[afro-nets] Food for a globalized thought

[Claudio Schuftan <claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn>]

Food for a globalized thought
-----------------------------

Human Rights Reader 97

Succeed, we ultimately must! If not, Human Rights will be rele-
gated to simply being an indicator of violations rather than an
essential foundation of the new development paradigm.

1. Globalization confuses the Rights-of-Liberty of persons
(i.e., non-interference by the state in issues of the persons)
with the Rights-of-Corporations who insistently claim for non-
interference by government.
Human Rights (HR) work primarily focuses on the groups socially
excluded from the prosperity some have long gained (and continue
to gain) from Globalization (or from any previous stage of Capi-
talism). Therefore, HR work focuses equally on Rights-of-Justice
(as on Rights-of-Liberty) denouncing, where needed, state regu-
lations and actions that interfere with ensuring/guaranteeing
equity and fair distribution-of and access-to social, economic
and cultural benefits.

2. In today's globalized world, minority-power-holders (often
important duty-bearers) put in place political distortions to
consolidate their oppressive and exploitative power. We need to
understand why those forms of power have been accepted and are
deemed-bearable-by-the-people-who-suffer-under-them. The French
philosopher Michel Foucault was of the opinion that the real
scandal is not 'power abuse', but 'obedience abuse': the real
problem is not the base of power, the real problem is one of do-
cility. [It is always useful to look at the other side of the
coin, isn't it? -- some more food for thought here on what to do
about this.]

3. In a world globalized or not, a Need is much more than a
Want. A need, if not satisfied, causes damage, for example, the-
non-satisfaction-of-basic-needs eventually leads to social
and/or biological death. That is why, in many of us, basic needs
(have) generate(d) the desire or the moral imperative (but not
the obligation!) to do something to satisfy them. (C. Sepulveda)

4. Furthermore, a Right is much more than a Need. It carries
with it a legally binding obligation for redress (i.e., 'cor-
relative duties'). Countries that have signed and ratified the
different HR covenants have, in fact, signed social contracts to
respect, protect and fulfil the human (people's) rights en-
shrined in them.

5. This notion of a social contract allows us to be very clear:
We are never going to achieve our HR goals by stepping up the
lobbying of NGOs or by promoting ever stricter conditionalities
in foreign aid (ODA) only. [For many reasons, PRSPs will not do
either. Just a key example: PRSPS do not address the disadvan-
taged position of poor countries in the world trading system].

6. Progress in HR work will depend on mobilizing claim holders,
opening opportunities in ways that will inspire them to think in
new ways and to take action themselves. (R. Jolly) New strate-
gies also require the wisdom to focus, to persevere in carrying
out consistent and determined action plus the ability to secure
sufficient amounts of the (right) needed resources. The idea is
not to overburden the system with a high diversity-of and with
fragmented actions that blur the focus on our primarily HR-based
work. [In a spider web metaphor, each string represents a dif-
ferent cause-and-effect-relationship. If one or even a few
threads are damaged, the firmness of the web is still intact.
Increasing the number of damaged threads threatens the strengths
of the web until, suddenly, the web collapses. If we want to re-
pair a-not-yet-collapsed-but-seriously-damaged web, we do not
need to replace all its threads, but rather identify the most
important ones to replace, as long as the re!
placement threads are strategically placed and are strong
enough]. (R. Gross) Or put in another way, the task is not to
deliver excuses, but to get the job done (G. Kent).

Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:claudio@hcmc.netnam.vn