The
following article appeared on the Asian Human Rights Commission
website. It analyses the difficulties of moving human rights issues
forward when working with a diverse group such as Asean-member
countries.
(Commentary) – Like every other activity, the impact of human rights
work is bound in space and time. As in every other social activity,
human rights is bound to historical circumstances. From these factors,
there is no escape. To ignore these factors in impact assessment is to
lose the very core of meaning in such an assessment.
Basil Fernando is a longtime advocate for human rights in Asia. Photo: basilfernando.net
Mentioning
the less developed countries is an essential element of space and time
and historical context. The way to explain this is by way of making a
contrast. A less developed country when compared to a developed country
has the following contrastz from the point of view of elements that
matter in human rights matters:
A developed country is today
described by perhaps the greatest political philosopher of our time,
John Rawls, as a place of moderate scarcity. A less developed country is
still in the stage of extreme scarcity. Thus the problem of poverty and
limitation of resources are essential aspects of the condition known as
being less developed.
From the point of view of rule of law, a
developed country has an adequately developed rule of law system, where
the basic elements such as the legislation, the constitutional framework
and the institutional set up – particularly in relation to the police,
the prosecution system, judicial system and the prison system – have
developed to an adequately acceptable standard. By contrast, a less
developed country has serious defects in legislation, in their
constitutional framework, and also in terms of the institutional
frameworks of the institutions mentioned above.
From the point of
view of democracy, a developed country has acquired an adequate level
of freedom. By contrast, a less developed country still remains within
the framework of repression. The contrast between freedom and repression
is a very essential element in discussions about developed countries
and less developed countries.
All the factors mentioned above,
including that of resource availability, the rule of law system and the
contrast between freedom as against repression, are important components
to take into consideration when dealing with the impact of human rights
work in a less developed countries.
For example, what may
appear to be a small act or event in a developed country may have very
different significance in a situation of repression.
As Vaclav
Havel mentioned, in the context of totalitarian regimes an act of an
activist distributing a small number of copies of a small pamphlet may
be of great significance. Such an act may also take great courage, as
the risks are very high. In a country where there is freedom of
expression and publication such an act may be seen as a mere triviality.
In
countries where torture is endemic and widely practiced, developing a
protest movement against that is not the same as condemnation of torture
in a developed country where the norms against torture are well
established and freedom of expression protect the person who makes the
protest. Therefore, assessing human rights work relating to torture in a
developed country and a less developed country are two very different
things.
The meaning of such work to people who live within a
context where torture is so commonly used is of historic significance.
Even such small activities can provide the victims as well as the
general population that lives under fear an opening that they may not
have seen before. It may show some light at the end of the tunnel. For
those who have been suppressing their anger against such use of torture
and abuse of power, they may find in such efforts to fight against
torture that they have an opportunity to express their own frustrations
and to work out of the cocoon.
Thus a small act of protest may
be the beginning of a movement and a movement once begun may find
expressions a hundred fold or thousand fold depending on the
circumstances. Also the beginners of such movements require considerable
courage and a willingness to face risks. Someone from a developed
country may not be able to see the manifold significance of such
activities. However to miss this element is to lose capacity to measure
the impact within a given historical context.
A further
important principal in assessment of impact is that there are layers and
layers of impact. An act which may seem small may have an echo that
gives rise to several more small actions and these small actions little
by little will expand and create new layers of impact and these very
layers of impact after some time will extend to other layers and keep on
going like this for a long period of time. Such ripple effects are
particularly important in dealing with the human rights works in less
developed, meaning more repressive, societies.
What is implied
by this concept of layers and layers of impact is that to look for
ultimate or final impact is to miss the whole dynamic that takes place
in the struggle against repression. What may be called the ultimate
impact may be some decades and decades away. If someone waited for that
ultimate outcome such waiting will delay the outcome. Essential work
against repression is the work of those impatient people, people who
want to do whatever that is within their power, howsoever small that may
be under the given circumstances.
There are people who do not
want to sit and wait. There is a social dynamism in such impatience. All
great social movements are the product of those who are willing to do
the small things, whatever little things that are possible under
difficult circumstances.
A sensitive person looking into impact
of human rights work must have penetrating insight into to the unhappy
lives of people who live under bad and repressive circumstances. Under
such unhappy circumstances, and the dark psychological impact due to the
repetition of bad events, there are those who make special efforts even
without expecting great miracles to happen by way of big changes. Hope
and hopelessness exist within the same person often at the same time. It
is the impulse of hope pushing against the impulses of hopelessness
that gives the impulse for all kinds of initiatives.
A sensitive
inquiry will look for the human genius that works under hopeless
circumstances and desperate situations which against all odds try to do
whatever they can to expand the area of freedom inch by inch. However
when something jumps from inch and inch to a foot, or to a yard, or to a
mile, this is not something that the active agent could predict as he
moves in the midst of hopelessness and darkness.
Human rights
works in the midst of repression is some sort of miracle making. However
those small people who push inch by inch do not often know that they
are miracle workers. They almost daily blame themselves for not being
able to do more, they weep seeing the suffering of others, they are
preoccupied with their own helplessness and their limitations. It is not
for them to see the role they play for their society and for the
future. Such is the human condition and it is under those circumstances
that small people work trying to contribute their little bit often
thinking that what they do may not matter at all.
To measure the
layers and layers of the impact of human rights works requires a deep
appreciation and understanding of what repression really means and what
efforts people do make in those circumstances to move their people for
better.
