<incom> Grain, What's wrong with 'rights'?

[Soenke Zehle]

GRAIN was one of the first group to look for 'movement convergences' in 
ways now pursued by the A2K campaign; given the centrality of the 
discourse of rights to the kinds of indigenous (eco-politics) GRAIN has 
supported over the years, I find this a fairly unusual project (haven't 
seen many NGOs engage in that kind of assessment) that will perhaps 
resonate with info-dev efforts as well, Soenke

What’s wrong with “rights”?

GRAIN

Peoples’ rights have long featured prominently in GRAIN’s analyses, 
deliberations and documents, as well as in those of our partners. As 
private companies – especially huge transnationals – have extended their 
control (and ownership) over wider and wider areas of life, peoples and 
communities around the world have seen how their chance of maintaining a 
decent and sovereign way of life, with their own values and norms and 
with respect for the human beings and the environment around them, is 
vanishing. Actions that were previously considered natural and taken for 
granted – such as keeping, reproducing and sharing seeds and animals, 
accessing water, copying a song, sharing information, reproducing 
medicines, borrowing books without charge from a library, and copying 
software – are no longer permitted but are becoming criminalised, all in 
the name of property rights. In this context, the concept of peoples’ 
rights has become a defensive tool, one to be used as part of the 
ethical, political and cultural struggles for justice and dignity.

But recently a cruel paradox has emerged: the very concept of rights is 
being used to impose and expand neoliberalism. Social organisations and 
NGOs that have attempted to advance certain rights have ended up causing 
confusion and divisions, and even harming the very interests and welfare 
of those claiming the rights. Rights regimes have forced many peoples, 
especially indigenous peoples, to define according to alien values some 
fundamental aspects of their identity and way of life, such as their 
art, their medicinal and agricultural knowledge, their tenure systems 
and so on. These harmful effects are occurring even when the 
organisations involved are unquestionably committed to the well-being of 
those they represent.

 From GRAIN’s perspective, this process has been especially harmful when 
it has affected the way people collectively enjoy and manage local 
natural resources and biodiversity, using knowledge acquired over 
millennia. We have seen the aggressive expansion of private property 
over territories and ecosystems, including components as essential as 
water and air, all carried out in the name of the “right” of local 
communities to use local natural resources and biodiversity. We seem to 
be facing a tragic contradiction: the fight for rights – a component 
common to the struggles of peoples around the world – is being used by 
states, corporations and international organisations to worsen the 
conditions of the people involved.

GRAIN believes that we urgently need to reflect on these processes. We 
need to search for new concepts and ways of thinking that might help us 
to defend from corporate control the ways of life that people themselves 
have defined. We see this not as a theoretical exercise, but as a 
compelling political necessity. The debate needs to be as wide, 
collective and diverse as possible. Most of all, the debate should take 
place locally, as close as possible to the actual conditions people face 
and to the cultural and political strengths people possess.

To encourage this wider debate, GRAIN invited a group of people around 
the world to reflect on their concepts of rights and how they affect 
people’s lives and welfare. We raised the same issues with people from 
Asia, Africa and Latin America. These are some of the questions we put 
to them: What, if anything, is wrong with “rights”? Do the problems stem 
from the fact that its intimate corollary – obligations and 
responsibilities (but see Radha D’Souza’s contribution for a different 
view even of this point) – has been erased from the debate and our 
thinking? Or is it because “rights” have been equated with “property”? 
Or is it because there has been a decades-long attempt to standardise 
rights? How do we distinguish legitimate rights from illegitimate ones? 
And how do we socialise rights when most rights regimes and approaches 
today almost inevitably seem to favour individual rights, even if this 
is not always fully apparent? What sort of processes and approaches are 
required to keep biodiversity and knowledge outside the realm of 
“property rights”? How can collective goods – including public goods – 
be protected against exploitation by corporations? How can we build 
forms of social control that do not entail ownership? What are the 
traditional norms, customary practices or laws that in your community or 
country or region illustrate another way of viewing the world and 
defining relationships?

In the following pages we share with you the responses we received from 
over a dozen panellists from different countries, cultures and contexts. 
Our contributors have very different perspectives and experiences but 
they are all profoundly critical of current formal rights regimes. They 
all identify the expansion of private property and capital as a major 
source of disruption of the forms of life and coexistence that peoples 
and communties around the world have built over centuries, saying that 
this invasion is threatening or destroying their social and cultural 
relationships, their food sovereignty, their forms of education and 
their sources of welfare. One way or another, most panellists see the 
source of all the most serious problems to be the wide physical, 
cultural, political and social distance of local communities from the 
people who write legal defintions of rights. They also say that the 
imposition of formal education and health systems, cultural erosion, and 
the lack of reflection and discussion around ethical issues are, 
directly or indirectly, contributing to the increased inequity and the 
loss of sovereignty and dignity. All in all, the picture that emerges is 
that the evolution of rights regimes around the world have been clearly 
harmful to communities. The struggle for rights has not yielded a 
positive balance.

No clear picture emerges as to the way forward. The views of our 
panellists vary from those highly sceptical about the prospect of 
continuing to walk along the old road of appealing to governmental and 
state processes to those who still believe that it is possible to reform 
the formal rights systems. Very little was said by our panellists on the 
linkage between rights and responsibilities, or about the fundamental 
difference between rights and property, or how collective resources 
could be protected.

However, two promising lines of discussion seem to have emerged. The 
first concerns the need to shorten distances – physical, cultural and 
social – between those who define rules and regulations and those who 
live under them. In other words, increasing numbers of people, 
communities and organisations are seeing the need to bring the struggle 
for rights and dignity as close as possible, turning themselves – and 
not international or state bodies – into the main agents for building 
and defining the norms for coexistence, including individual and 
collective rights and obligations.

