AFRO-NETS> Food for duty bearer's thoughts

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Food for duty bearer's thoughts
-------------------------------

ON THE ROLE OF THE STATE, THE UN AND CIVIL SOCIETY

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 de-
creasing 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 re-
alization of these rights. All this amounts to nothing but the resto-
ration 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 Hu-
man 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 formu-
lation 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 nor-
mative framework for development than on their ability to transfer 
resources.

This transition from general commitment and principles to actual im-
plementation 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 soci-
ety.

While the UN remains critical for advocacy actions, for standard set-
ting and guidance, it is essential that country-level initiatives be 
developed. In this endeavor, continued gaps in communication and un-
derstanding 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.

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

Reference:
Barth Eide, W., 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, 2000.

--
Send mail for the `AFRO-NETS' conference to `<afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org>'.
Mail administrative requests to `<majordomo@usa.healthnet.org>'.
For additional assistance, send mail to:  `<owner-afro-nets@usa.healthnet.org>'.