Getting From Here to There
32. Meetings on Human Rights (e.g. the recent 26th Session of the UN’s ACC/SCN, Geneva, 12-15 April, 1999 and many other), and even the UN Secretary General's own pronouncements, are desperately asking for ways to operationalize the new Human Rights-based paradigm.
33. As alluded earlier, the fundamental changes needed to realize universal Human Rights are not possible without conflict with the powers-that-be (those who have excess power). Thus the call for politicizing development praxis in this new paradigm.
But because there is no progressive politics without the masses, only political mobilization --or ‘practical politics’, as it also has been called-- will do; no matter how we will call it. Otherwise, we may have to wait for another ten years, for who knows what new breakthrough... [Actually, I do subscribe to the metaphor that “without genuine political mobilization, development is like a Christmas toy: Batteries not included”.
34. We are talking here about a practical, hands-on mobilization: mobilization for self-help actions, for lobbying, for placing demands, to fight for people's basic economic, social and political rights, to exert active resistance to social evil. Such a mobilization has to lead to empowerment where popular demands are accompanied by concrete action proposals. (10)
Human Rights in the Era of Globalization
35. I am convinced the Left/Right, Capitalist/Socialist ideological divide is well and alive and kicking as the world's political pendulum is desperately trying to regain its center (and maybe go beyond...to the left?) after the free market ideology has been reigning supreme. (11, 12)
36. As under Colonialism, under Globalization we live under the rule of “Might is Right” and, under the rule of that might, Human Rights just fall between the cracks...
37. Globalization does not have a human face, it leads to the recolonization of the whole planet. The term Globalization is a euphemism for a process of domination. Power differentials are at its crux. We cannot wish it away. [This fact reinforces the view that when economics ceases to strengthen social bonds it is time to start thinking in political terms].
38. But as opposed to people only having their Basic Needs taken care of, people having Basic Rights makes it possible for Rights Holders to legitimately claim the same. Additionally, the Human Rights approach imposes clear obligations on Duty Bearers (e.g., signatory governments) that, by definition, must the met. (As the cliché goes, a right exists only with a concomitant duty). Such obligations include respecting, protecting and fulfilling Human Rights provisions they agreed to by becoming signatories. (13)
And that is the breaking point of the new paradigm: It strengthens our hand to act politically.
39. In the development context, what this means is that states have the duty to improve the fair distribution of the benefits from development. And we have to hold them accountable for it.
40. Not all forms of growth and development are Human Rights friendly. Development has to demonstrably give protection to the most vulnerable and impoverished in society to be Human Rights friendly. (7)
41. The values we will now advocate for under the new Human Rights discourse are thus underpinned by International Human Rights Law that, in the future, needs to be incorporated into national laws --in part through our future political struggle for this, and through our action as a watchdogs of their enforcement. Our Human Rights work should, therefore, begin at home.
42. The focus has now clearly shifted to the politico-legal links between development and Human Rights (G.B. Brundtland) keeping in mind that in the Human Rights framework, the duty to fulfill the rights --of children and women, for example-- does not depend on economic justifications or excuses. (4)
43. Moreover, the Human Rights leverage should also be forcefully applied to contingent bilateral and multilateral diplomacy as a preemptive move to prevent violent man-made disasters and their flagrant Human Rights violations.
Pleading Guilty
44. Democracy and Human Rights are interlinked and mutually supportive. (World Conference on Human Rights)
45. As development organizers acting as political activists we have to be willing to come into conflict with the ideology of the ruling minority any time it disregards Human Rights. For that to happen, we need to demystify the ideology of power-taken-as-being-neutral in the ruling development paradigm.
46. But so far, our prestige as intellectuals has depended on laying claim to being ‘rational and apolitical’, in short, espousing the “ideology of the extreme center”.
47. Moreover, there is not yet among us a felt responsibility for the creation of national and international conditions favorable to the realization of Human Rights. (7)
48. Because of that, I think most of us stand accused for our complacency towards the status-quo and violations of Human Rights, for our lack of criticism of the overall lack of progress in development, for our political naiveté (or our choice not to get involved in the politics of it all), for our uncritical pushing forward to do something and get things done and over with, for our paternalistic and ethnocentric approach.
In short, we cannot escape taking part of the blame.
What We Have Not Yet Done
49. The implementation of Human Rights requires first and foremost its translation to the domestic level. The current lack of development may not be invoked by Governments to justify the abridgment or postponement of internationally recognized Human Rights. Human Rights work will thus require committed leadership and an expanding popular commitment focused primarily on ensuring democracy, improvements in the incomes of the poorest, universal access and affordability of quality health, education and other social services, and improvements in the overall living conditions of people (especially women). (7)
50. As a start, at the country level, we need to check on the follow up each country has made on major recommendations from international conferences that they attended (a key role here for UNDAF, the new UN Development Assistance Framework).
51. How can the UN be associated with such a hard approach without being accused of political interference? UNDAF is but a very first, yet insufficient and mostly still top-down, step in that direction. It is hoped it will evolve to higher levels of accountability on Human Rights issues.
52. Steps also have to be taken, then, to clarify the universal minimum core content of Human Rights as opposed to a minimum core per country; the latter risks excessive relativism and/or lenient application of the principles of the Universal Declaration and other Human Rights covenants. (7)
53. Furthermore, existing standards that are not in conformity with the current Human Rights regime have to be openly opposed.
Where to Start?
“In development work, dreaming is OK, but being naïve is not.”
54. We do not exert effective political leadership on most of these issues yet. But we cannot run away from showing intellectual leadership at least. All of us are called upon to help legitimize and enforce all UN-sanctioned people's rights, and that requires a crucial change in conceptual thinking, a change of our mindset.
55. More than before, defining Human Rights objectives and establishing explicit Human Rights goals is thus a political task we cannot escape. We urgently need to contribute to the setting up of the legal entities that will define people's rights more bindingly (e.g. setting up National Human Rights Committees).
56. To this, we will have to add all the needed work at grassroots level to launch the Social Mobilization and Empowerment processes needed to pursue the hard path alluded to earlier. (14)
57. Additionally, among many other, what we need to, is to
· Strengthen the capacity of development workers in all fields of specialization to more effectively analyze and act upon the core economic, political and social determinants found in the basic causes of maldevelopment wherever they work (4)58. The overall call is for us to move from a basic needs to a rights-based approach. In it, beneficiaries are active subjects and bona-fide claim holders. In the rights-based approach duties and obligations are set for those duty bearers against whom a claim can be brought, both nationally and internationally, thus ensuring that claim holder needs are met. The added value of the rights-based approach really lies in creating and enforcing the legal accountability needed and in legitimizing the use of political means in the mainstream process of enforcing it. (7)· Overcome the culture of silence and apathy of this staff around Human Rights issues; this means they will have to work more directly with communities using a AAA approach
· Challenge and build consensus on political issues related to Human Rights, perhaps starting with eliminating in people's minds the division they see between politics and their professional endeavors
· Move from the politics of status-quo to a politics of global responsibility for the enforcement of Human Rights; we need to become scholar-practitioner-activists
· Work towards the more liberatory view of social movements (Paulo Freire), and not waiting for opportunities, but creating new opportunities [rights have to be taken; they are not given!].
· Move from Human Rights to wider Social Rights and from Declaration to Implementation (Gramsci); we need to “walk the talk and not talk the talk”.
· Link the normative standards of Human Rights with other developmental processes in which each of us now works so as to proactively change our roles in development work in the new millennium. (7)
· Forcefully support the 20/20 Compact, because a Human Rights approach will need additional financial resources (20/20, also is a useful monitoring tool to monitor the intentions of governments and donors to implement economic, social and cultural rights). (7)
59. The establishment of national and international complaints procedures is, therefore, also needed. Short of civil society taking up this function on its own shoulders, national and international monitoring bodies will be needed. One can start with eliciting contributions to the formulation and adherence to voluntary guidelines that pursue the application of Human Rights principles.
Epilogue
60. What has been said here, is not food for cheap Internet philosophers. I see this endeavor as the opening of the nth chapter of a long-term painful struggle on these issues that desperately attempts to horizontalize the previous more vertical dialogue on the topic. We need you to react. Here and elsewhere.
61. We are in for an exciting new era. We need all the courage we can muster. Wouldn't you rather become a protagonist than a bystander?