The second line of discussion concerns collective rights. Although no 
clear concept emerged as to how, precisely, they could be defined, 
several of our panellists mention these rights as a central component of 
their struggles. One says that a fundamental characteristic of 
collective rights is that people are not mere beneficaries of these 
rights but have the capacity to decide how these rights should be 
exercised. Interpreted in this way, collective rights could be a way in 
which people and communities construct, in a supportive, reflective and 
deliberate way, the norms by which they will live together, without 
being obliged to make these norms comply with standards established, 
mainly in the interest of capital, in the centres of power.

GRAIN presents the points of view of its panellists as a catalyst for 
discussion. We agree with some of the observations made and disagree 
with others. It is evident that key issues – the link between rights and 
responsibilties, the precise nature of collective rights, the multiple 
links between the effective exercise of rights and the concrete 
conditions of everyday life, and others – need further discussion. It is 
in this spirit that GRAIN supports the call for a long and thorough 
debate that deals with the fundamental questions, such as values and 
ethics, and that strengthens the processes of autonomy. If the voices we 
present in this issue of Seedling contribute to this process, GRAIN will 
be fully satisfied.

-------- Original Message --------

New from GRAIN
October 2007
http://www.grain.org/nfg/?id=522

WHAT'S WRONG WITH 'RIGHTS'?

Part of the October 2007 issue of Seedling.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=69

We are devoting more than half of this edition to an issue that is of 
growing concern to GRAIN: what is wrong with rights? At first sight, it 
would seem uncontroversial to be in favour of rights. Indeed, few of us 
would disagree with the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of 
Human Rights. To cite just three of the 30 articles: "All human beings 
are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with 
reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of 
brotherhood"; "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of 
person"; "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or 
degrading treatment or punishment." When the declaration was 
unananimously approved by the United Nations in December 1948, it seemed 
like a landmark in the struggle against oppression.

Yet almost 60 years later there is growing unease among social movements 
about the way in which "rights" are being appropriated by neo-liberalism 
and multinational corporations. There is widespread concern that that 
the "right" to property is being enforced at the expense of more 
important individual and communal rights. To understand better what is 
going on we decided to invite partners from many different parts of the 
world to share their concerns in a panel discussion.

The contributions strikingly illuminate the diversity of ways in which 
people look at the living world and relate to it and to its resources. 
One of the main problems with the "rights" discourse in its current form 
is that it attempts to impose on all these different realities a single 
conceptual framework that is framed by capitalist logic. There is 
perhaps a corollary to this: rather than search for a single alternative 
to the "rights" discourse, diverse communities should develop their own 
distinct response that makes sense for their reality. This is a 
fascinating and complex issue to which we shall return in later editions 
of Seedling.

We wrote a short editorial as a way of introduction 
(http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=495), and then opened up the 
discussion to a panel which included:

C.R. Bijoy is an independent researcher and activist in India who is 
primarily involved with indigenous peoples' struggles, such as the 
Campaign for Survival and Dignity, a coalition of mass organisations 
that emerged to counter the nationwide repression unleashed on forests 
and forest peoples in 2002.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=496

Evangelina Robles is a lawyer who has represented the Wirarika people of 
Mexico in hundreds of litigations to recover their territory. She is in 
a collective that supports efforts by indigenous peoples to retain 
control over their territories and ways of life.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=497

Edmond Ouinsou works for ANASAD (Afrique Nature pour la Santé et le 
Développment/African Nature for Health and Development), a 
non-governmental organisation in Benin.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=498

Louis Tovioujdi is a traditional healer from the district of Avrankou in 
south-east Benin, near the border with Nigeria.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=499

Houédassi Kounagbodé, Tétédé Ogoutolé and Jeanne Houeto are women 
peasant farmers from the Ahouanzanhouê Djromahouton Association in the 
village of Ouanho, Benin.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=500

Dodou Koudafokè belongs to an association that brings together 
traditional healers from four villages (Ouanho, Tchakla, Gbakpo and 
Hèhoun) in the district of Avrankou in south-east Benin. / Honguè 
Koudafokè is the brother of Dodou Koudafokè. He is also a traditional 
healer and lives in the village of Ouanho, Benin.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=501

Nestor Mahinou is the executive secretary of Synergie Paysanne (Peasant 
Synergy), a peasant farmers' trade union in Benin.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=502

Farhad Mazhar is a leading member of Bangladesh's Nayakrishi Andolon 
(New Agricultural Movement), which practises and promotes 
biodiversity-based ecological agriculture.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=503

Terry Boehm is a farmer in western Canada. He is the vice-president of 
the National Farmers Union of Canada. He has worked for many years on 
issues concerning seeds and intellectual property, as well as transport, 
orderly marketing and supply management.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=504

Radha D'Souza teaches law at the University of Westminster, UK. She is a 
social justice activist from India, where she worked in labour movements 
and democratic rights movements, first as organiser and later as 
activist lawyer. Radha is a writer, critic and commentator, and has 
worked with solidarity movements in the Asia--Pacific region.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=505

Maria Fernanda Vallejo is on the Board of GRAIN. She is an 
anthropologist who has been working for more than ten years with 
peasants' and indigenous peoples' organisations in the Sierra Central in 
Ecuador.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=506

Prem Dangal is secretary-general of the All Nepal Peasants Federation, 
an umbrella group of different 25 farmers' organisations. It has about 
one million members all over the country. It campaigns on issues of food 
sovereignty, agrarian reform, peasants' rights and sustainable 
agricultural development.
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=507

Clark Peteru, from Samoa, is an environmental legal adviser at the South 
Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP).
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=508

(Part of the October 2007 issue of Seedling - 
http://www.grain.org/seedling/?type=69)