An Illustration
Documentation:
within a repressive situation many violations of human rights happen
all the time but they are soon forgotten. That is a part of the way
people are silent. When someone decides to record a violation, it is a
significant event in that context. The act of documentation involves
victim/victims and others who come to support him or her.
It
takes a considerable courage on the part of a victim to decide to
participate in speaking out what he or she suffered and to allow it to
be documented. Such a victim has to struggle against his or her own
fears as well as reprimand from those around him or her who may remind
him or her that it is better to be silent, or that at least it is wiser
to be silent. Thus an agreement to participate in documenting involves
many personal decisions on the part of the victim. The worst part of
this is to live through the trauma of recalling.
When the
victims, after consideration of the risk, takes a decision to allow his
or her story to be recorded, that is a bold step. It will have its
impact on his or her own future behavior. Once a victim speaks out for
the first time for a public purpose, and documentation is a public
purpose, new kind of habituation begins. After making revelations for
the first time doing so again for the second time may be less difficult
and then he or she may even get to the habit of beginning to tell her
story. It is also beginning a process of making a new friends and also
new enemies. Many who hear his or her story may not have earlier thought
that this same person has undergone such an ordeal. A new process of
identification and linking begins.
On the other hand, when the
victim speaks out he or she has begun the process of confronting his or
her tormentors, and they too may and often do retaliate. Thus new kinds
of contacts begin between the victims and the tormentors. At the time of
suffering the violations the victim may have had to face it alone and
passively. Now in the process of confrontation it is done with the
solidarity of others and the person is now active and no longer passive.
Thus there is an impact in the behavioral process of the victim as well
as of the associates. A beginning of a contesting process in repressive
societies is a very significant movement. When a single individual
begins his or her contest it also has an impact on the general situation
of repression itself. Not only the victims but a few others and
gradually more and more persons begin to participate in such a context.
This
is the most important element in fighting for human rights. Changing
passivity into active protest is indeed a very fundamental kind of an
impact. And now the process of transcribing the story that is
transforming the oral story into a written story begins. In the cultural
scene the transformation of the oral into writing is an impact. While
the oral story can be shared only within a hearing distance, the
transcribed story can now be shared with more persons. It may be shared
with one more person, ten more persons, hundreds more persons or even a
million or more persons. A process of sharing a story of a violation of
rights is itself impact. Now the story is available outside the victim.
The story can travel without the victim having to travel.
The
story as it travels comes to the notice of many others and this makes it
possible for more persons to respond. Improving the capacity of
responses of more persons is also impact. When more people respond there
may develop some reactions. Some persons may take up this issue in many
forums. Now some persons may begin to correlate other stories to this
new story of the victim and thereby begin a process of analyzing. When
human rights problems are being analyzed, that too is impact. Now with a
story, reactions of some or many, and analysis of some or many, the
matters relating to the violations begin to be discussed.
Discussions
mean social discourse. Thus violations that the victims complain of
have now given rise to a social discourse. The generation of a social
discourse on human rights violations is also an impact. As a result of
this discourse the violation may be taken up at a legal forum. The
matters relating to the violation may be dealt with within that legal
forum. Thus a legal discourse on the violation of rights has now begun.
A
beginning of a legal discourse on human rights violations is also an
impact. As a result of a legal discourse, perpetrators will be brought
before legal forums and they may be subjected to a process of
accountability. A process of accountability has now begun. As a result
of the process of accountability perpetrators may or may not be punished
and the victim may or may not be compensated.
That will depend
on the strength of the legal machinery. If the legal machinery proves
incapable of dealing with the issues of accountability, then the
inadequacies and the problems of the legal process will be subjected to
scrutiny and analysis and criticism. In repressive systems beginning a
process of criticism of the legal mechanism is an impact of a very
significant nature.
As a result of many such discussions on one
story leading to another, and when the critique develops extensively,
public opinion begins to form on the defects of the system and the needs
of the system. Such a discourse on reforms is again a very significant
level of an impact. As this discourse widens media channels may begin to
show a greater interest and thus through the media little by little
gradually a discourse on reform begins to get an ever wider hearing.
This
is the level at which social debate at various forums is generated on
human rights violations. Thus wider publicity generated for a social
debate on human rights violations is also an impact of a very
significant nature. Then, depending on the political situations,
possibilities arise for not only legal reforms but related political and
social reforms. The time the story was documented to the time such a
discourse for reforms happens will be determined by circumstances beyond
the control of the victim or the activist who initially took the
initiative to begin to talk. Often such situations will depend on many
factors. However once a process has begun it is kept up by an
ever-increasing number of documentations of the stories, and a process
of repetition and replications takes place. Such replications are an
essential aspect of improvement of reflection, knowledge, reactions and
generating of impulses for reforms. All such matters are matters of
impact.
Thus the victims and the activists who are engaged in
the process of documentation, publishing, pursuing legal redress,
generating analysis, generating the discourse of the reforms, are all
the time engaged in influencing impact at many layers. As said before,
impact takes place at many layers over a long period of time depending
on favorable and unfavorable situations, and generates different kinds
of discourse.
At each level there is impact. And each action’s
reaction and response leads to further response and publicity, further
discourse and collective actions, which are all a series of single
change. And it is to build this change that the human rights activists
work and their impact must be measured through consultation relating to
all these dimensions.
Basil
Fernando has been the executive director of the Asian Human Rights
Commission and the Asian Legal Resource Centre since 1994. He has
written numerous works on human rights and legal reform issues.
For more information, go to http://www.humanrights.asia/