62. Tactically, I am not so sure it is so good to say all this. It may give a tactical advantage to the ‘powers that be’ that are actually afraid of or fear and will oppose with all their might any move towards politicization.
63. There is a big catch up task to be undertaken to remedy past wrongs and making the next decade a winning decade for Human Rights. Never be sorry to be too late.
64. It is fitting to close with another quote from the Latinamerican writer Eduardeo Galeano who asked: What if we would start exercising the never proclaimed Right to Dream to lead us to another, possible world?
References:
(1) Schuftan, C. (1979): The challenge of feeding the people: Chile under Allende and Tanzania under Nyerere, Soc. Sci and Med. 13C, June.
(2) Schuftan, C. (1978): Nutrition planning What relevance to hunger?, Food Pol., 3:1, February.
(3) Jonsson, U. (1993): Ljungqvist, B. and Yambi, O., Mobilization for nutrition in Tanzania, Chapter 9 in Reaching Health for All, J. Rohde et al Eds., Oxford University Press, Delhi.
(4) Lewis, S. (1999): Malnutrition as a Human Rights violation: Implications for UN-supported programmes, SCN News, No.18, July.
(5) Schuftan, C. (1988): Multidisciplinarity, paradigms and ideology in national development work, Scand. J. of Dev. Alts. VII:2+3.
(6) Schuftan, C. (1999): The different challenges in combating micronutrient deficiencies and combating PEM, or The gap between nutrition engineers and nutrition activists, Ecol. of Food and Nutr., 38:6.
(7) van Weerelt P. (1997): The right to development as a programming tool for development cooperation, CRPP/ALOP Workshop, Santiago, Chile September.
(8) Robbins, T. (1985): Jitterbug Perfume, Bantam Books, NY.
(9) Schuftan, C. (2000): Can significantly greater equity be achieved through targeting? An essay on poverty, equity and targeting in health and nutrition, recently submitted for consideration for publication to the WHO Bull., April.
(10) Schuftan, C. (1990): Activism to face world hunger: Exploring new needed commitments, Soc. Chge., 20:4, December.
(11) Schuftan, C. (2000): Globalization, or the fable of the mongoose and the snake, recently submitted for consideration for publication to the Canad. J. of Dev. Studies, April.
(12) Schuftan, C. (1992/93): Brave new world: A political pendulum in search of its balance, South Letter, winter.
(13) Jonsson, U. (1999): Historical summary of the SCN working group on nutrition, ethics and Human Rights, SCN News, No. 18, July.
(14) Schuftan, C. (1996): The community development dilemma: What is really empowering?, Comm. Dev. J., 31:3, July.
1. Human Rights are plainly not guaranteed by the existing institutional arrangements. [We have to understand this as a point of departure]. (Amartya Sen)
2. A country becomes State Party to a convention or covenant once it has ratified it. The same is then binding and the state is obliged to take what are considered appropriate steps.
3. As the duty bearer, the state is then considered to have a contractual relationship with the rights holders.
4. Additionally, the state has to periodically report to the UN on progress made in implementing the prescriptions of the covenant.
5. States’ compliance with their obligations under each covenant is thus to be monitored by the international community ultimately via the UN.
6. This double (reporting/monitoring) mechanism, in theory, should help decrease our level of past frustrations since, now, international monitoring is no longer excluded and can no longer be considered as an external interference (!) even when taken up by international NGOs and civil society organizations alone or together with local partners.
7. Such international monitoring aims at establishing a dialogue with those states that can be shown deliberately to violate Human Rights, or more commonly, to omit pursuing explicit policies towards the realization of these rights.
8. All this amounts to nothing but the restoration of the mandate already contained in the original (over 50 years old) UN Charter to pursue Human Rights.
9. It is probably only a matter of time before all UN agencies will have explicitly committed themselves to a Human Rights approach (which will permeate all agencies) and carry out this monitoring mandate as related to their specific/respective mandates.
10. The Human Rights component of their programs will now have to cut across all the agencies’ political and technical priorities.
11. To this should be added the same agencies’ new responsibility of advising interested member states in the drafting of so-called ‘framework legislation’ towards the formulation and implementation of domestic Human Rights laws.
12. In short, in the future, the comparative advantage of the UN agencies will rest far more on their capacity to generate ideas and to shape of the normative framework for development and health than on their ability to transfer resources.
13. This transition from general commitments and principles to actual implementation will need time especially since the respect for Human Rights often goes against dominant economic interests, against the interests of Globalization and those of entrenched power elites. But this represents a challenge rather than a constraint.
14. The misconception that the realization of rights is necessarily costly will have to be vigorously countered as well.
15. Moreover, it should be understood that the state does not always have to be the direct ‘provider’; it can and often will be the facilitator of and guarantor for primary Human Rights actions taken by others in society.
16. While the UN remains critical for advocacy actions, for standard setting and guidance, it is essential that country-level initiatives be developed.
17. In this endeavor, continued gaps in communication and understanding between Human Rights advocates/analysts and practitioners remains a major problem.
18. For example, many NGOs are still unfamiliar with the Human Rights potential to strengthen their work.
Reference:
- Barth Eide, W. (2000): The promotion of a Human Rights perspective on food security: Highlights of an evolving process, Chapter 14 in Clay,W. and Stokke, O. (eds.) Food and Human Security, Cass Publishers.
1. Focusing on sustainable poverty alleviation is inseparable from bringing about greater respect of Human Rights and greater equity.
2. Current development thinking is at a cross-road.
3. We need to influence overall development strategies and particularly the professional ‘lords of poverty’ to move a step closer to putting Human Rights issues at the center of poverty eradication.
4. We cannot leave it up to (undefined) ‘others’ to undertake the needed steps to bring Human Rights center stage.
5. This sense of urgency must be heightened for all of us, including donors. They have to understand that technical actions will not bring about significant improvements in the condition of the poor.
6. The myth of the Chinese proverb of ‘give me a fish and you’ll have fed me for a day, and give me a net and you’ll feed me for life’ has to be debunked. This fallacy is repeated over and over again. The real question is who owns the pond/lake/river/ocean and what the RIGHTS of the poor are to fish there...
7. Access to the Commons (or means of production, for that purpose) is not to be taken for granted!
8. Donors have to join together to fund Human Rights violations surveys in the recipient countries and these data are to be published annually in a publication of the type of UNICEF’s ‘The Progress of Nations” or UNDP’s annual report where countries are ranked according to their respective Human Rights performance.
9. Subsequently using these data to tackle identified Human Rights violations at national and sub-national level will then become the main challenge for committed donors to get involved in helping revert them.
10. As is true for NGOs, donor agencies will thus also have to more forcefully pursue Human Rights-promoting, bottom-centered, empowering interventions.
11. They will have to bring recipient governments to the table to negotiate binding commitments (with signed memoranda of understanding) to move in the direction of poverty eradication via the Human Rights approach (with specific poverty-redressing and rights-upholding objectives), including the close monitoring of progress.
12. Funds can then be released in tranches based on the achievement of negotiated verifiable Human Rights indicators along the implementation line of funded projects.
13. A donor-NGO/civil society link and funding window should be developed concomitantly along the same lines (...for remissioned NGOs).
14. In case of non-responsiveness or non-performing government projects, donor funding should be progressively reallocated to the NGO/civil society sector.
15. Non-performing NGOs should be dropped under the same guise.
16. All this may only add up to a start --and from the top at that... But it is a start in the right direction.
17. Next, we will have to let most inputs for future actions come from the more directly affected themselves.
18. Perhaps most of our energies will need to be spent on the latter. The road ahead will, for sure, require our greatest boldness ever.
Human Rights and International Financial Institutions (IFIs)
19. In an apparent recent rediscovery of ‘the social’, the Bretton Woods IFIs are now also turning to Human Rights.
20. But this ‘revalidation’ of ‘the social’ and of Human Rights is happening mainly at the micro level in these institutions. At the macro level, IFIs’ attention to social questions is, in all honesty, still very much an afterthought!
21. In reality, (purportedly) ‘sound’ macroeconomic policies continue today to be designed mainly based on cold economic considerations.
22. Then, [luke-(warm)] social ‘band-aids’ are applied in order to achieve acceptable outcomes --outcomes IFIs feel they cannot be blamed for by the rest of the international community.
