Struggling for Rights

Some time ago, there was the farming community who – after several decades of experimenting and collective learning – found out how to interpret the signs of the coming rainy seasons, and when to plant. Not to early and not to late. And, except in years of exceptional drought, they henceforth produced a reliable crop.

And then the farmers had a drink and said to themselves: Boy, aren’t we glad that we realized our children’s right to good nutrition.

True or not? The first part, perhaps true. The rights part, probably not.

To identify strategies for survival or good health may not be necessarily and in itself a human rights issue. Hundred years ago, people died from simple infections. There was no right to penicillin. It has become a rights issue, because antibiotics exist and some people have access to it and others do not. At the end of the day, much of it boils down to money and budget allocations.

Affordability is a relative concern. We - the UN Programmes and Funds - are cracking our heads to find out how to lower the unit costs of reaching the unreached. To keep the costs below the often secret thresholds for financing basic services that governments in programme and donor countries have set themselves. Until they find them affordable enough to act and fork up the money.

We haven’t been used to seeing claims and acceptance of duty as a struggle between those who have and those who have not. We assume the omnipresence of good will, and avoid open discussion about redistributive justice, power and politics. But not everything is a matter of lacking capacity. There is a lot of obstinacy out there, and vested interests.

UN agencies are not made to solve conflicts. We have to work by consensus. Mostly that is the consensus of the big and mighty. Shaking hands with the marginalized and excluded doesn’t get you into the evening news. And sometimes I wish that the emerging human rights culture will allow us to take sides more often.

(27 August 2004)

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