AFRO-NETS> Food for a subversive thought

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Food for a subversive thought
-----------------------------
 
Human Rights Reader 49
 
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN PROJECT AND PROCESS IS OWNERSHIP. HUMAN RIGHTS 
CANNOT BE IMPLEMENTED AS A PROJECT.
 
     Projects create islands in the ocean of poverty.
     The origin of Human Rights lies in the rather
     subversive idea of protecting the collective
     interests of the poor and weak in a society
     against the rich and powerful. (Adilisha, FAHAMU)
 
1. One violated right is a violated right. Suffering is not increased 
by numbers. One body can contain all the suffering the world can 
take.
 
2. In Human Rights, we do not judge in terms of quantity (alone). By 
doing so, one surely betrays Human Right's principles.
 
3. We must, therefore, no longer allow the sovereignty of states to 
be used as a shield for gross violations of Human Rights, simply be-
cause there are times when sovereignty just protects grave suffering. 
(J. K. Galbraith).
 
4. The Human Rights struggle is about turning human suffering into 
history rather than destiny --and we can't face heavy artillery with 
water guns. (D. A. Moi) That is the naked truth.
 
5. But we live in a world still in need of believing in old truths 
that nobody has wanted to believe in... and Human Rights are not ex-
actly a new truth.
 
6. Because to achieve change one has to attain a critical mass of 
process ownership, human social struggles are, by necessity, inter-
generational. (C. Sepulveda) But this does not allow for complacency 
or procrastination. Bluntly put: the struggle for Human Rights is 
overdue.
 
7. Health rights are to be taken-up-by rather than bestowed-on or 
given-to the people as charity. So, to move the process ahead, we 
need to move into new territory. For example, we need more parliamen-
tary, civil society and student involvement in the struggle for Human 
Rights: more constituent groups have to take ownership of the human-
rights-restoring process.
 
8. In the struggle to achieve that, it has been easy to meet, but not 
so easy to act together. (The rich are more united precisely in that 
sense; they close ranks very rapidly when threatened; the rich are 
also 'very charitable': they understand that they have to pay ransom 
for their riches). (G. B. Shaw)
 
9. Our challenge, then, is to interpret our individual experience 
from a Human Rights perspective to better serve the people so they 
take de-facto ownership of the specific struggle for Human Rights. 
But beware: experience is not what happens (or has happened) to you, 
but what you do (or have done) with what happens (or has happened) to 
you! (A. Huxley)
 
10. Idealism, when uninformed by experience, is abstract and danger-
ous in a world coerced by the cult of power. (A. A. de Vitis) More-
over, idealism and ethics are a mockery where the question of action 
is never even raised. (Robert Scholes) ...and our inaction and inef-
fectiveness in the field of Human Rights is bliss for politicians and 
bureaucrats. (Or, we sometimes wrongly assume that decision-makers 
are rational, righteous and pious, and will accept hard evidence or 
will react to outrageous injustice...).
 
11. Too often, the aim is clear, but what precisely we want to 
achieve, and how we can act together, is less clear; the 'how', on 
'how-to-get-to-our-aim ' stays in the dark. Too often too, genuine 
protest movements have big words, but even a bigger cluelessness. We 
do not want to be like that. Slogans alone no longer do in Human 
Rights work. The discrepancy between slogans and reality is simply 
too painfully apparent. The challenge thus is to go from getting-all-
relevant-information -- to mounting-an-argument -- to organizing-
action. But beware, too often have we tended to mistake (sometimes 
endless) negotiations for action. (J. G. Speth)
 
12. Standing up for a common cause often means to resist, to oppose, 
to redirect, to counter, to denounce. Getting the right information 
to claim holders is thus an armor and a weapon for people to take the 
ownership of Human Rights work. From the right to know and the duty 
to inquire flows the obligation to act. (S. Steingraber)
 
13. In the Human Rights arena, courageous individuals act; they lis-
ten to people's complaints, learn from them and teach them; they 
treat them like someone of value.
 
14. The challenge is thus to adopt a course of action which, for all 
its drawbacks, positively affects social change in the direction of 
the achievement of all Human Rights. And when acting, just REacting 
limits our choices. We have to take the initiative and denounce, yes, 
but also announce a new order.
 
15. While denouncing, presenting alternatives, showing the way and 
suggesting alternatives, Human Rights activists have to be 'comfort-
busters' and 'disquieters', as well as 'callers-to-reflection-and-
action'. This eventually makes them into true alter-egos of the civil 
society community. Their mission is to center-the-debate and articu-
late-the-reasons for Human Rights. It is indeed a heroic battle of 
'universal ideas against special interests'.
 
16. For all the above reasons, I see our task as critics being one of 
actively politicizing the Human Rights discourse and leading it into 
new action-oriented positions.
 
17. In doing so, we also often have to unveil the workings of many a 
colonized consciousness: Great spirits have always encountered vio-
lent opposition from mediocre minds. (A. Einstein)
 
18. So, if you think we are too small to be effective in upholding 
Human Rights, ...you have never been in bed with a flee.
 
Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn
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