23. IFI prescriptions for the privatization of basic social services (i.e. the privatization of health) is antithetical to Human Rights, antithetical to the basic tenets of wealth redistribution, antithetical to poverty eradication strategies, and, therefore, antithetical to equity.
1. The notion of duty and justice (...and not compassion!) give rights their cutting edge.
2. Power is the key relation in health and Human Rights issues: A right confers power, i.e. the power to make key changes as far reaching as the system allows claim holders to do so. (...and it is our duty to help making the latter possible).
3. People have full power only when they can alter existing (power) relations. (...and it is our duty to help making this possible too).
4. X has to have power over Y to affect results; power thus is a normative advantage...to change the existing unfair health system and to turn it to people’s advantage. (...and it is our duty to help create that advantage as well).
5. Only exercising full power can people freely select among the available and possible solutions; people’s empowerment is thus needed.
6. Claims are rather useless if there is no power to have duty bearers enforce their public health duties.
7. A party other than the duty bearers has to have power over the duties in order to make sure most public health duties are enforced.
8. To enforce a duty, the claim holder is the best suited to exert power over the duty bearer.
9. It is not good if the claim holders have no power or control over the enforcement of their health claims.
10. Actually, people can only have a true health claim when they also have the power to claim for it; the power is a necessary ingredient in their claim; ergo, having a claim necessarily involves having (or getting) a power.
11. Rights (claim) holders cannot only be passive beneficiaries of the duties of others.
12. People’s health rights are recognized as long as the rights holders have power over the duties.
Reference:
- Sumner, L.W. The Moral Foundation of Rights.
Human Rights Accountability Analysis
1. Capacity/accountability analyses (that tell us why duty bearers at many levels do not seem to be able to perform their duties as expected) are a cornerstone of Human Rights planning.
2. The key question is: Who gets to do these needed analyses and who the calling to account?
3. It sometimes sounds too much as if it is some outside authority who is going to do these things for us and, ‘with a lightning bolt call the sinners to account’.
4. This attitude/suggestion that some outside agency will/must do this has to be combated. The task cannot simply be disembodied and left up to outsiders.
5. Primary (but not exclusive) attention needs to be given to local grassroots groups to lead these analyses.
6. Bottom line: it is unthinkable to talk about capacity/accountability analyses in any other way than in a participatory way.
7. But we should not concentrate too narrowly on grassroots either; agents at all levels have roles to play; we need to figure out their (and our own) respective responsibilities and inter-relationships in this endeavour.
8. National governments need to be actively lobbied to concretize their commitments to pass framework national Human Rights laws.
9. Ambitious capacity/accountability analyses risk leading us to too many priorities. We have to reduce the analyses to a limited set of claim-duty relationships that are likely to be most critical in a given situation.
10. If not limited, we risk ending up with a very large number of claim-duty relationships and actors who we will not be able to productively involve in new actions for which we will now hold them accountable.
11. Therefore, the recommendation is to --with people’s participation-- arrive at a list of the most crucial three or four ‘sins of omissions’ for each particular set of selected rights violations; later in an AAA (Assessment/Analysis/Action) cycle, people can reevaluate and pick their new priorities.
On Goals and Means
12. We always need to keep in mind that Human Rights do not proscribe --they prescribe--and on broad goals at that.
13. Human Rights do not specify means for reaching those broad goals.
14. There thus is a separation in Human Rights work between goal setting and figuring out how to reach them: The first part is to a great extent done already; the second is history in the making.
15. For the time being --and hopefully not for too long-- it is we (you and I and growing numbers of others) who are called upon to take up the challenge of furthering the operational aspects of Human Rights so as to translate them into concrete actions.
16. As we do so, we have to be absolutely clear that there is no neutral territory in combating oppression and eradicating poverty.
17. Those who believe in neutrality will ultimately become prey to the agendas of the conservative social forces.
18. As long as the movement for Human Rights does not seek to dismantle the structures of power that breed and sustain inequity with its accompanying Human Rights violations, the latter will remain untouched or just cleverly manipulated to make them look like progress.
19. Work on Human Rights, as well as work on reshuffling power relations to tackle the problems of poverty will have to pass through gaining the support of the middle class. For example, health services must be made equally accessible to all on a basis that is perceived as fair by all; this also means that Human Rights principles have to be equally applied to all citizens --not only to the poor.
20. The current emphasis on privatizing the provision of health services and on targeting only the victims of the most severe violations (alas to offer them only token palliative measures) goes in exactly the opposite direction of what is meant here.
21. Such current policies are unmistakably making the solidarity work needed for the attainment of Human Rights next to impossible.
22. Therefore, rights should not be theorized in the sense of claims playing themselves out in a vacuum.
23. Achieving them will mean a struggle.
24. Rights are not a standard granted from above, but a standard bearer around which people have to rally to bring about a struggle from below.
25. Know where you stand and know on whose side you wish to be counted as an actor.
The Right to Information
26. All peoples and all nations have the right to share their knowledge with one another.
27. It is thus vital that a proper balance be struck between the ownership interests of knowledge producers and the public good interests of knowledge users.
28. The international community has to come to the realization that the right to knowledge is far too important to be left to commercial forces only.
29. The much-heralded ‘knowledge societies’ of the information superhighway will amount to little more than paper tigers if their governance is delegated to the marketplace:
30. The market will simply produce and distribute knowledge according to people's purchasing capacities.
31. Conversely, a Human Rights-inspired system of governance will favor the availability of knowledge not according to people’s means, but according to people's needs and aspirations.
References:
- Kent. G. Personal e-mail dated 26/2/2001.
- Jonsson, U. (2000): An approach to Human Rights-based programming in UNICEF ESAR, SCN News, No.20, July, pp.6-9.
- Manji, F. (1999): Editorial, in Development and Rights, A Development in Practice Reader, Oxfam Publications.
- Shivji, I. (1989): The concept of Human Rights in Africa, CODESRIA, p.71.
- Hamelink, C.J. (2000): Who has the right to know?, UNRISD News, No.23, Autumn/winter, p.20.
- UNRISD (2000): Social policy in a development context, UNRISD News, No.23, Autumn/Winter, pp.10+11.
Introduction
1. Many of our fellow development professionals are not satisfied with the training future generations of our colleagues are receiving. Quite a few have been vocal about it and discussions have ensued for the last few years. More recently, a sizable part of the discussion has centered around the mix of technical and other skills Human Rights advocates need to acquire given the challenges they are sure to face in their future careers. Not much of the content of this discussion has found its way into concrete changes in the curricula of schools that train different types of future development workers.
2. Not enough has been done to address the training needs of future Human Rights advocates as relates to their role as activists. As development workers, we are simply still ill-prepared to act confidently in the realm of Human Rights. It behooves us to get prepared to contribute to the central issue in the upcoming phase of development work worldwide.
3. As part of the effort to find our professional niche in tackling the basic causes of maldevelopment more proactively than we have done so far, we cannot escape our obligation to look for workable training options that will prepare future colleagues to better do so. Alternative modalities of training for different groups of them will have to make up for this deficiency in their current training. Here, I will concentrate primarily on graduate students training --thought to be an important group to start with. I will opt for a modality that can be accommodated without necessarily entering into conflict with already crowded curricula in masters degree programs.
4. Giving graduate students in the different disciplines of development work a chance to practice activism skills vis-à-vis the problems which we are training them to resolve is a duty that ideally should be woven into all courses of their degree program. This not being the case, a second best (and hopefully transitional) approach is to set up an additional course that will better confront these students with their future ethical and political responsibilities, i.e. those they will surely have to face when they start working.
5. When facing this challenge, one has to keep in mind the possible strong and valid opposition of those who will say we might as well use our energies in such an endeavor to work directly with people, communities and budding civil society organizations. They would argue that working with the future "development engineers" might be less well spent time since they are not the ones who are going to actually make the needed changes anyway. But then --if we are lucky-- engineer-activists retooled in an activist’s course may become additional advocates/multipliers/strategic allies in the huge task ahead of us of more proactively removing the basic causes of malnutrition worldwide.
