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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Hi <st1:PersonName w:st="on">Parminder</st1:PersonName>
and all,<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'>Thanks for how you
expressed so evidently how rights are evolving or become more conscious. FYI,
yesterday I attended during the session of the UNWG on the Right to Development
the launching of the <b><i><span style='font-weight:bold;font-style:italic'>Implementing
the Right to Development – The Role of International Law</span></i></b><i><span
style='font-style:italic'>,</span></i> a joint publication by the Friedrich
Ebert Stiftung and the Harvard School of Public Health, Program on Human Rights
in Development, soon to be online. In the meantime you can find<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=abstand style='background:white'><b><font size=2 color=navy
face=Arial><span lang=DE style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy;
font-weight:bold'>Towards the implementation of the right to development</span></font></b><font
size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span lang=DE style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:
Arial;color:navy'> : field-testing and fine-tuning the UN criteria on the right
to development in the Kenyan-German parthership / Felix Kirchmeier ; Monika
Lüke ; Britt Kalla. - Geneva : Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Geneva Office, [2007].
- 46 S. = 2,3 MB, PDF-File. - <br>
Electronic ed.: Genf ; Bonn : FES, 2008<br>
ISBN 978-3-89892-853-3</span></font><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
lang=DE style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'><a
href="http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/genf/05105.pdf" target="_blank">Die
Publikation im PDF-Format</a><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></font></p>
<p class=abstand style='background:white'><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
lang=DE style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><a
href="http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/populo/digbib.pl?f_ABC=genf&t_listen=x&sortierung=jab">http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/populo/digbib.pl?f_ABC=genf&t_listen=x&sortierung=jab</a><o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=abstand style='background:white'><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
lang=DE style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Best<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=abstand style='background:white'><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
lang=DE style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'>Renate<o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=abstand style='background:white'><font size=2 color=black face=Arial><span
lang=DE style='font-size:9.5pt;font-family:Arial;color:black'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span lang=DE
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 color=navy face=Arial><span lang=DE
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial;color:navy'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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<p class=MsoNormal><b><font size=2 face=Tahoma><span lang=EN-US
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma;font-weight:bold'>From:</span></font></b><font
size=2 face=Tahoma><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Tahoma'>
<st1:PersonName w:st="on">Parminder</st1:PersonName>
[mailto:parminder@itforchange.net] <br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Sent:</span></b> mardi, 19. août 2008 08:01<br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>To:</span></b> <st1:PersonName w:st="on">governance@lists.cpsr.org</st1:PersonName><br>
<b><span style='font-weight:bold'>Subject:</span></b> RE: [governance] Rights
in IG research</span></font><span lang=EN-US><o:p></o:p></span></p>
</div>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span lang=EN-GB
style='font-size:12.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> ??).
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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US 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 lang=EN-US style='font-size:
10.0pt;font-family:Arial'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><st1:PersonName w:st="on"><font size=2 face=Arial><span
lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Parminder</span></font></st1:PersonName><font
size=2 face=Arial><span lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> <o:p></o:p></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoPlainText><font size=2 face="Courier New"><span lang=EN-US
style='font-size:10.0pt'><o:p> </o:p></span></font></p>
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