*Human Rights Readers list of titles to No.211 (April 2009)* ALL CAN BE FOUND UNDER No.69 IN www.humaninfo.org/aviva
*Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City, cschuftan@phmovement.org *
1. Introduction
2. Human Rights or the Importance of Being Earnest: A Personal Account.
3. The Sixteen Groups of Human Rights.
4. Human Rights Based Planning: The New Approach.
5, 6, 7+8. What Does the New UN Human Rights Approach Bring to the Struggle of the Poor?
9, 10, 11+12. The Role of Human Rights in Politicizing Development Ethics, Development Assistance and Development Praxis.
13. On the Role of the State, the UN and Civil Society.
14. Health, Human Rights and Donors.
15. Arguments in Favor of an Empowering Community Capacity Building in Health.
16. Short Discussion Topics.
17. Elements for a Human Rights Activists Course and Curriculum.
18. Some Pearls of Wisdom about Health Care Financing.
19. Health Sector Reform and the Unmet Needs of the Poor: A Critique.
20. On Development, the Real World, Power Games and the Ugly Faces of Greed.
21. On Morality, Freedom, Choices, Justice and the Need for People’s Power.
22. Variations on a Theme by the Chilean Writer Isabel Allende.
23. On Statistics.
24. Food for NGOs Thoughts.
25. Food for Donors Thoughts.
26. Caveat Emptor: A Participatory Approach is not a Human Rights Approach!
27. Development and Rights: The Undeniable Nexus.
28. On the Role of the State, the UN and Civil Society.
29. On Vulnerability, Access and Discrimination.
30. Potpourri.
31. Human Rights and South-South Cooperation.
32. A Call for Substance and Networking.
33. Human Rights are Very Much on the Agenda of Development Work.
34. Rights are Guaranteed Entitlements: Right?
35. Charity is Obscene from a Human Rights Perspective.
36. Perspectives on Human Rights: Furthering the Debate.
37+38. Putting Equity and Human Rights in Health on the Agenda: The Role of NGOs.
39. Social Exclusion and Human Rights.
40+41. Beyond Capacity Analysis: Additional Elements of a Human Rights-Based Development Strategy.
42. On Capacity Building Needs: The Macro Issues in Human Rights.
43. The Ideological Neutrality of Human Rights is its Greatest Strength, but its Proponents should not be Neutral in Engaging to Achieve Them.
44. An Introduction to Children’s Rights.
45. Globalization, Health Rights and Health Sector Reform: Implication for Future Health Policy.
46+47 Stepping into the New Age of the Right to Adequate Nutrition: Snail Pace Progress?
48. A Case of Logic - The Human Rights Advocacy Syllogism.
49. The Difference Between Project and Process is Ownership. Human Rights Cannot be Implemented as a Project.
50. NGOs should not be Human Rights Blind and Should be Judged by their
Politics.
51. The Need to Struggle is Actually a Built-in Principle of Human Rights Work.
52. The Law is the Law...and Human Rights are not yet the Law.
53. Human Rights are Universal, but the Risk of Having One’s Rights Violated Is Not.
54. Some Well Known and Some Less Well Known Aspects of Human Rights Work.
55. Human Rights Violations are Part of a Social Disease with Historical Roots.
56. Objectivity in the Analytical Stages of the Planning Process is Nothing but a Myth.
57. We Have to Learn to Look at Totalities, Rather Than at Fragments of Reality.
58. It is Through Ideology that Society Ultimately Explains Itself.
59. Social and Economic Injustice are not an Accident.
60. As Human Rights Activists we are too often Committed to Stability as the Prerequisite for Justice...Rather than the other Way Around.
61. Projects Dreamed Up in a Social Vacuum Must Play Themselves out in the Real World of Injustice and Conflict.
62. The Political Imperative in Human Rights Work.
63. Many Among us Think that Politics is Dirty or not a Virtuous Activity.
64. Passivity Makes us Accomplices of the Status-Quo. Many of Us, with an Academic Approach to Change, Should not Forget This.
65. So, What Have We Achieved in the Last Few Years? Have We Been Using the Appropriate Strategies, Tactics and Tools in the Battle Against Human Rights Violations?
66. A Dead-End Option.
67. Why are We so Often Conciliatory when We Should be Confrontational?
68. Some Aspects of the Politics of Women’s Rights and the Politics of Empowerment.
69. A Basis to Develop a New Vision for the Future.
70. A Basis to Develop a New Praxis for the Future.
71. Remember?: Rights Mean not only Having a Right to Something, but also Claiming that Right from Appropriate Duty-Bearers.
72. The Poor and Marginalized Themselves will have to Ultimately Address the Factors that Keep them Disempowered.
73. Recapitulating: the Eight Major Differences between the Basic Needs and the Human Rights Approach to Development.
74. Five Decades of Development Assistance have Cost the World Over 1 Trillion USD: How Much in Improved Human Rights is There to Show for That?
