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Preface
Deborah Eade
If the concept of universal, indivisible, and inalienable human rights - that body of rights and freedoms that belong to all people and peoples by virtue of their humanity - is not universally acknowledged, its corollary - that of the right to development - is more contested still. For almost the entire half-century since the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), international political debate both on human rights and on development have been mediated by the ideological battle between the Cold War super-powers. Until 1989 and beyond, such debates were characterised on both sides by appeals to crude, monolithic stereotypes and self-serving rhetoric, further fuelled by mutual fears and hostilities, in which the contesting parties assumed the moral high ground rather than seeking to listen to or learn from each other. The nuclear arms race, and the policy of mutually assured destruction (aptly known by its acronym, MAD) ensured that proxy wars between the two powers were fought in the South.
A bipolar worldview requires and fosters false dichotomies and intellectual dishonesty such as that epitomised in the notorious distinction claimed by Jeane Kirkpatrick, a leading light in the Reagan Administration, between 'authoritarian' military regimes friendly to the USA (such as those of Pinochet, Somoza, or Ríos Montt) and the supposedly 'totalitarian' dictatorships of those such as Fidel Castro, Maurice Bishop, or Daniel Ortega. Thus the West, it was claimed by its critics, stood for individual rather than collective rights, for the rights of private capital over those of the common good, propping up military dictatorships in order to protect its political and economic influence. The Soviet bloc and China, on the other hand, were held to have achieved social and economic gains by trampling on the political and civil rights of individuals and of groups, and exerting an iron grip on their citizens.
Today, the ideological battle-lines are drawn differently. With the collapse of the USSR and the absence of a tangible socialist alternative, there is no focal point for resistance to the ascendancy of neo-liberalism. Deregulation and anti-statism are the order of the day. Indeed, in the 1990s, many of the former Soviet bloc countries have (more or less willingly) undergone the 'shock therapy' of transition to market economies and privatisation, while those in the South were by the mid-1980s already (more or less reluctantly) embarked on the same process via economic structural adjustment. For their part, the international development agencies (and, by extension, their local counterparts) have increasingly adopted the conditionalities of 'good governance' and 'democratisation' to foster a somewhat narrow interpretation of political and civil rights. Meanwhile, with new divisions of labour emerging between state and non-state actors, social and cultural rights (and 'participation') are to be taken care of by 'civil society organisations', including non-governmental organisations (NGOs), while economic rights are meted out via the free market. So much for the indivisibility of human rights. In addition, given the fast-diminishing role of national governments in regulating global markets that include everything from public utilities to fast-food chains and genetic material, it is unclear how individuals, groups, communities, or even nation-states will be able to defend the basic rights and fundamental freedoms that are enshrined in the UDHR.
Critiques of the universality of human rights often centre around the fact that although the UDHR was ratified by the UN General Assembly in 1948, the worldview it represents is historically grounded in the liberal philosophical and political traditions of western Europe. As such, it is argued, the specificities of other cultures and thought systems are not adequately accommodated. However, despite sharp differences among delegates from North and South, the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights re-affirmed the universal, indivisible, and inalienable nature of human rights, including that of the right to development. Further, in the wake of shocking revelations concerning the use of mass rape as a military tactic in contemporary civil warfare, women's groups succeeded in having 'crimes of gender' acknowledged as a war crime; and in getting international acceptance for the appointment of a UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women. But at the Fourth International Women's Conference held in Beijing in 1995, many Southern women's groups retreated from re-affirming the universality of human rights (and from the Vienna slogan 'Women's Rights are Human Rights'), arguing instead that from their perspective, a 'gender and development' analysis would call for a complete re-conceptualisation of the notion of rights. In other spheres too, there has been an explosion of special interest lobbies, some seeking to have their rights explicitly incorporated into existing formulations and legislative structures, others proposing their radical overhaul. Another version, one might say, of revisionism versus revolutionary change; but one that is marked by a wider retreat - at least in many industrialised economies - from collective struggle into 'personal politics' (1).
