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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Hi All<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Rights to me are a set of basic conditions and purposes of
political association of human groups. They are basic, and therefore they
cannot be each and every thing which is decided by the concerned political
community. However at the same time the nature of political association, and of
a political community, is not static. Its members today have the same right to
pull together some ‘basic’ conditions and purposes of their
association as someone had in say circa 1823. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>We know that nature of political communities have undergone
great change through history, and the conception of rights can be said to have
undergone a corresponding change. It can be no one’s case that we have
reached the end of history, so I find this thing about lets stick to existing
rights a bit difficult to swallow. It is more difficult to accept this for
someone from a society that is in the middle of more rapid political evolution
than someone in a relatively mature political system. And since, as discussed,
changes in conception of rights has directly to do with evolution of a
political community, I have great problem with how most analyses of
rights as have been seen on this list mostly simply refuse to factor this angle
in. (this evolution of political communities also cannot be taken to be going
in a given specified direction, <i><span style='font-style:italic'>a la </span></i>modernization
theory.)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Another issue of relevance here is this distinction of some
rights needing spending of resources, as if others don’t. Go to the
stateless parts of Afghanistan, or Sudan, or insurgency bound areas of Kashmir,
and you will begin to understand what kind of resource expenditure and systems
need to be put in place to ensure the right against bodily harm, what to speak
of FoE. Ensuring any right needs work to be done, otherwise they will be
self-ensured. And doing any work/ effort means expenditure of resources. So
this distinction too, at the bottom, is very fallacious. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>This is not to say that all political claims are rights, or
even that all rights are equally important. Depending on our individual and
collective political preferences, some may be more important than the other.
And some are most important for all of us. For instance, we will all agree that
the right against bodily harm is something extremely basic and important. But
there are many grey shades here as political communities evolve. Does the right
of children not to work in relatively dangerous conditions derive from this
right? (Or, the right not to work at all.) Which all other ‘child
rights’ derive for this right and from others. What are dangerous
conditions? At some point just working long hours can be considered dangerous.
Can then working long hours for adults also be considered dangerous?. Does
then, the right to have a decent livelihood without working in ‘dangerous
conditions’ become a right derived from the right against bodily harm.
Does it mean anything, or help, to christen a new set of rights as child rights
or labour rights, or is it blasphemous to the basic ideals of human rights. Who
decides when this point of blasphemy is reached? <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>It is amusing that people could argue that we should close
the list of rights - as the list of states who can legally pursue nuclear
weapon programs is official closed – when we, for instance, in India, see
daily struggles of people to claim basic political rights, through grassroots
movements, constructing these rights collectively, through new political consciousness.
There is this right to livelihood struggle by tribals whose forest inhabitation
is taken away by ‘civilized’ people carried self-certified
documents based on right to property, and its ‘legal’ adjudication
(reminds of something long back in the US ??). People dying with AIDS in
millions when there are medicines that are not allowed to be produced by them
(local companies) for self-consumption in the name of intellectual property
rights. And therefore there is a (counter) political assertion of a right to
health. This are only a few vignettes of the political struggles of a big
number of people which are very conveniently sought to be excluded by some,
from conceptions of what is political most important and non-negotiable –
‘our’ rights (whose??). <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>This doesn’t mean that we can talk about rights
loosely. No not at all. These are, by definition, issues of highest importance
to human life. But neither one should seek to freeze an arbitrary codification
for everyone about what is of highest importance to human life for different
political communities (including for the global community, whose
‘political community’ nature is increasingly stronger, and
therefore we should be more careful than ever of political dominations, even if
in the name of human rights.)<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>In fact, at a seminar organized by IT for Change a few years
back a social activist strongly challenged the conception of
‘communication rights’ as being un-connected to any people’s
movement or people’s perspectives. She was strongly of the opinion that
one has to be careful putting things in a ’rights framework’, and
not doing so devalues people’s struggles (not only Indian
people’s struggles but as much as those of French, and American whose
struggles underlie some very important rights). I have not brought this subject
up with her but I expect her to criticize a conception of a possible
‘right to the Internet’ from the same perspective. I don’t
think she will be right in doing so, but I do agree with her framework of critique.
<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>But I don’t agree with the frameworks of defending
‘existing rights’ and negating any other conceptions that seek
refuge in UDHR as ‘the’ rights document or in negative-positive
right distinctions. Instead, let us be tuned in to people’s political
realities and struggles which give shape to rights. There is no other yardstick
of ‘deciding on’ what can be or cant be rights. Such essentialism
is self serving for the respective political ideologies professed by the
protagonists. (No, it is not neo-imperialism - at least, not yet :-) )<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Since we are discussing rights as a part of an advocacy
group (which concerns social change), I think we should, in my view, be more
tuned with real frontiers of social change, and deep political realities of
these frontiers. And since this is a global group, I think its political
legitimacy lies in being globally inclusive in conceiving of what is highest in
terms of our political priorities as a global political community. <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Parminder <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:
10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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