75. More on Human Rights Workers as Activists.
76. Why Power only Yields to Counter-Power.
77. More on Leadership.
78. We Have Declared War on Poverty and Poverty has Won. (President Lyndon Johnson, 1964).
79. Human Rights and the "Weapons of Mass Deception".
80. Asserting and Affirming Human Rights is as Conflict-Prone as it is Indispensable.
81. On NGOs and the Rights of Winners and Losers.
82. Trade, Governance and Human Rights.
83. Human Rights and the Growing ‘Gap’.
84. Development = Substantial and Steady Advancement in the Realization of all Rights.
85. Activism, Profession, Compassion and Political Solidarity.
86. Does Improving the Provision of Services Empower Poor People, or is it the Empowering of Poor People that Improves the Provision of Services?
87. Excuse the Redundancy, but the Poor are a Majority: How does This Make a Difference in our Strategies and our Everyday Work?
88. ‘Behind Human Rights are Freedoms and Needs so Fundamental that their Denial puts Human Dignity itself at Risk’. (Goldewijk & Fortman)
89. Unfortunately, Human (People’s) Rights Violations do not Call for Concrete International Sanctions.
90. Human Rights Principles: What They Mean in Practice.
91+92. The Human Rights Discourse in Health.
93. The Rise of Rights.
94. A Characterization of the Current Stage of Human Rights Work.
95. Two Non-actors in Human Rights.
96. On the Human Rights Discourse and ‘what one-is and is-not’.
97. Succeed, We Ultimately Must! If Not, Human Rights will be Relegated to Simply being an Indicator of Violations Rather than an Essential Foundation of the New Development Paradigm.
98, 99+100. A Primer for a National Action Plan to Operationalize the Right to Health Care (within the broader framework of the Right to Health).
101. NGOs: A Network of Protagonists (and denouncers of the slow progress being made) in Human Rights Work?
102. More on Poverty and Human Rights.
103. People who File Claims to Secure their Right to Health and Adequate Nutrition Cannot Wait for a Whole Generation.
104. How Aggressively Should Governments Be Put Under Pressure In The Struggle For Human Rights?
105. Is there such a thing as a fair and human-rights-sensitive (Capitalist) Globalization?
106. Feeling helpless or lost (or being used) in your work?: Adopt the Human Rights-based Approach to Development!
107+108. Always check if the Government is ‘putting its money where its mouth is’: A guide to using budget analysis to advance human rights.
109. Glossary of Human Rights Terms.
110. If I accept the responsibility that I should act, and I have the authority that I may act, and I have the resources so I can act, I can indeed be held accountable for my actions (or non-actions).
111. Before I start this poem.
112+113. The Sachs Macroeconomics and Health Report: Investing in health for economic development or increasing the size of the crumbs from the rich man's table?
114. The Human Rights Discourse in Health (19 key statements).
115. It will be via Poverty Alleviation Programs that Human Rights will be Fulfilled.
116. Poverty does not persist solely because of incompetent, corrupt governments insensitive to the fate of their populations! No, it is at once the cause and the effect of the total or partial denial of Human Rights.
117. It is on the basis of a broken social contract and of global injustice that we speak of poverty as a human rights violation.
118. Would you consider yourself to be (at least part-time) a health and human rights activist?: A very informal and tentative quizz.
119. In human rights work, our legitimacy and authority are only as strong as they are strong in the weakest link of our own network.
120. On foreign aid, corruption, democracy and development: implications for human rights.
121. Human rights in the era of neoliberal global restructuring.
122. Using the millennium agenda as a reference point implies side-lining the human rights-based approach!
122. A rights-based approach to the MDGs.
123. People have rights even without any specific legislation saying so.
124. Human rights and the World Trade Organization.
125. Being a human rights activist is not an illusion one should lose at age 40.
126. MDGs are to (eventually) end extreme poverty, not most poverty; so, where are human rights left?
127+128. Yesterday’s future has arrived: The Post-Washington consensus only has a pitiful vague orientation towards the eradication of poverty and ill-health as human rights priorities.
129. The rights-based approach fundamentally changes the nature of state-society relations.
130. How we, HR activists, are duped: just a few examples.
131. Some questions with human rights implications that are seldom asked.
132+133. If a state has ratified a treaty, it is legally bound to implement it: a reiteration.
134. Human rights and the corridors of power.
135. “bread and health for all before cake and circus for anyone”.
136. In human rights work, cliche thinking in terms of good and evil is not helpful at all.
137+ 138. The human rights-based approach: a distilled inventory of its essential attributes.
139. Human rights questions i wish i had concise answers for.
140. Many still think human rights are about political prisoners and street demonstrations.
141. It is not an exaggeration to say that the human rights-based approach is in a different league than other approaches to development: it is the ‘make or break’ issue of our time.
