Now that the class is focused again on human rights, I want to pose a question. You have all been reading a lot about human rights, and discussing interesting things on the blog like, what rights we would like to have, what we really need, whether access to information ranks with access to basic physical needs and the like. My question for you is: are there any responsibilities that go along with these rights? I think these fall into two categories: the responsibilities on the people who already have the rights towards the ones who don't; and responsibilities of everyone getting or having the human rights towards everyone else (in a good citizen sense.)
The American jurist Hohfeld (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_Newcomb_Hohfeld) observed that one person's rights mean another person's duties. For example, if everyone in Uzbekistan has the right to fresh, potable water, then it becomes a duty of many other people to a) depose the ruler who is using all the aid money to put gold toilet seats in his marble palace -- this is true, by the way; he takes massive aid money and puts it into his palace, which really does have gold toilet seats, while his people drink from muddy, piss-filled rivers -- b) to re-structure a government so that people will receive that aid money, c) send in a a bunch of engineers and cement to build water projects, as well as a d) host of social analysts to communicate with the Uzbeks and see what kind of water purification projects they actually want and will use and won't dismantle for parts in a year or two as has happened in so many well-meaning but externally imposed development projects. And e) pay for all of that.
That's a lot of duty heaped on the shoulders of other people. Some of whom may be you.
Implementing universal human rights probably means reduction in lifestyle as well. For example, if the people of the Niger Delta were right now granted the rights to clean water and to not have their land and fishing grounds destroyed by the near daily oil spills that occur, and the oil companies operating there had to fix their systems and clean up the spills, the price of gas would probably go up to something closer to $10/gal. A lot of what we enjoy in this country, from coffee to petroleum products to coffee to the vastitude of awesome little tech machines, is priced based on the very human rights violations we seek to eradicate. So human rights is not just a code of behavior for people who are violating human rights; it is a very broad global code, saying, in essence, you will put money, a lot of money, towards paying for what it would really cost to have an iphone if it were produced in countries that paid a livable wage and disposed of somewhere other than the beaches in Bangladesh where some child is going to be exposed to toxic waste picking it apart for scrap. And sneakers. And coffee. And gas. All of that stuff will get much, much more expensive if we commit to uphold human rights, and there are not going to be corresponding salary increases, because that money is going to fix the human rights situation, and not into the pocket of someone who can hire you.
Then there is the idea that a person should not be entitled to stuff without making a contribution. I'm thinking of a story of an old Zen master, who insisted on working in the garden every day. But he was old and weak, and his disciples worried for his health, so one day they hid his tools. The old master said nothing but went to bed without eating. This was not the result the disciples had hoped for. Finally after three days of this, they asked the master why he was now starving himself, when all they wanted was for him to take it easy. He said, "No work, no food." They gave back the tools. Obviously this does not apply to people who are not capable of contributing, like infants, but what about people who are? In the context of all these promises of human rights and goals that we want to reach on human rights, will we be like the disciples who want to give things for free, or like the master, who insisted that there is no right without a duty fulfilled?
I'm not strong in math, but it seems to me that the output required (achieving a high, universal standard of human rights) needs to be balanced by the input (new concepts of duty and of how we are all going to act and what we need to contribute.)
So, is there a point where human rights should be dependent on human conduct? Which rights? What conduct?
Maija, your post has led me to think long and hard and I have concluded that I don’t really have an answer to your questions. I have spent most of the day thinking in circles and not reaching any definitive conclusions. To start with, I am not sure that there can ever be any universal human rights simply because, as you pointed out, that would require some people to go without the luxuries to which they have become accustomed. For every person who claims a right to have enough food to eat or clean water to drink, there will be someone who claims the right to drive a Hummer or have pizza delivered to their front door. One of the issues is that the privileged few have a louder voice in the discourse on human rights than those without internet access, media outlets, or even the ability to read and write. Another issue is that the people involved in such a discourse are often unaware of the invisible privileges they possess. This makes it impossible to understand what needs to be done to define, establish, and protect basic human rights.
ReplyDeleteI do think that human rights are dependent on human conduct because it is impossible to separate the human from humanity. With that being said, I think that some people would argue that independence is a right, which makes my belief problematic. Wasn’t one of the driving forces behind the influx of women in the work place a desire for independence? The ability to financially support oneself rather than being at the mercy of the men in one’s life is a relatively new development. Further, in order for a state of true equality to exist in the world, I would argue that every person has to be either totally dependent on everyone else or totally independent of everyone else. This means that we do all have a responsibility in ensuring our rights and the rights of others; whether that responsibility is to assist others or to leave them alone is a matter for debate.
I think that it is reasonable to expect that people should contribute to their own success and survival. At the same time, if a right is truly basic and universal, then depriving someone of it because they are not contributing to the betterment of themselves or of society turns into a crime. For example, if we say that everyone has the right to enough food to eat, ignoring for the moment the slew of issues brought up by the definition of ‘enough’, what we are saying is that everyone has the right to enough food to eat regardless of their personal situation. It does not matter if they are male, female, young, old, a native, an immigrant, a war veteran, a peace activist, an intellectual, uneducated, tall, short, overweight, emaciated… the list goes on and on. Political affiliations, religious convictions, ethnicity, language barriers… it all becomes irrelevant in the face of the idea that because you are a)human and b)alive you have a basic right to enough food to eat. If we then predicate such a right on an individual’s contribution to society, we are depriving any individual who chooses not to contribute or who is perceived as not contributing of a basic human right, which puts us right back where we started in the first place, where not everyone has basic human rights. You can see where I began to think in circles.
DeleteHow do we even define which rights are basic and which rights are not? Here in the US one of the ongoing debates has been over gay marriage. I think that many gay individuals would argue that marriage is a basic human right, particularly since it is a right automatically granted to heterosexual couples. But to a community facing starvation, marriage may not even be on the radar. Likewise, Brandon posted an interesting blog earlier about internet access. I can’t see internet access as being something necessary for the functioning of life, but perhaps I am blinded by proximity. In our modern world, how long could I realistically survive without internet access? I would certainly have long since failed out of Mines considering that many classes (including this one) use the internet in some fashion. Further, having access to this blog as a public forum on which to communicate with like-minded individuals about the world is possible only through the internet. Maybe I could technically survive without the internet: I would not physically die if I suddenly lost internet access. But I would not be able to thrive intellectually. Is that not just as much a basic human right as physical survival? What makes my intellectual growth any more important than that of someone currently without internet access and without the instantaneous communication and information sharing made possible by it?
Sorry for the long comment! As I said, I’ve had a hard time wrapping my head around your questions.