The Course: A Technical Note
6. A summer school course (or equivalent) of 10 weeks in a graduate school will fit the needs well.
7. The course will be primarily based on a series of student debates and role plays. [A debate/role play format is the closest I can think of to mimic the real life challenges nutritionists-as-activists will face in their careers].
8. The students will be given access to a specially stocked room in the library and to the internet to research and prepare their debate strategies and contents.
9. A set of rules will be made explicit and a team of 3 faculty (teacher) judges will preside each debate. There will be one 6 hrs. debate per week for a total of 8 debates.
10. Guest lecturers will be invited to discuss their Human Rights or other advocacy experiences in two-hour seminars twice a week. The rest of the time the students will be preparing their case, reading, reviewing case studies and hanging the key pieces of what they find up in the form of a poster of 3-4 square meters.
11. There will be two teams of 6-7 students each with one faculty tutor each to support them. Each team will elect a leader.
12. Each debate will consist of an opening statement or argument which will refer to the poster which will be unveiled at that time. This presentation will be academic in style and will bring up the key debate points.
13. A full range of audiovisual media will be made available for the teams to use in their presentations.
14. The opening statement will be followed by a mandatory role play in which one set of ‘actors’ will represent the community and the other set the activists who are trying to learn from and discuss with the community representatives the best relevant action measures to take for the Human Rights problems brought up; simple language and convincing examples will have to be used.
15. In a strategizing exercise, the team will then say how they want to implement what they propose.
16. The first role-play will be followed by the second team presenting their opening argument, their poster, their role play and strategy.
17. After a break, the actual debate will start; one chosen student will act as a rapporteur and the chairperson of the panel of judges will direct the debate. The teams will challenge each other on issues. Faculty will also challenge them.
18. The format of the debate will be such that it will attempt to convince and persuade others about a certain reality and about the corresponding course of action needed. The contrasting potentials of top-down, bottom-up and bottom-centered approaches to solve the Human Rights problems unveiled need to be brought up and critiqued. In other words, the debaters have to point to a way out that they think is better than what we have had so far. Creativity will be encouraged in the presentation of their arguments.
19. The two posters will stay up for 4-5 days each week for closer scrutiny.
20. The whole proceedings will be videotaped (by two students themselves). The teams will have access to the tapes, to look at them so as to plan better strategies for their next debate. Later, a professionally edited version of the debates can be used for an internet version of the course. [Graduate students from the Communications Department of the University can do this work for academic credit].
21. The debate will be followed by a wrap-up session in which each team leader will summarize the major points made by his/her team; the student rapporteur will highlight the key points of the debate. The judges will then point out which elements of the debate are relevant to the students' future engineer-activist's role, as well as pointing out strengths and weaknesses of each team; good leadership points will also be pointed out.
22. Practicing negotiation skills, the students will then be called upon to produce a short synthesis statement on the topic of the debate (summarizing the best of both positions presented). Efforts will be made to post such syntheses in different pertinent email list-servers and web sites; the better ones may be considered for submission for publication.
23. Guest witnesses will be welcome and an open audience will be encouraged in the debates by advertising each of them on campus in advance. The audience could give a show of hands to the team they thought did a better job.
24. The students will be allowed to switch groups provided there is another student in the other group who is willing to swap. The faculty may also have some say on this, early on, to better balance the teams.
25. The first week will be an introductory week with instructions on the mechanics of it all plus a couple of lectures on "effective and critical reading" skills that will allow the students to more effectively scan printed and electronic materials, on "how to build a case", on "principles of role playing", perhaps on the use of a conceptual framework of causes of Human Rights violations and the Triple A approach (Assessment, Analysis and Action) that facilitates participatory decision-making; other relevant topics can be thought of for this introductory week.
26. The faculty will set up the reading materials in the special room in the library by doing a systematic search and networking with colleagues worldwide to collect relevant documents. Graduate students on work-study assignments can be used for this (as well as for the videotaping). At least 2 computers with internet access are needed for each team.
27. The following weeks will each have one debate plus 2-3 scheduled guest lecturers' seminars --making sure that these do not preempt topics of future debates.
28. A choice of topics for the debates on Human Rights might be the following: [In no particular order yet]
- 20th century Science, Ethics and Politics and their effects on Human Rights.29. This list of topics should be edited and completed after a wider discussion of this idea. Conversely, the list of topics may be replaced by a list of sharply pointed questions that would stimulate students to find appropriate answers for.- Corruption, bureaucracy, accountability and transparency and Human Rights.
- Development ethics and ideologies/paradigms: the last 40 years and why it has all worked poorly for Human Rights.
- Engineers and activists in Human Rights and development work: What’s first, the chicken or the egg?
- Equity and Human Rights.
- Foreign aid, debt and Human Rights.
- Genuine people’s participation in Human Rights and development work: community-based programs.
- Human Rights and demographic trends in developing countries.
- Human Rights and economic development.
- Human Rights and empowerment.
- Human Rights and Globalization.
- Human Rights and income distribution.
- Human Rights and land reform.
- Human Rights and rural credit for women.
- Human Rights and small scale income generation programs.
- Human Rights and SRA, LRA, PRA, PLA and other such letter soup acronyms.
- Human Rights and sustainable development.
- Human Rights in emergencies.
- Human Rights in the 21st century: New needed commitments.
- Human Rights in the times of AIDS.
- Human Rights work as a career.
- Human Rights: networking and coalition building.
- Human Rights: NGOs and civil society; the need for NGOs to ‘revision and remission’ their mandates to regain an activist’s role as true allies of the poor.
- Making sense of the myriad of “World Reports” (WDR, State of the World’s Children The Progress of Nations, State of the World-Worldwatch Institute, ACC/SCN Report on the state of the world’s nutrition, etc.).
- Nutrition, health and Human Rights.
- Paulo Freire and the ‘conscientization’ movement: relevance for Human Rights work.
- Sectoral World Declarations and Human Rights (3 Rome declarations on food issues since 1984, Rio, Copenhagen, Beijing, Cairo).
- The new Human Rights approach of the UN.
- The political economy of Human Rights.
- The role of donors in worldwide Human Rights: blessing or curse?
- The role of government in the battle against Human Rights violations.
- What is really empowering?
- Women’s role in Human Rights and development: what is really empowering for them?
30. The students will be given this list during the first week and will vote the 8 topics they want to cover in the whole course. They can also combine two or more topics in one debate or propose new topics for faculty consideration. Topics not chosen may become the basis to decide which guest lecturers to invite.
31. The last week of the course will focus on lessons learned by the aspiring engineer- activists on the topic of Human Rights. Each team will do their own presentation on this followed by the faculty. Each team and the faculty will hang their conclusions in a last poster. Suggestions for improvements on the course will be a part of this exercise. Each of the 12-14 students will then be given an opportunity to tell the class what they want to do with all this in their upcoming career and will receive peer and faculty feedback on it. In their presentations, they should also bring out their own personal and professional enthusiasms and apprehensions for the coming decade.
Note: The format here proposed follows the North American environment of a graduate course. Adaptations can be made to suit other academic environments. The course could also be adapted as a distance education course, perhaps with the debate being carried out in an electronic ’chat room’ or asynchronously via email.
Acknowledgments:
I would like to thank George Kent from the Univ. of Hawaii for his valuable comments to this draft.
1. Equity in health means equal access for equal need.
2. Near-zero-priced public services for the poor is an essential public policy towards equity.
3. Government intervention in the inequitable workings of the free market is required to bring about equity in health. The problem of resource shortages in the health sector cannot thus be seen as only a sectoral problem.
4. Health fees are little more than an additional form of direct taxation.
5. Changes in health care financing should be promoted because they will improve the existing situation and not for their own (or the donor's) sake.
6. Levying fees will prevent the more deprived groups from seeking care at government facilities. It will add an additional barrier to their use. 'Affordable' fee levels are next to impossible to set...
7. Even where efforts are made to base fees at affordable levels, the poor will accumulate debt when faced with major illness.
8. Effectively protecting the poor from charges (fees) depends on setting up cumbersome administrative procedures for waving fees.
9. Given that lower socio-economic groups are least likely to use health care services, a sample survey only covering health care users is probably biased toward higher income households.
10. The question that always needs to be kept in mind when interpreting any survey results is: Does willingness to pay reflect ability to pay?... This means that, ultimately, we need to address the ethical issues of the impact of charges on equity.
