[governance] Rights in IG research

Wed Aug 20 14:23:38 EDT 2008

Hi Parminder and all,

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 Implementing the Right to
Development  The Role of International Law, 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

Towards the implementation of the right to development : 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.
- 
Electronic ed.: Genf ; Bonn : FES, 2008
ISBN 978-3-89892-853-3
Die <http://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/genf/05105.pdf>  Publikation im
PDF-Format

http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/populo/digbib.pl?f_ABC=genf
<http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/populo/digbib.pl?f_ABC=genf&t_listen=x&sortie
rung=jab> &t_listen=x&sortierung=jab

Best

Renate

  _____  

From: Parminder [mailto:parminder at itforchange.net] 
Sent: mardi, 19. août 2008 08:01
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org
Subject: RE: [governance] Rights in IG research

Hi All

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. 

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 ones 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, a la modernization theory.)

Another issue of relevance here is this distinction of some rights needing
spending of resources, as if others dont. 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. 

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? 

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??). 

This doesnt 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.)

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 peoples movement or peoples perspectives. She
was strongly of the opinion that one has to be careful putting things in a
rights framework, and not doing so devalues peoples struggles  (not only
Indian peoples 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 dont think she will be
right in doing so, but I do agree with her framework of critique. 

But I dont 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 peoples 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 :-) )

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. 

Parminder 

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