Human Rights Reader 193
*IN THIS, ITS 60TH ANNIVERSARY, THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IS STILL A KIND OF CONSCIENCE OF THE WORLD --OR EVEN MORE-- TODAY IT CAN BE CONSIDERED CUSTOMARY INTERNATIONAL LAW.*
Many of you may feel a sickening sense of impotence about the widespread situation of injustice (in health) the world over; yet if these feelings of disgust could be united into common action, something effective can indeed be done. (P. Benenson).
1. In order for the right to health (RTH) to be actually claimed, it has to first be made better known, i.e., only when people know their health rights can they actively claim them. This very essential yet difficult task can only be achieved through a quite massive institutionalized HR and RTH learning initiative with a bottom-centered approach.
2. Launching, keeping-up and overseeing these indispensable learning and training activities is, therefore, of utmost importance, precisely because we need to set up a long-term-empowering-monitoring system and a long-term-effective-advocacy system for the RTH that can coalesce into a veritable social movement for health. A vital responsibility is thus placed on (y)our shoulders: to become a mentor and a monitor of HR/RTH learning.
3. What this means is that only by getting international conventions off the pages of UN covenants and into the heads of those affected by the violation of their RTH will progress be made.
4. But this is not all in this 60th anniversary; the RTH also has to be made to become a guiding concept in the common legal order.
5. To overcome RTH bottlenecks found in so many laws, policies and budgets that govern the actual use of government resources, we need to look at these systematically and with a critical eye (setting up a veritable 'RTH balance sheet'). This will allow us to we make sure the plans we develop to strengthen the realization of the RTH have a realistic chance to succeed --quite more so if backed by the legal system.
6. Ultimately, and in the medium term, changes will be needed in national laws in order to bring them into compliance with international HR obligations. This, because limits and standards that fall under the non-derogable clauses of international HR law can and must constitute a minimum level below which societies allow some of the marginalized citizens fall into not receiving the health care they need , i.e., into the violation of their RTH…and such a discriminatory action needs to be made clearly sanctionable by law.
7. What it is all about, then, is to use the HR framework as a tool for social transformation in the health domain. Why? Because it is by putting the HR framework to use, i.e., by becoming active claim holders, and negotiating with duty bearers, that people will eventually address the chronic RTH problems in their daily life. This calls for actually inventorying and identifying the RTH realizations and violations in each national context in a way that leads to the elaboration of a strategy that then translates into a plan of action.
8. To achieve all the above, we need to go from an era of an intellectual commitment to the RTH to an era of its actual implementation (K. Annan); from fighting for the respect, the protection and the fulfillment of HR in various scholarly fora (…like this HR Reader) to the enforcement and the practical realization of HR.
9. This all will require our developing and joining a whole new political culture based on HR (N. Mandela).
10. The use of a 'mobilization of shame' or a 'name and shame' strategy, mainly achieved with the help of the independent and progressive media, can be very effective.
11. As Kofi Annan also said, we will not enjoy development without security; we will not enjoy security without development and we will not enjoy either without respect for HR. (…HR as birth rights, Boutros Ghali added).
12. In this day and age, does it sound plausible to the reader, then, that the protection of HR has to be a part of the struggle against terrorism? So many just don't seem to get it….
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
mailto:cschuftan@phmovement.org
[All Readers can be found in http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva under No.69<http://www.humaninfo.org/aviva%20%20under%20No\.69>\]
Adapted from W. Benedek et al, Understanding Human Rights: Manual on Human Rights Education, 2nd Edition, European Training and Research Centre for Human Rights and Democracy (ETC), Graz, Austria, May 2006.