11. From the World Bank's perspective, efficiency is the key concern to pursue in health care financing; equity takes second place to efficiency.
The Bank supports a market-based allocation of health resources and envisions a limited role of government in the distribution of societal resources. But ultimately, it is the relative utilization of health resources and facilities by the different socio-economic groups which will tell us about how equitably the allocation of these resources has been. Increasing efficiency is, therefore, not a good enough reason to raise fees.
12. Equity considerations are of primary importance; they are of importance as a policy goal. But the market-based allocation of care discriminates against the poor --with a fee system aggravating this situation.
13. Efficiency considerations are concerned with matters of allocation rather than distribution.
14. The basic justification for assessing equity does not change with the level of resources available in a society: it is the same in rich and poor countries. Moreover, limited resources do not justify greater levels of inequity.
15. With equity in mind, the assessment of the likely impacts of paying fees on users has to be disaggregated by income distribution quintile, and these characteristics of users (and payers) need to be assessed before and after implementing the change.
16. The challenge definitely is finding a just balance between efficiency and equity.
17. From the perspective of the poor, social and economic considerations are too often forgotten in the politics of health care allocations. For instance, treatment costs per event are lower in rural areas, but transport costs for patients are significantly higher. Or, another example to ponder:Seasons determine income and times of low income coincide with times of potentially greatest sickness.
18. Payment exemption mechanisms and retention of revenue arrangements remain grossly unaddressed in health care financing plans....and most of the power still remains centralized.
19. Increasing access to health care is not impossible if fee revenues are retained by the facilities themselves. But barriers still exist for peripheral facilities to retain fee revenues and using them effectively at local level with community inputs.
20. Because public expenditure is more important than taxation in the overall distribution of income, health care expenditures should be biased in favor of the poor. Therefore, need for health care should be defined along the lines of the socio-economic status of households.
21. Income per capita is highly associated with demand for medical care. Low income is a barrier to access to care.
22. Equity has to be understood as a social justice and distributional fairness issue: a more broadly-based socio-economic development is thus a prerequisite for an improved health status that is sustainable.
23. Worldwide, the distribution of health care is already inequitable in socio-economic terms. It will become more inequitable increasing the cost of care. It will reduce the demand for services by the lower income groups and by female household members. It will also delay presentation for care for them. Therefore, raising the cost of treatment will only aggravate poverty.
24. Prices are important determinants of health care demand and that demand is reduced more in response to price changes when income is lower.
25. In summary, health care financing reforms alone cannot bring about sustained better health. The promotion of wider structural changes in society is also required. Health must thus be seen as only a part of total care. Aiming for better universal health care forces us to consider and tackle the unequal distribution of the circumstances under which preventable malnutrition, ill-health and deaths are perpetuated.
Food for an ombudsman's thought
I have been re-reading some of the Health Sector Reform (HSR) and health and poverty literature. I have been amazed by the ambiguity, lack of clarity and of a sense of direction, and even some misconceptions I have found in an otherwise serious literature. This is not the time to call names or to point fingers, but let me give you a generic potpourri (or a smorgasbord) of what I found:
1. The most pervasive problem with some of the articles is that they say a lot of the right things one could be in agreement with, but they fail to put it all together to build a new needed vision (and much less a mission) for the future. They would say things like: "what is needed are plausible strategies", but fail to come up with such. Or, as another says: “Our discussion has perhaps been frustratingly inconclusive. In our view, this is inevitable, given the complexity of the issues and the current state of knowledge about them. We can only estimate potential benefits”. Alternatively, I have seen authors use an 'options' approach which is a sanitized way to give advice by saying things like: 'governments have a choice of doing A, B or C'. But the respective author rarely sticks her/his neck out strongly in favor of one or two alternatives that point to a clear direction.
2. Further, the literature too often portrays governments as not having the political will to do such and such, without making it clear that that (laissez faire) in itself IS the manifestation of a will, ergo a political choice (i.e., not to exercise a will...).
3. I am also disturbed by the abuse of the 'cost-effectiveness' paradigm in the writingsas a stiff, sacrosanct principle overriding good old social concerns in health.
4. What bothers me further is the acceptance, as a fait accompli, that the existence of an already in-place 'mixed public-private health sector' system supposedly is an impediment for decisive government action to straighten out the system as a whole, especially with a view to securing care for the poor who are consistently and universally being left out in this 'mix'.
5. Some of the literature I ran into also implies the DALY approach can be modified to steer actions in the direction of the needs of the poor (which some authors purport to be experts in when, as one of them says "it is important to understand these changes from the perspective of poor households"). I'm not so sure the DALYs are a fruitful analytical tool for the poor to put their hopes in; equity issues just take the back seat in its approach.
6. When it comes to what functions governments MUST perform, people make lists. I feel these often to be biased. In some of the papers reviewed, these lists more and more often --almost as a given-- take the position of the market approach to the delivery of health care, namely 'Let government do what the private sector cannot'. I am afraid this is not a proven recipe either, as long as the profit motive remains the driving force of the latter.
7. Nowhere I read are community based insurance schemes presented as an important potential co-payer of health services. I say co-payer, because governments (central and local) DO HAVE to live up to their Human Rights obligation to provide care for the poor. Because, and let me stick out my neck here, I AM - together with others - talking about governments having to increase their health budgets in a renewed greater, long-term commitment to Health for All! Of course we are also talking about other things that need being done, but this issue of a renewed struggle to increase government spending in health is key in our vision for the near future. Governments around the world have indeed neglected their duty to meet the needs of the public.
8. In most of what I have re-read, I do think there are prescriptions that could have been put forward more forcefully. Not truths, but prescriptions to better address the challenges we face. Without having an argument with a lot of what is said as individual statements, I would have loved to see more authors give some more direction even at the risk of attracting criticism. That is exactly what the times are calling for.
The second generic comment I would like to make is that much of the literature also critiques some of the more equitable approaches proposed elsewhere for a more 'poor-friendly' HSR. Many authors do not fully agree with the alternatives proposed:
9. Many are convinced that proposing a bottom-up approach puts too much faith in attaining the many structural changes needed. Further, many are of the opinion that when management of services is turned over to the local people, they do not become any more efficient or effective.
- On the other hand, I, together with many others, still do find evidence that when the management of services is (really) turned over to the people, the added accountability and transparency DOES make them more efficient/effective than what they are now; not perfect, but better. Of course, this turning over of control has to be matched by government support of such a move including it reallocating resources to back the new truly decentralized structure. For sustainability purposes, any viable alternative will have to pass through this turning over of responsibilities, whatever other remedies are instituted. Even diehards would agree with some variant of this today.
10. Other authors contend the problem is not the structure; the root problem, they think, is pervasive apathy and corruption at all levels of the public service --from the village to the top. Some of them may have become hardened through some personal experience to believe that people tend to act only when there is some compelling reason for it. And today, in many countries, there is absolutely no compelling reason for anybody to take their public responsibility seriously. In fact, these authors think it is against the public servants' own self-interest to fulfill their public responsibility.
- Many of the proponents of equitable approaches do agree that people tend to act when there is some compelling reason for it; I remain convinced though that one has to and can create such compelling reasons for people to take their public responsibility more seriously using the right mix of (monetary and non-monetary) incentives, local support supervision and local accountability to beneficiaries. Devolving real powers to local populations, so that public servants are de-facto accountable to them, is feasible and is crucial for this.
11. Unfortunately, many of our colleagues have also come to believe that predominantly tax financed health care is a myth. ('Citizens often end up paying twice', they say, 'first for the consultation at the public clinic and then again at the private practice of the public-clinic physician; this is probably the reason for an increasing number of people going to the private sector services directly').
- Against this, the many 'other' of us contend that there is absolutely no evidence (but a lot of faith) that private hospitals do a better job for low income groups or that they will locate in areas of need rather than of potential profit (when the evidence shows that only public hospitals serve disadvantaged groups or areas). Let's face it squarely, as regards the private alternative, even if we could perfect all the 'market distortions' that hinder private services, the result would still be grossly inequitable and totally unworkable to care for the poor.
12. Proponents of HSRs of any kind ARE genuinely interested in finding a workable solution to the major problems exposed by this humble ombudsman --granted.