142. Human rights are no longer a-preoccupation-that-is-best-left-aside for ‘others’ to worry about.
143. Power makes even the ugliest look handsome.
144. Programs for the poor most often are poor programs: reducing the income gap between the poor and the non-poor is the real challenge for human rights activists.
146. Group rights and collective rights are not the sum of individual rights.
147. Because of their universality, sovereignty must sometimes come second to human rights.
148. From the human rights perspective, power imbalances underlie health inequities.
149. Moral progress does not exist; we are not more moral today than what we were a hundred or a thousand years ago.
150. Free trade agreements, millennium development goals, and human rights: working at cross-purposes?
151. Human rights have to be a core component of the promotion of democracy.
152 +153. Jonsson’s credo.
154. Human rights have to be transformative rather than just simply easing human suffering.
155. Public health brings a counterbalance to the individual-centered view of human rights.
156. The rich have power because of their money, and the poor have power because of their numbers *and* their potential for organizing around human rights principles.
157, 158, 159 +160. Exploring a critical, systemic approach to health rights.
161. Human rights obligations rich countries are not honoring.
162. Human rights and poverty alleviation.
163. Human rights have to go from the conceptual, to policy to action.
164. From a human rights perspective, public health stands at a crossroad.
165. Human rights activists are not social engineers; they are public mobilizers.
166. It is only when potential individual benefits are seen more clearly as being high that people are more willing to actively engage in work leading to the realization of their rights.
167. The recognition of human rights such as they are expressed in international instruments is not enough for their realization.
168. Do statistics serve the human rights cause well?
169. The lack of funding to carry out national or local human rights assessments should *not* delay us in launching them!
170. The respect of the right to health is a reflection of a society’s commitment to equity and justice.
171. More iron laws that affect human rights: use them!
172. Physical capital wears out; social capital does not. The more it is used in exercising *direct* democracy, e.g., to combat human rights violations, the stronger it gets.
173. Human rights violations are no longer a private affair, because they now have a political dimension.
174. Gender equality is not just a women’s issue, but a development and a human rights issue.
175. The human rights discourse is globalization-skeptic and IFIs*-skeptic.
176. The human rights discourse is also MDGs-skeptic.
177. In some cases, the human rights discourse is religion-skeptic.
178. Of claim holders, duty bearers *and* agents of accountability.
180. Social progress has always depended on public pressure.
181. In the development debate, the perception of poor people as people in need rather than as people with legitimate rights puts them totally out of step with the rights-based framework.
182. We do not need more philanthropy and patriarchy; we need more emphasis on human rights.
183. Clarifying the responsibility of the different levels of government is at the center of the dialogue between claim holders and duty bearers.
184. In human rights work, we cannot wait for political will --we need to generate it!
185. When we stand naked before the unvarnished mirror of truth, what we see is what we really are. Often what we are is what we civilize ourselves to disguise (or what we choose not to be outspoken about).
186. International NGOs demand more funds from donors but, with those funds, they often do not address crucial problems such as those related to deplorable local human rights situations.
187. The purpose of freedom from want is to create it for others.
188. We hear endless appeals-to and laments-about the lack of political will to address human rights issues. An active engagement by civil society means we no longer have a need to resort to the concept of political will!
189. In human rights work, when you deal with symptoms you generate sympathy, when you deal with causes you create social change.
190. Corporate social responsibility does not revolve around human rights concerns or charitable intentions; it revolves around business interests.
191. Corporations need clear, binding human rights rules.
192. Human rights: while small success stories are certainly possible, needed global reforms are being hampered.
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.
194. Keep in mind: in human rights work we are in a struggle not only for accountability, but also against impunity.
195 + 196. The human right to health care process revisited.
197. The human right to health and to adequate nutrition in a structurally unequal society.
198. To define yourself as a human rights activist means initially going against the current.
199. Human rights violations are not only ‘social regrettables’.
200. A human rights-based poverty line is possible: It is one that points to the income level at which human rights are fulfilled in practice in every particular context.
201. The human rights-based framework is here to put right avoidable wrongs worldwide.**
202. In the spirit of the Paris declaration on development cooperation, the improvement of foreign aid is not seen purely as a technical matter of better harmonization, but as a political quest to more decisively focus development on human rights.
203. Something has gone terribly wrong with the promotion of democracy: our elected leaders are far from treating (and not only looking at) poverty as the most important underlying condition of human rights violations.
204. The preamble of who’s constitution unequivocally states that the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being: is who living up to its mandate?
205+206. Health sector reform measures: have they worked?... And where do we go from here?
207, 208 +209. Health care as a right: what you need to know.
210+211. Human rights are part of a never-ending human struggle to improve people’s lives and to prevent reoccurrences of past abuse.