International human rights — rhetoric or reality?

In the international context of massive disparities, talk of human rights appears to be no more than mere rhetoric.

The First International Forum on Human Rights was organised by the government of Brazil from December 10-13, 2013 in Brasilia. I was invited to speak in the forum. Nearly 5,000 national and international delegates attended the event. The most striking part of the forum for me was the duality of the space and its politics.

The government of Brazil provided this space to the national and international human rights organisations and defenders to engage in discussion on the state of human rights globally. It enabled them to connect, network and develop a common conceptual framework for the realisation of human rights globally.

By way of providing such a space, the Brazilian government expressed its commitment to human rights and used it to establish its credentials as a pro-people government. On the other hand, local groups and indigenous communities of Brazil in particular used the same space to raise the issues of human rights violation by the government itself. Protests were in sight throughout the four days of the forum (the level of tolerance for the dissenting voices on the part of the Brazilian government was quite impressive).

This duality in the discourse and practice of human rights typically represents the global situation. The gap between the pronounced commitments to human rights is increasingly reflected in the plethora of international conventions and covenants and the deteriorating state of human rights exposes the emptiness of the discourse globally. Stark inter-state and intra-state disparities along the lines of class, gender, race, disability, religion and ethnicity, etc. demand a shift in how we conceive the question of human rights.

While learning about different countries’ experiences at the forum, it became clear that the legislative discourse of human rights has failed to deliver nationally and internationally. The neo-liberal economic policies and the growth/export oriented development models, commonly pursued by their government, were held responsible for not creating conditions that were crucial for the realisation of human rights guaranteed in national and international legal instruments.

The economic policies of neo-liberalism based on liberalisation, privatisation, informalisation, deregulation and downsizing gave rise to unemployment, inflation, poverty, disease and hunger around the world.

There seems to be a paradoxical relationship between international human rights and the macroeconomic policies and frameworks. International human rights law lays down obligations for states to protect, promote and fulfill human rights; as listed in paragraph five of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action 1993. On the other hand, the macroeconomic framework based on free markets, free trade, private ownership, demand minimalist and weak nation-states.

The biggest challenge to human rights discourse comes from the national and international context of vulnerabilities. Despite unprecedented economic development and growth in the 21st century, nearly half of the world population of seven billion lives below the poverty line. About 1.1 billion people in developing countries have inadequate access to water and 2.6 billion lack basic sanitation. 121 million children are globally without education.

Similarly, the gap between the rich and poor countries is also widening. Two hundred ago, the rich countries were three times richer than the poor countries. Today, the rich countries have 80 times more wealth than the poor countries.

Also, the concentration of global wealth in the hands of few is the hallmark of the 21st century. According to the Global Wealth Report 2013, the top 0.6 per cent of the world population owns 39 per cent of total of $241 trillion of global wealth. If the figure is combined with the next category of rich, then 10 per cent of the world population own 86 per cent of global wealth, compared to barely one per cent for the bottom half of all adults. The total assets of the top three billionaires are more than the combined gross national product of all less developed countries.

It is important to understand that in today’s globalised world of integrated economies and markets, the state of human rights within a nation-state is the combined result of national and international forces. The unfair terms of international trade and commerce presented by the World Trade Organisation and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (that push cuts in custom duties, exploit cheap labour and raw materials, overpriced finished goods and technology, etc.), the policies of the World Bank and the IMF (structural adjustment programmes, push for withdrawal of subsidies and indirect taxation) and the role of multinationals lays bare the fact that the world today is in the grip of neocolonialism. The exploitation of the developing countries continues in the post-colonial era through political and economic control of the wealthy countries over the developing world.

The political control is maintained through the politics of aid and debts by the Western, imperialist and rich nations. However, the fact is that poor countries are annually given $130 billion in aid, whereas the multinational monopolies transfer $900 billion from the developing countries to the banks of rich countries every year. The Global Development Finance report (2014) by the World Bank states that the external debt to developing country rose to $4 trillion. The economic dependency on aid and debt becomes the basis for the loss of sovereignty of developing countries and their ability to make independent foreign ad economic policies.

Within this international context of massive disparities, the talk of human rights appears to be no more than mere rhetoric. The poor state of human rights across nations is the shared reality of the majority of poor and marginalised in the world. It is the result of the integrated political and economic systems. Therefore, human rights must be contested not only in legislative arena but also in sociocultural, economic and political domains. The rise in protest movements against the unjust sociopolitical and economic world order has led to political instability globally. The poor and marginalised can use the situation to form transnational alliances for a common struggle against common enemy. Neo-liberal economies must be replaced with more humane and caring economies in order to realise the agenda of International Human Rights Organisation.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 2^nd, 2014.

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