- But what I found is that too many define the current realities with what I think is a bias and an a-priori skepticism against the public sector. That is the unhealthy attitude many of us think needs to be broken. The PUBLIC SECTOR IN HEALTH still has the central moral and de-facto responsibility to be the guarantor of equitable health services being made available to all its citizens; nobody can or will do it for the state. Within this context, neither the public financing of private providers (contracting out of clinical and/or preventive services) nor the private financing (running) of public health facilities (as for example currently in China) serves the interests of the poor equitably. The profit motive stands in the way.
13. Finally, you may say that dogmas are just dogmas; and what we need are solutions.
- Yes. But it is HSRs, as currently applied, that seem to be more driven by dogmas than by evidence. From my ombudsman's perspective, and not claiming exclusivity, solutions have to start with a vision that leads to a mission...and visions of an enhanced role for public sector driven solutions as here proposed are not dogmas; they are viable and in the best interest of those we purport to serve.
Acknowledgments:
I thank Goran Dahlgren for his contribution to this text.
Food for thought about a state of mind (1)
Variations on a theme by the Danish writer Peter
Hoeg.
Inspired, extracted (plagiarized) and paraphrased from his
short story "Reflections of a young man in balance", in Tales of the Night,
Panther Books, The Harvill Press, London, 1998, pp.295-308.
Words no longer make much of an impression on many of us. You can take what follows any way you please: as a 'cri du coeur', as a lament or as an ode to hope. I look at it as one way to come closer to the truth about what I do. I will admit to one feeling though -- a faint feeling of anger; I foster it because it keeps me warm. Something tells me that we need to get to the bottom of it all, to the most intimate hopes and fears of what we do for a living. Thoughts as the ones expressed here keep me from sleeping. But they make some sense of my sleeplessness.
The most profound truth about all Development (and indigenous knowledge) is that it is a state of mind. And to that state, those changes we call advances or modernization hold only little relevance. As outsiders, there is little we can say or do that is not or does not become a cliché.
All of us see Development as a series of reflections in mirrors of our own images. But the mirrors are actually false. They help us hiding behind a thin film of humanity (we can genuinely be accused of that). As champions of partial truths, we build these mirrors, which end up invariably being a screen on which we project Development as we would (biasedly) like it to be. These mirrors are dreams. They are based on speculations (from speculum: mirror). Partial truths tend to be sinuous, only bi-dimensional fragments of real life. Partial truths lead us to visions and reflections that remain mostly unaffected by what we do to address them. What we do represents an attempt to half-consciously realize our hopes and allay our fears. The mirror registers our hopes for the truth; it gives us a glimpse of an undeniable misapprehension.
But we know so little about the causes we actually serve. Are we taking the right and crucial steps along the path that will alter the world for the better? People ask us to show results; we think we do, but are we not often entertaining them with descriptions of how difficult it is to reach them?
Anyone who looks into a mirror sees what she wishes or fears to see; a mirror of Development that showed things as they really are would have to show the misery, the suffering, the anguish, the joys of the beholders. How often do we skip these images?
People often ask us why we take part in the daily ordeal and political chicanery of spreading Development. Perhaps the most honest response is: We have to make a living. If anyone questioned me further I would be tempted to say I have no wish to say anymore about it. This because it has long dawned on me that I am a player in a ghastly power game; anything else is an illusion.
Maybe what we see in the Development mirror has nothing to do with the finicky reality; the real world is not inside our mirrors. Some of the "facts" we base our actions on may easily have been formed in the mirror when IT produces us. We chase the mirror's images. If we ran from them, they would pursue us. Whatever we feared the most, the mirror will ram down our throats.
Since I realized this, it has become clear to me that this is a dilemma with which we will always be faced: the 'account of reality' is what makes me what I am and what alters me accordingly. The question is how far the beholder is passively subjected to the impression of reality, and how far she herself actively shapes what she sees. But, on the other hand, this question may be wrongly posed; it presupposes that there is a stable Development reality to be observed. There is no such thing. As soon as we lay eyes on the world, it starts to change. And we with it.
The history of Development is the history of a boundless faith in the power of (the Western) will. I perceive the infinite limitations of that will. Faced with this, I have to submit to the mirror; either that or forget the whole thing.
The process that leads towards reality comes in stages, like the steps on a staircase. We have to take from the mirror the images that show us the world in flux, a world that strives for reaching a credible utopia; a world that is activated by ideas, by people, by reason, by economic hard facts that take into account the ugly faces of greed: a world that does not exist yet; a world that recognizes that human beings are infinitely alike and infinitely diverse.
Getting closer to reality brings liberation. Viewing reality does not mean immediately making sense of a given setup though; it means surrendering oneself and triggering an unfathomable transformation in us. Getting closer to reality helps us discern between different types of colleagues among those that have spent their lives searching for solutions to underdevelopment. Are they right in what they are looking for? We can further judge the great systems that have tried to inform the world about truth and life claiming to be absolutely truthful and well balanced. Have they been right?
Of course, all of us have had inspired instants in which we had a glimpse of reality. But quick forgetfulness (and fear, apathy and bias) erases it all.
I know now the source of my anger. But I am only human, and that is the problem; for humanity is frail, it forgets, it betrays (even its own principles), it devaluates, it is hit by moral and intellectual inflation.
If only I could remember how it felt to be modest and in command of the situation. But forgetfulness is eroding my (and my colleagues') effectiveness. We are clearly leaving crucial things out of the Development equation. I write this with an increasing sense of worry. What's happening to our cliches? Our cynicism? Our mirrors?
Food for thought about a state of mind (2)
Variations on a theme by South African Nobel Prize winner
Nadine Gordimer.
Inspired, plagiarized and paraphrased from her novel
“A Sport of Nature”, Penguin Books, N.Y. 1988.
I am not lonely. But in my darkest hours,In development work, living without a cause is living without a reason to be.
I feel I am alone.
As opposed to those who do not, those of us who have choices ought to have morals.
How often are we caught in the thought that we know what is right, even if we do not manage to do it? Many of us spend our professional lives living in the midst of inequities and behave as decently as we can -under the circumstances. We can spend our lives on our front porches and never be of real use to anyone, especially if we uncritically listen to all the dis-information floating around about development, justice, rights and equity.
We can indeed choose to continue to live on “innocence and ice-cream”. But is that ethical?
We cannot just be grounded on remembering how good it used to be; instead, we need to embark in providing a new style of leadership (more and more based on the inalienable principles of Human Rights). We need to be taken out of the ranks of ‘useful onlookers’ and become grassroots protagonists. We say we have been preparing for change. That is all right. But have we really worked for change that is meaningful to those we purport to serve?
The much-taunted freedoms of assembly, speech and the press are not the only ones that count. Freedom is divisible. Most of us want life for the poor people to be better. That is a freedom too! I still prefer the way freedom is divided here (in Viet Nam, for example) over the way it is divided in the great riches of the West.
Some choose to fight through charity (or God). This comes about, in part because we do not know why we are in this world...and religions tell us why. Others decide to go fight with the people - not through God. (For me, in the real world, God changes sides too often). To one of Gordimer’s characters it was not the Church, but Marx who told him what the world was really about.
Donors send soup powder to change the world. In the meantime, some get power.
The important thing is to be on the side that gets the power...you will never come to power on soup powder. And you have to be in power to be able to feed your own people.
You get there with power (people’s power) and you stay there with money. (In the process of negotiating to get there, it is not questions of justice and reason that count; it boils down to the question of sheer power). Justice is high-minded and relative. We can give people justice or withhold it. But power, they find out how to take it for themselves; through circumstances that arise pragmatically from the specific circumstances of their lives. That is why textbook revolutions fail. Therefore, is it our role to help create those circumstances?
But even under these prerogatives, if we do not attempt to do justice, we cut morality out of power. And that is dangerous.
We can go away from what is happening now. But we can never go away from our moral responsibility.
We need to be fully engaged with the world and the present, based on a concrete historical past.
Then there is no need for too much reflection.
The past becomes a preparation to put action in motion.
Food for finding where your thoughts are
Inspired, extracted (plagiarized) and paraphrased from her novel "The Daughter of Fortune”, Plaza y Janes Editores SA, Barcelona, 1999, pp 296-301.
