human rights

I recently sat in on a meeting where a human rights scholar from Europe was trying to gather information about human rights education in Uganda. She encouraged my organization to teach human rights at an organizational level, as well as to our beneficiaries (i.e.: poor, semi-isolated disabled women and their families). My first reaction to this concept was disbelief. I couldn’t believe that this educated woman from one of Europe’s richest countries was telling me that a development priority should be teaching women about human rights. Human rights that will never be granted to them and that will never be realized in their own lives. I couldn’t fathom the purpose of spending valuable time and resources teaching people about rights that their government will never protect, all the while women are dying during childbirth, living well below the international poverty line, dying of curable diseases, and can’t afford to educate their children. I was kind of upset. I understand that human rights are important (heck, I think they are great), but I can’t help but think this is an exercise in utter futility. The UN commissions and reports are great standards and they can help instill political will (at their best), but they are not legally binding, and the UN is not a rights-granter. The UN won’t be going down to small villages in Uganda to make sure that women are granted their human rights any time soon.

Human rights are only relevant so far as someone is there to enforce them. It’s great to say that you have a right to health care, but unless you live in a country that is fiercely committed (politically and financially) to upholding that right, you really have nothing of the sort. I surely believe that women have the right to proper maternal health care that minimizes their risk of death or injury, but unless the state of Uganda is committed to that goal and outcome, the women of Uganda have nothing.

Teaching people the pillars of the CRC (commission on the rights of the child), CEDAW (the convention to end all forms of discrimination against women), and the CRDP (convention on the rights of persons with disabilities) won’t magically empower them to claim their rights, nor will it strong-arm the state into granting/upholding rights. Teaching about human rights is a great exercise for advocacy purposes, but beyond that I fail to see the point. If you teach women about human rights, but fail to instill any sort of self-efficacy or empowerment about claiming those rights, what has been accomplished? And sadly, most people have no ability to claim their human rights at all, especially within the context of a government that can’t and won’t dedicate resources where they are most needed.  

People who disagree with me might say that a society that knows their rights is better equipped to hold the government accountable for providing them.  I get that, but pragmatically, it's shallow.  At a national level advocates and civil society should definitely be well-versed in human rights for those purposes.  But what's the point of making human rights education a priority for people who literally have no access at all to the laws and justice system of this country, let alone the non-legally binding laws of some international body.

There are plenty of noble and interesting development goals; I’m just not convinced that human rights education at the grassroots level is one of them.  Maybe it's just another thing that makes donor countries feel good, but that's not good enough.  Not even close.