The Underside of Human Rights

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Today, in the underbelly of unbridled globalization, there are peasants, farmers and laborers who are overworked yet underpaid and underfinanced; migrant workers who provide crucial services in developed economies, yet remain underappreciated; children already in the work force at an early age, yet their human rights remain to be debated, while their bodies are undernourished and their minds undereducated.

Women make up most of agricultural workers, yet their contributions in the economy remain undercounted and undervalued, and their participation in decision-making processes underestimated and underrepresented. Populations in small island nations are underwater - their livelihoods, crops and nations disappearing - and yet underfinanced in their efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.

In this underbelly of globalization are the subjects of human rights - human beings - a greater majority of whom are wailing from painful hunger, wallowing in abject poverty, and suffering from illnesses that already have cure but underfinanced. We are witnesses to the lack and shortage of health funds even as so-called sovereign wealth funds are invested robustly, widely and heavily. The right to health is a human right. Wealth must now fund health.

Our pursuit of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) must be re-centered so that the nexus that joins human rights and sustainable development is secured and stronger. In this regard, there should be no slackening among stakeholders on the necessary partnership among governments, corporate entities, non-governmental organizations, and civil society as a whole, to make these goals a reality. The MDGs are about human rights and justice demands that they be pursued!

I know that there is an abundance of civic courage within civil society even as there is shortage of political will among our leaders. But when civic courage meets up with flailing political will we might yet muster a formidable front that will ensure that the MDGs.

No longer must the MDGs be pursued as if they are ceilings of success too high to reach. They must be baselines to start from. To regard them otherwise betrays our pursuit for justice for the poor and the hungry. The MDGs are starters for what makes decent human life; we must attain no less. To pursue them, the goals must be firmly enshrined in both the laws of our lands and the laws that govern the relation of nations.

CoNGO, the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations, which I serve as President, is ready to work with like-minded organizations in pressing for political will and organizing civic courage among NGOs so that human rights discourse translates into relevant and timely human rights praxis. CoNGO will continue to be an advocate for NGO access at the United Nations so that NGOs can be more effective in its human rights work. CoNGO is committed to capacity building everywhere, preparing NGOs in their advocacy for human rights before governments and multilateral and intergovernmental institutions assembled by and at the United Nations.

Human rights learning and human rights education are a lifelong commitment to saying never again, plus jamais, nunca mas, to the desecration of human dignity and the violation of human rights, under whatsoever political circumstance, economic condition or cultural situation. In the end, the human rights struggle is about the victim.

I believe that human rights must undergird every civil society endeavor and underpin every decision that we do in bettering our societies. Human dignity - the foundation of human rights - can only be made real when you and I help underwrite even further the setting of norms and standards, in larger measure from what we already have in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the conventions and covenants emanating from such Declaration.

I would not want to neither overwhelm nor underwhelm you with my plentiful use of the word “under”, and yet again, I want to underscore the necessary campaign to defend human rights defenders. They are an endangered species everywhere. Many of them are tortured, imprisoned and eventually disappeared. In my days of opposing the Marcos military regime in the Philippines, human rights activists went underground while military thugs and right wing vigilantes roamed above ground. Freed from fear, human rights defenders, you and me, can focus more on having peoples and communities freed from want.

Sixty years of a universal text for human rights is a cause for celebration. But do not underlook the fact that the reasons for this magna carta of rights to be drafted are very much the same as that of the founding of the United Nations - so that the ignominious acts of colonialism, war and genocide may not visit human kind again. Alas, unfortunately, they continue to exhibit contemporary and lingering expressions today. One need only ask indigenous peoples whose knowledge, practices and habitations are under assault by commercial, and trade interests, not to mention the militarization that happen in their localities. Detentions, torture and extrajudicial killings continue to happen in the Philippines, for example.

There is much that remains to be done in reaffirming human rights for all. Let not one more human rights violation become the reason to be involved. Rather, one engagement in human rights advocacy should come from the joy and celebration that happens when there is food on the table, or when one is able to exercise the right to vote, or when one’s religion is appreciated with utmost understanding and tolerance.

The multiplicity of crises that we face today may yet undercut the many efforts that peoples and communities around the world are doing to better their economic, political and cultural conditions. We must squarely face what the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has recently spoken about as a “development emergency” - the emergency brought about by the energy, food, financial and climate crises.

We know that there is plenty of food even as there is scarcity of political will. But whatever political will there is, it is undercut and undermined by commercial and trade interests that have not been reined in by the international human rights regime. Even more so, we must reinforce the understanding that human rights must undergird development. The nexus and junction is necessary and crucial.

If we loosen the nexus, we are endangering the achievement of the MDGs. And we cannot afford that - not for ourselves, not for future generations. This is why we must not neglect to examine the underrecognition of the key importance of the sector of agriculture where many women farmers and laborers are undercounted and their labors underfunded and underappreciated.

Human rights work is never done. It is a continuing process. Never be discouraged by human rights violations. Instead, promote and protect human rights and altogether stop any further violations. Prosper the ideas and ideals that emanate from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and make them come true. Human dignity will triumph over desecration. And we will overcome, not someday, but now and today.

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Commentary by Rev. Liberato C. Bautista, President of the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations, otherwise called CoNGO. He is also Assistant General Secretary for United Nations and International Affairs of the General Board of Church and Society. This commentary is based on a speech he delivered in Paris, France at UNESCO in early September 2008, at the annual NGO/DPI meeting which focused on celebrating the 60 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

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