Some of us have for too long lived surrounded by four walls, in an immutable environment, where time rolls in circles and the line of the horizon where we are heading to in our work is barely perceptible. We have grown up professionally inside an impenetrable armor of good manners and conventionality.
We have been trained to please and serve, and ended up limited by our own routines, the prevailing social norms and our hidden fears. For too long, fear has been our companion: fear of authority and of what people will say, fear of the unknown and of what is different, fear of the unpredictability of social justice, fear of leaving the protected cocoon and facing the dangers of the real world out there, fear of our own fragility and of the ultimate truth.
Our truth has been a sweetened-up truth, made of omissions, courteous silences, well kept secrets, order and discipline -while masses of the poor share the same space and time with us, yet it is as if they did not exist for us. And under such circumstances, our aspiration has really been more to achieve virtuosity. But now we are beginning to doubt the significance of that word.
As this doubt assaults some of us, we are waking up. We do not know in what turn of the road traveled we lost the person we used to be. Looking back, we are not sure anymore which of the causes we championed were meaningful, which we won and which we lost. If we made some mistakes and had uncertainties and fears about the future, we feel we have paid dearly for them already.
We feel new wings growing on our shoulders; we feel we can fly like a condor; we feel suddenly empowered; a new arrogance allowing us to make meaningful decisions in our professional lives is overtaking us, and we are willing to pay the consequences for it. We feel we do not owe an explanation to anyone for these changes.
An atavistic, seldom before felt sense of optimism and commitment invades some of us. We have lost that sensation of multiple fears always sitting in the mouth of our stomachs. Our fears have melted as we have lost our fear of fear. We now find new strengths as we face new risks. We are finding new forces within ourselves that we probably always have had, but did not know we had, because we had never used them. We are ready to join the growing number of explorer-doers seeking new ways out to the problems of the world. We feel pride as wo/men who are reinventing equity.
Some of us walk victorious while others still carry disillusions mostly having early defeats to show for. But we feel we own our destinies, our future, and our own irrevocable newly acquired dignity. We finally understand talk about liberation, about rights and empowerment, and about freedom from want in new ways and yearn to discuss with others what we see and feel about each of them.
We can now live each day without necessarily making plans that are not worth spending our lives on. We feel we have a blank sheet in front of us where we can write our new plans and, in the process, become whoever we want to become, without anybody judging our past. In short, we can be reborn.
“Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors” - T. Henry Huxley
Thinking loud
Statistics create subjects; they tell stories and shape cultures.
Over the past five decades, development practitioners have prided themselves on successfully creating more sophisticated ways to measure and compare. Statistics have become crucial, if not the most crucial of, development tools.
They describe, measure and help to build the arguments in favor of, or even against, development issues. (For example, as somebody jokingly said, “smoking is a major cause of statistics”).
Statistics, we are told, reflect economic and social characteristics; they have the power to focus awareness on a range of problems, deficiencies, challenges and improvements.
Of all the development tools, it is clear that statistics play the central role in constructing power and knowledge.
However, statistics are often used unknowingly (?) by development experts to further entrench the (prevailing) development discourse. The problematic, potentially biased nature of the statistic in development work is given little credence.
One of the cruxes is in the choice of indicators; it always embodies certain values about what information ‘counts’ (“whatever the cakes we bake are the ones we will have to eat”). For instance, when choosing which data are collected to determine the type and extent of a given health problem affecting a population, Human Rights principles and norms can be considered or disregarded. The resulting statistics will tell a different story altogether.
Further, decisions on how to disaggregate data (by age, gender, socio-economic, ethnic or other group) also have direct influence on the policies and programs that are put into place.
While being comforted by the statistic, we remain unaware of how central the use of statistics can be to the politics of representation. Statistics ultimately is a political technology which can create a reality that is understood as factual and as a translation of the truth.
We thus have good reasons to be skeptical (or at least inquisitive) about statistics; after all, it is notable that the seventeenth century term for what is now called statistics was “political arithmetick”.
Note:
Comment from Joe Hannah: On the same subject, here is a quote whose author I also do not know: "If you torture multi-variate data sufficiently, they will confess!"
Note: *This is partly plagiarized, but I regrettably lost the reference. Although it is nothing terribly new, I think it is still worth bringing to a higher level of consciousness every now and then. Any disagreements?
In the 2001 World Development Report devoted to poverty, it is stated that there are limits to a micro-level approach to poverty, and a macro-level approach is advocated for. The latter is supposed to include work with and through NGOs. For this to happen comprehensively, the Human Rights dimension will have to become more central. And this implies some changes in NGO work will have to happen.
Let me share with you my micro-comment on this macro-issue:
In these times of widening gaps between haves and have-nots --between those whose rights are mostly upheld and those whose rights are being systematically violated--
NGOs simply cannot continue doing business as usual.
The vast majority of them are long overdue for “REVISIONING/REMISSIONING EXERCISES”. These are literally “retreats” in which NGO staff ask themselves:
- What are we all about?If NGOs do not like the ring to the answers to these questions (and many others like these in the same vein)...well...you guessed: It’s time for them to remission their organization!- In the present climate of Globalization cum pauperization (involving a whole a chain of old and new Human Rights violations), are we part of the problem or part of the solution?
- How are our activities contributing to combating these Human Rights violations, to combating poverty and to bringing about greater equity in a sustainable, empowering way?
A few NGOs (e.g. ACHAN in Madras, India, achan@vsnl.com) have successfully done this and are proactively convincing others to do likewise.
NGOs: Get your planning going for the most important workshop you have held in the last ‘x’ years and let the new Human Rights approach be at its center...
It should be clearer to many of you by now that focusing on sustainable poverty alleviation is inseparable from bringing about greater respect of Human Rights and greater equity.
As we have discussed, current development thinking is at a cross-road. This gives us a golden opportunity to influence overall development strategies and particularly the professional ‘lords of poverty’ to move a step closer to putting Human Rights issues at the center of poverty eradication. In this endeavor, we cannot leave it up to (undefined) ‘others’ to carry out the needed steps to bring Human Rights center stage and miss this close to a last ditch opportunity. This sense of urgency must be heightened for all of us, including donors: technical actions will not bring about significant improvements in the condition of the poor.
The myth of the Chinese proverb of ‘give me a fish and you’ll have fed me for a day, and give me a net and you’ll feed me for life’ has to be debunked. This fallacy is repeated over and over again. The real question is who owns the pond/lake/river/ocean and what the RIGHTS of the poor are to fish there...Access to the Commons (or means of production, for that purpose) is not to be taken for granted!
Donors have to join together to fund Human Rights violations inventories in the recipient countries and these data are to be published annually in a publication of the type of UNICEF’s ‘The Progress of Nations” or UNDP’s annual report where countries are ranked according to their respective Human Rights performance.
Actually subsequently using these data to tackle identified Human Rights violations at national and sub-national level will then become the main challenge for committed donors (...would some of them also need re-visioning / re-missioning retreats...?).
As is true for NGOs, donor agencies will thus also have to more forcefully pursue Human Rights-promoting, bottom-centered, empowering interventions. They will have to bring recipient governments to the table to negotiate binding commitments (with signed memoranda of understanding) to move in the direction of poverty eradication via the Human Rights approach (with specific poverty-redressing and rights-upholding objectives), including the close monitoring of progress. Funds can then be released in tranches based on the achievement of negotiated verifiable Human Rights indicators along the implementation line of funded projects.
A donor-NGO/civil society link and funding window should be developed concomitantly along the same lines (...for re-missioned NGOs). In case of non-responsiveness or non-performing government projects, donor funding should be progressively reallocated to the NGO/civil society sector. Non-performing NGOs should be dropped under the same guise.
All this may only add up to a start - and from the top at that... But it is a start in the right direction. Next, we will have to let most inputs for future actions come from the more directly affected themselves. Perhaps most of our energies will need to be spent on the latter. The road ahead will, for sure, require our greatest boldness ever.
Beware: The fashion is out. Everybody wants to jump into the bandwagon of Human Rights.
It is coming to our attention that to be ‘up to the times’ a number of donors and NGOs are telling us that their programs have incorporated participatory approaches to their development, health and nutrition programs. They see those being an “essential” part of Human Rights, because they build activities around the express needs of the beneficiaries.
But this is NOT what the Human Rights approach is about!