Political battles are ultimately waged by people organising either to protect what they have, or to fight for what they (or those whom they represent) need or wish to have. Many such battles - whether for land, work, decent housing, or for political expression, freedom of movement and association - are reflected in the papers gathered in this volume. However, the 1990s have also seen a widespread fragmentation of popular struggles, towards a necessary recognition of diversity and difference and away from the 'false universalisms' (2) of an earlier age - but perhaps into cultural relativism, and the 'commoditisation' or privatisation of values and struggles of a post-modern era. Where, in practice, does this leave a concept such as that of the right to development? And how can such a right be realised?
On the one hand, as Firoze Manji argues in his introductory essay, the development discourse has served to deflect the more radical, rights-based forms of mobilisation that spear-headed the liberation struggles in many countries. Instead of exercising their right to participate in shaping their societies, people are at best offered the opportunity to participate in top-down development projects that all too often act as a vehicle by which their existing rights and values are still further undermined. However, there are dangers in simply abandoning the notion that '[a] development strategy that disregards or interferes with human rights is the very negation of development' (3). While there are serious problems with the describing an entire nation as 'under-developed', the reality is that a vast and growing number of human beings worldwide lack access even to the basic necessities of life. For all their limitations, the inter-governmental and non-governmental development organisations and numerous rights-based agencies have helped to ensure that these people, and the processes of impoverishment, do not disappear off the map of international consciousness. It is certainly possible to argue, as leading Southern thinkers such as Arturo Escobar and Gustavo Esteva have done (reference needed here!) that 'development' should be laid to rest rather than endlessly resuscitated by new qualifying adjectives - 'sustainable', 'people-centred' , 'bottom-up', or 'participatory'. In various ways, many have also maintained that 'development' requires, creates, and perpetuates 'under-development': if competition is the name of the game, there will always be more losers than winners, and 'mal-development' is the result. As Firoze Manji puts it, there is no 'neutral territory' in addressing the causes of poverty and oppression. But while it is clear that there can be no one way, no context-free solution to these realities, there is still a need for a principled and consensual basis upon which to interpret the world, work out where we stand within it, and decide how and whose side we wish to act. The UDHR is of necessity an imperfect instrument, a starting-point rather than a final destination. The discourse on human rights has been, and will doubtless continue to be, manipulated in cynical ways by governments and politicians concerned to protect their own narrow interests. A case in point is the discrepancy between the US response to alleged human rights abuses in Cuba, which is of little or no economic significance to it, and China, which happens to represent a vast potential market. Nevertheless, the UDHR represents a set of values that has given women and men from cultures as diverse as those of Algeria, Indonesia, or Mexico the courage to stand up to injustice and abuse, just as it has inspired ordinary people around the world to mobilise in solidarity with their struggles. It has been said that if women's social, political, and economic status reflected their numbers and the importance of their labour, the values shaping our global institutions would be profoundly altered. (4) Similarly, if the one-fifth of humanity that is today disenfranchised by virtue of absolute poverty could achieve even the most modest realisation of the rights enumerated in the existing Declaration, their collective voice would provide the moral basis upon which to build a broader and deeper understanding of the nature of human rights.
Notes
1 While the 1970s feminist insight that 'the personal is political' sought to break down the patriarchal distinction between the public space and private experience, it is today common to hear the argument that only those who personally belong to a particular interest group can represent or identify with its concerns. In the UK at least, it is certainly possible that this trend is in some way a response to the dismantling of the welfare state. However, the focus on ever narrower identities can lead to an exclusive emphasis on what divides people rather than on what they have in common, and to a denial of the role of solidarity across social and other distinctions.
2 Anne Phillips (1991) Engendering Democracy, Cambridge: Polity Press, p. 168.
3 From the 1991 UN document 'The Realisation of the Right to Development', quoted in Deborah Eade and Suzanne Williams (1995) The Oxfam Handbook of Development and Relief, Oxford: Oxfam, p.24.
4 See, in particular, UNDP, Human Development Report 1995, New York: OUP
