware of the political implications of their daily activities
both as professionals and as concerned citizens (two inseparable
spheres of action)? Can anybody working in development evade the
responsibilities that these questions bring with them?
Human Rights Reader 57
WE HAVE TO LEARN TO LOOK AT TOTALITIES, RATHER THAN AT FRAGMENTS
OF REALITY. (Part 3 of 16)
22.When looking at totalities, what will count as facts will de-
pend on the concepts we use, on the questions we ask. Asking
different kinds of questions produces quite different kinds of
answers. It is well and good to question the violation of human
rights (HR), but in so doing, are we asking the right questions?
That is, do we not obfuscate the problem by avoiding the real
issues behind these violations, i.e., the issues of wealth and
power and their distribution in society?
23. For example, there is the naive perception that food and nu-
trition interventions are intrinsically good; who can be against
feeding mothers and children? But many do not realize the impor-
tance of addressing the social and political context of the of-
ten abject poverty in which those programs play themselves out.
24. How does one deal with abject poverty around the world if,
by our behavior, we bend to those who favor an elitist and au-
thoritarian view of society (and who see left-wing-subversion in
every attempt to change the way people have been treated un-
justly)? Whether we like it or not, which ideological positions
we take towards the problems we want to solve guides the choices
we make and the things we actually end up doing. And what we
teach also depends on what we are all about. The subjective con-
viction that one is in the right gives one the inner strength to
do what one is doing. But we too often find ourselves accepting
or supporting 'ethically neutral' although 'value biased' prem-
ises.
25. When people who hold the fate of how HR are respected in
their hands make fine distinctions, semantics become statements
of policy. Words have always been ideology and ideology has been
policy.
26. To put it more bluntly, in terms of political reality, out-
comes depend on whose claim(s) can muster more support --based
on the real interests of those who have the power to grant,
sanction or deny unpostponable actions. This, then, is what the
public is made to accept.
27. Morally, might is not right. Politically, it often is. If we
had the might, flowing from the fact that we know that we are
doing the right moral thing, we could, perhaps in time, receive
the sanction of a growing number of people and of time itself.
But not only do we not have the might to overcome blatant HR
violations, not only do we not have the power to rally the
needed support, and not only does time work against us, but the
very attempt to rely solely on our moral strength may lead to
disaster. It may be good rhetoric to say that we need no one's
confirmation of our rights, that we will in all likelihood win
morally, but politically, however, it may bleed us to death. The
question is not our right to fight for these rights, but how --
and that, unfortunately, can not easily be imposed only from an
ethical vantage point.
28. To fight HR abuses we have a supreme moral claim, sanctioned
by the entire world. For the solutions we propose, the claim for
structural social changes, we have no universal sanction. (Note
that the moral code of any given community also legitimizes es-
tablished relations of power!).
29. A system that has no decent place for the majority of the
people has lost the moral authority to prescribe what should be
done. It has lost its civilization.
30. It is by participating in the political life of a community
that one acquires a sense of who one is. It is through such a
political discourse that a rights-oriented new system or para-
digm comes into being. The right to equal access to such a po-
litical discourse should be the essence of our demands.
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn