The Paradoxes of Human Rights

The Paradoxes of Human Rights
Susan George
El Periodico, 15 November 2003
(original in English)

Where human rights are concerned, we live today at the heart of paradox.

The first paradox is that while the definition and declaration of human rights exists only at the international level, their enforcement can only happen at the national one.

Although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [1948] can be interpreted to cover them all, the United Nations, in the Protocols of 1966, defined two distinct categories: political/civil rights and economic/social/cultural rights. The UN, however, is in no position to enforce any of these rights. So far, only individual, sovereign States can do that. States guarantee - or not - democratic freedoms and the rule of law (civil/political rights). They alone can ensure economic, social and cultural rights, for example by providing universal education and health care regardless of ability to pay, or by allocations and compensations to the disabled, the old, the unemployed. Citizens pay taxes so that the State can fufill its human rights obligations - a function better known as redistribution.

The second paradox is that some of the worst violations of economic, social and cultural rights are committed - whether or not those committing them are prepared to recognise the fact - by international institutions, which may even be tenously attached to the United Nations.

Over the past twenty years the so-called "structural adjustment" programmes designed by the International Monetary Fund [IMF] and the World Bank have wrought havoc in country after country. These economic austerity programmes force indebted countries to reduce government spending and orient their economies towards exports in order to earn the hard currency needed to service their debts. They have been responsible for creating a "lost generation" in the South. Millions have been refused education and health care as State budgets have been slashed.

Furthermore, the IMF insists on total freedom of capital movements, resulting in one massive financial crisis after another. In Mexico, 28.000 small businesses failed as a result of the crisis; in Thailand and Korea, there was a wave of "IMF suicides" as people called them locally; in Indonesia, thirty thousand bank employees lost their jobs in a single week, in Russia, poverty now strikes 60 million people and male life expectancy has dropped by seven years in a decade; in Argentina, which carried out the instructions of the IMF to the letter, a huge proportion of the citizens of this once-rich country have become virtually destitute.

And what about the right just to stay alive? Nearly everyone is aware that hunger is still rampant in the world. According to the Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, at the rate we're going it will take 150 years to eradicate it. Yet Sub-Saharan Africa is still paying more than $20.000 every minute to its creditors in debt service. One could provide quite a lot of food and clean water, not to mention schools and clinics, with $20.000 a minute, but it seems that the needs of the rich creditor nations for these payments - marginal for them though crucial for Africans - are more important.

The third paradox is that for perhaps the first time in history, the world is rich enough to guarantee the economic, social and cultural rights of every person on earth, yet powerful national and international institutions so far refuse to do so.

Not only has official development aid dropped since the end of the cold war, but the richest nations are often the stingiest. Whereas thirty years ago the UN set the development aid target at 0.70% of GNP, the United States contributes just 0.10%. If all the rich countries met the UN target, we would have $150 billion in official aid funds-not the miserly $52 billion contributed last year. Yet even $150 billion would not cover the net transfers from the poor countries to the rich ones which, in 2002, reached a scandalous $200 billion in favour of the North.

How, then, to guarantee the provision of basic economic rights for everyone? By going after the money where it is - which is at the international level. It's time to cancel the debt of the poor which has already been paid over and over again. It's time to close down tax havens that shelter illegal fortunes and the profits of trafickers in drugs, animals, women, children. It's time to undertake international taxation and redistribution, starting with the financial markets, but not neglecting the profits of transnational corporations or eco-taxes. Such taxes are, technically speaking, perfectly feasible, and could be redistributed under the condition that countries receiving the money guarantee democracy and human rights within their borders, or forfeit the windfall. That would create a powerful incentive and guarantee both kinds of rights at once.

The worst paradox of all is perhaps that we could at last create a world where the universal demand for universal human rights would no longer be what Reagan's UN Ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, called it: "a letter to Santa Claus". A radically unequal world is a world in which terrorism can only continue to thrive. National and international political institutions could make all human rights a reality yet they lack the political courage to do so. The world global justice movement, including Barcelona's own Observatory for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, is fighting to force them to change their minds.

Copyright 2003 El Periodico