Human rights: Food for a yet to be marshaled thought  ‘Of claim holders and duty bearers’

Human Rights Reader 520

- “Where, after all, do universal human rights (HR) begin? In small places, close to home --so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere." (Eleanor Roosevelt)

Claim holders’ potential power not used is wasted (George Kent)

-Claim holders have to shake their servitude mentality carried on their shoulders for centuries. (Franz Fanon)

1. Claim holders have to understand that much of what they aspire-to are actually their inalienable rights. This understanding is to empower and mobilize them. Beyond understanding, they must know their rights, and must consequently make the appropriate institutional arrangements available to them to actively pursue the realization of those rights. It is using these arrangements that claims must become enforceable and claim holders truly empowered. Where there are no such effective arrangements in place, there are no chances for them to effectively fulfil their rights. (G. Kent) Improvements will not come by waiting for favors from well-disposed politicians or benefactors, but from getting claim holders organized to solve problems collectively.* Period. (Denis Goulet)

*: Since the participation of claim holders has, at best so far, been symbolic (have they gone from confrontation to accommodation?), they must first understand that there is a big difference between just-receiving-the-usual-social-services and the inalienable fact that they are legally entitled to specific services and can go somewhere to complain if they do not receive what is due them.

2. Hence 1: Having rights that are being enforced is invariably recognizing that people must have had specific powers to stake claims on some duty bearer(s). In short, HR are about enforceable and enforced claims resulting from the successful demanding of claim holders.

3. Hence 2: Having rights enables claim holders to ‘stand up like wo/men,’ to look others in the eye, and to feel in some fundamental way the equal of anyone. To think of themselves as the holders of rights is not to be unduly, but properly proud, to have that minimal self-respect that is necessary to be worthy. (J. Feinberg) Ergo, the only thing that, in all truth, can be called a winning rebellion is when claim holders no longer accept their fatalistic fate (assessing the threats to the future can easily lead to apathy or despair) and actively claim. (Adapted from Ortega y Gasset) (Somebody called this going from earthquake to socialquake…).

4. Let us be truthful here: Many of us speak on behalf of the claim holders rather than amplifying their voices. The issue of engaging claim holders themselves in demanding the fulfilment of their rights does not get much attention in the HR discourse these days. To make rights systems effective, the first thing that needs to be done is to make sure that people know their rights.** Then it is important to make sure they know how to exercise those rights.

**: The right to information is to be understood as also exposing claim holders to information related to the underlying and structural causes of HR violations. In this context, consider: National statistics officers are indeed accountable for HR; they are actually HR duty bearers.

5. Way too often, HR activities are carried out far over the claim holders’ heads, without them knowing what is going on, and without them being directly involved in the action. Writers (including me) should offer more discussion about how their readers can ensure that claim holders are fully engaged as actors in their specific environments. Guidance on ways claim holders can empower themselves must simply be given greater priority.

People must be able to claim their own rights, and not depend on others claiming their rights for them. The hunger problem, for instance, needs to be handled not as one would approach livestock management, but rather as a partnership based on genuine concern for the well-being of those who are hungry and with the direct engagement of the hungry in addressing the problem. (G. Kent)

If the claim holders are silent, the system has failed (G. Kent)

-Duty bearers (and CEOs of TNCs) who consistently violate HR have no better excuse to continue doing it than pointing out the same violations being committed by others. (adapted from Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Noticia de un Secuestro)

6. Applying the HR framework helps us structure the power we need to control how issues are understood by duty bearers and, therefore, reveal the bottom line power relations in society. The framework also helps us to better understand why history progresses as it does and what ways are needed to bring duty bearers on board the HR agenda.*** (L. Considine) This, because it is clear that duty bearers bring-in competing frameworks that they keep changing in shorter and shorter periods --as if experimenting… Central to this, then, is to understand the need we will have for cliff-hanger negotiations, and for conflict.**** (M. Hajer)

***: Remember: Basic human needs only elicit promises; HR demand duty bearers to exercise their correlative duties as firmly established in international HR law.

****: Fundamental change is not possible without conflict with the powers-that-be. As for when the best timing is for this inevitable conflict with vested interests will depend on whether claim holders decide to precipitate a crisis or face it when it comes.

7. Also never to forget is the fact that operating within the HR framework does not automatically change the way duty bearers relate to claim holders. This means claim holders have to work on changing this relationship since they are not always seen as full citizens with the same rights as the-more-fortunate-members-of-society. This is only possible from a position of acknowledged power. (SCN News No 25, 2002)

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

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Postscript/Marginalia

Urban’s iron laws (or syllogisms?) on empowering communities through capacity development

• The notions of duty and of justice (…and not of compassion!) give HR their cutting edge;
• In HR work, power is the key relation to change since a right confers power and makes it possible for claim holders to act decisively;
• power is a counterpart to liberty;
• people have full power only when they can alter existing power relations;
• Claim holders have to have power over duty bearers to affect HR;
• power gives an advantage to claim holders to change the system to their advantage;
• only exercising full power can people select and implement one of the available and possible solutions;
• staking claims is rather useless if there is no power to have duty bearers enforce public duties;
• a party other than duty bearers has to have power over the duties in order to enforce most public duties (So, to have a duty enforced, claim holders need to exert power over duty bearers);
• it is no good if the holders of the duties have no power or control to enforce their duties;
• people can stake a claim only when they also have a power (the power must be a necessary ingredient in their claim);
• having a claim necessarily involves having (or getting) power;
• therefore, claim holders cannot only be passive beneficiaries of the duties of others;
• effective participation means power sharing;
• only the political maturation of community members makes them a political force;
• in last instance, disparity reduction means power reduction of the haves. (Urban Jonsson)