Such programs must be retooled to adopt the full Human Rights paradigm to deserve being called such, i.e. the goal of them should be achieved through interventions founded in international Human Rights law that will provide the legal basis for interventions that will ultimately underscore the host governments’ fault at fulfilling its obligations to redress the violation of Human Rights of its citizens.
To bring about a reversion of the violations requires changing/adapting ongoing programs’ objectives to the Human Rights framework (the difference is one between just delivering the usual services, and making it clear to beneficiaries that they are legally entitled to specific services and can go somewhere to complain if they do not receive what is due them; people need to know what commitments have been made to them).
The new objectives are not to stabilize the problem, but to make it disappear. Accountability now will not only be on services being provided, but on tackling (and ending) the problem at its roots.
You need to see the difference in this.
Typical public health, nutrition or development programs, for instance, do not include Human Rights education and do not address the fundamental problems (and process) that marginalize(s) disadvantaged groups in society. They do little to address the basic causes and inequalities that lead to the perpetuation of poverty. And these are the challenges that the Human Rights approach does address, i.e. it attempts to redress the imbalance between society’s privileged and its disempowered members and it clearly identifies individuals and agencies of the state that are called upon to carry out these obligations, and, it also says how they are to operate to remove the specific Human Rights violations.
Another subterfuge used that comes to our attention is for donors to say that they are carrying out some of their activities through NGOs that do advocate for Human Rights. Well, the same objections apply here. This is not enough, even if the latter NGOs are genuinely involved.
The fallacy that needs to be uprooted is that development and, for example, public health programs such as child survival and nutrition programs, ‘implicitly’ address fundamental issues of Human Rights. In the Human Rights approach, nothing is left implicit. Without retooling to an explicit Human Rights focus such claims remain but hot air.
References:
- Johnson, F.C. (1997): USAID child survival programs: Adopting a Human Rights approach, The Intl. J. of Children s Rights, 5: 383-395.
- Kent, G. (1997): Realizing international children s rights through implementation of national law, The Intl. J. of Children s Rights, 439-456.
Food from a Commissioner's thoughts
For this issue of the reader, I find it fitting to excerpt and adapt from Mary Robinson’s (High Commissioner of Human Rights’s) statement to the Copenhagen Plus Five meeting in Geneva in June 2000.
“Without the rights rhetoric (and praxis),
I am afraid we will end up
with a total and uncaring market system
that will not solve our problems.”
- Judge Albie Sachs, South Africa
Just a few years ago, the language of Human Rights was unwelcome in the work of development. Human Rights were regarded as ‘political’.
On those rare occasions when Human Rights were raised, it was often in the context of conditionalities set by donors.
Today, the situation is different. Most official and non-governmental aid organizations have now committed themselves to the integration of Human Rights into their work; at least in general. As was long overdue, a new dialogue is taking place, more and more using law-based approaches to Human Rights, and the same have been integrated into the latest reforms of the UN system.
The path to human dignity runs not through imposed technocratic solutions, imported foreign models, or presumed trade-offs between development and rights.
Health, education, housing, fair justice and free political participation are not matters for charity --but rather matters of right.
This is what is meant by the ‘rights-based approach’: a participatory, empowering, accountable, and non-discriminatory development paradigm based on the full set of universal, inalienable Human Rights and freedoms.
Poverty eradication without empowerment is unsustainable.
Social integration without minority rights is unimaginable.
Gender equality without women's rights is illusory.
Full employment without workers’ rights may be no more than a promise of sweat shops, exploitation and slavery.
The logic of Human Rights in development is inescapable.
As said, rights-based approaches are normatively based on international Human Rights standards and emphasize accountability, equality, empowerment and participation.
The question is: How closely does the rhetoric match the reality?
Therefore, the focus of the next five years must be on accountability, because duty bearers delivering on commitments is crucial to the advancement of Human Rights.
All partners of development must accept higher levels of accountability!
Human Rights-accountable aid is the respective responsibility of donors.
Human Rights-accountable business practices will have to come to mean fair trade, decent jobs, protected consumers and clean environments.
But the will to protect Human Rights must be accompanied by the means to do so.
Because there are crucial resource implications, international cooperation is a sine-qua-non, including higher levels of aid with ‘rights-friendly’ priorities, deeper debt relief, and protection of poor countries from the negative impacts of structural adjustment and globalization.
Recognizing women's rights as Human Rights --in law, policy and practice-- is also crucial.
But perhaps no social phenomenon is as comprehensive in its assault on Human Rights and human dignity as is poverty.
Poverty erodes or nullifies economic and social rights (health, housing, food, safe water and education) and civil and political rights (fair trial, political participation and security).
The poor are acutely aware of the indivisibility of these rights! But the same are elusive to them...
From a Human Rights perspective, poverty is a condition characterized by the sustained deprivation of choices and the power necessary for the enjoyment of fundamental rights.
The social exclusion, humiliation, abuse, rejection and harassment the poor are subjected to --and their lack of power in regard to insensitive local officials, corrupt institutions and inaccessible development decision-makers-- all point to the need to create the new mechanisms necessary to ensure that the voices of the poor are heard and given authority in development.
The rights-based approach does provide a better response to the continuing challenges of poverty -particularly those not reflected in current statistical indicators...
This, because the rights-based approach brings with it a more rational development framework, more complete structural analyses, enhanced accountability, increased transparency, higher levels of empowerment, ownership and active participation, safeguards against harm, and -- most importantly-- a more authoritative basis for advocacy.
Food for duty bearers thoughts
“Human Rights are plainly not guaranteed
by the existing institutional arrangements.”
- Amartya Sen
We have to understand this as a point of departure.
A country becomes State Party to a convention or covenant once it has ratified it. The same is then binding and the state is obliged to take what are considered appropriate steps. As the duty bearer, the state is now considered to have a contractual relationship with the rights holders. Additionally, the state has to periodically report to the UN on progress. States’ compliance with their obligations under each covenant is thus to be monitored by the international community ultimately via the UN.
This double (reporting/monitoring) mechanism, in theory, adds to decreasing our level of past frustrations since, now, international monitoring is no longer excluded and can no longer be considered as external interference (!) even when taken up by international and civil society organizations alone or together with local partners.
Such international monitoring aims at establishing a dialogue with those states that can be shown deliberately to violate Human Rights, or more commonly, to omit pursuing explicit policies towards the realization of these rights.
All this amounts to nothing but the restoration of the mandate already contained in the original (over 50 years old) UN Charter to pursue Human Rights throughout the system...
It is probably only a matter of time before all UN agencies will have explicitly committed themselves to a Human Rights approach (which will permeate all agencies) and carry out this monitoring mandate as related to their specific/respective mandates. In the latter, the Human Rights component will now have to cut across all the agencies’ political and technical priorities.
To this should be added the same agencies’ new responsibility of advising interested member states in the drafting of so-called ‘framework legislation’ towards the formulation and implementation of domestic Human Rights laws.
In short, in the future, the comparative advantage of the UN agencies will rest far more on their capacity to generate ideas and to shape of the normative framework for development than on their ability to transfer resources.
This transition from general commitment and principles to actual implementation will need time especially since the respect for Human Rights often goes against dominant economic interests, against the interests of globalization and those of entrenched power elites. But this represents a challenge rather than a constraint.
The misconception that the realization of rights is necessarily costly will have to be vigorously countered as well. Moreover, it should be understood that the state does not always have to be the direct ‘provider’. It can and often will be the facilitator of and guarantor for primary Human Rights actions taken by others in society.
While the UN remains critical for advocacy actions, for standard setting and guidance, it is essential that country-level initiatives be developed. In this endeavor, continued gaps in communication and understanding between Human Rights advocates/analysts and practitioners remains a major problem. For example, many NGOs are still unfamiliar with the Human Rights potential to strengthen their work.
Finally, good governance, in terms of appropriate state actions in the realm of Human Rights, should be the result of and go in tandem with ongoing civil society initiatives. This is not automatic and needs to be better worked out as a matter of urgency.
Reference:
- Barth Eide, W. (2000): The promotion of a Human Rights perspective on food security: Highlights of an evolving process, Chapter 14 in Clay, W. and Stokke, O. (eds.) Food and Human Security, Cass Publishers.
(SCROLL ON: CONTINUED UP TO READER No. 211, MARCH 2009)
