AFRO-NETS> Food for thought for friend and foe (2)

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Food for thought for friend and foe (2)
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THE ROLE OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN POLITICIZING DEVELOPMENT ETHICS, 
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE AND DEVELOPMENT PRAXIS:

The vast majority of humanity just has the right to see, to hear... 
and to remain silent. (Eduardo Galeano)

Part (2)

The new discourse:

10. The main areas of concern of the Human Rights approach are nine:

- population and gender,
- mortality and fertility,
- health,
- education,
- income and employment,
- habitat and infrastructure,
- the environment,
- human security, and
- social justice.

11. Because Human Rights derive from the dignity and worth inherent 
in the human person, when deprived of rights, a wo/man does not rep-
resent the human person whom the Universal Declaration regards as the 
ideal of a free wo/man. (7) What I am focusing on hereunder -let me 
clarify-- is not (directly) on the need for the overall Political 
Rights of people to be universally upheld. I am rather interested 
here in the politics of enforcing (all) Human Rights using a people-
centered AAA process. This, since, for me, Human Rights are the res-
urrection-of or the return-to a greater focus and action on the basic 
causes of the Conceptual Framework which still remain un-addressed at 
the base of the causality pyramid.

12. The Human Right approach reiterates, in no uncertain terms, that 
a relationship exists between human rights and economic and social 
development. And within a Human Rights-based development, it is the 
politics of equity that ultimately counts.

13. Orthodoxy aside, politicization is here meant to be a process 
that transforms anguish into anger and into the search for being ul-
timately relevant --keeping in mind that a political climate is some-
thing one creates, not something that is found out there.

14. In that same sense, Human Rights is about breaking the silence of 
powerlessness that keeps the needs and desires of the poor from being 
part of national political agendas. For the disempowered to get voice 
is not enough; Human Rights is about getting them influence, and 
about the processes that lead from having voice to having influence.

15. In sum, the added value of Human Rights is that they cannot be 
relegated to a mere social aspiration: they are rights; even if, at 
present, some of them are not enforced (or enforceable).


Claudio Schuftan
Hanoi, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn

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