by Solen Lees Gratiet
(This article was originally published in SDIA’s magazine, IN CONTEXT. To get a printed copy, please send $4.00 along with your name and address to Susila Dharma International Association, 777 Campbell, Greenfield Park (Montreal), Quebec J4V 1Y8, Canada.)
Nine-year-old Kavitha goes to school near Bangalore. Her family is from the Dalit (or ‘untouchable’) caste and her parents are illiterate. Her mother works selling incense on the streets and her father is a manual labourer. Kavitha’s older sister, now 15, has helped her mother make incense sticks from the age of 6, working twelve hours a day for the equivalent of 30 cents, and never had an education. Kavitha is lucky and was sent to school. The school she attends is part of a development project which sees education as key in empowering people and helping them break the cycle of poverty. Here, Kavitha is learning to read and write and do maths, but perhaps just as importantly, she’s learning about human rights, about those of all children, and particularly those of girl children. She’s also learning that, despite her poverty and low situation in Indian society, she deserves to have her rights respected as much as any other child.
At home she talks to her family about what she is learning, and feels she is even gaining the respect of her brothers and father. Sometimes her parents attend meetings at the school where issues such as conflict-resolution and child-labour are discussed. Kavitha hopes they are realising that her education is just as important as that of the male members of the family, and that they will allow and help her to continue her education after primary school. Kavitha’s greatest ambition is to become a lawyer and to help those who are oppressed, especially women who are not aware of their rights.
Charity versus human rights
This is a story based on a true-life situation. It illustrates the importance of schools in which children learn that they are worthy of respect and are taught about their rights and those of others. Children attending schools where human rights are not specifically taught may receive moral and ethical guidance but, when human rights are on the syllabus, these subjects are explored in a systematic way. These students attain better social skills and greater respect for themselves and others than students from schools where human rights are not specifically taught.
International Child Development Programme, El Salvador. (by Lailah Nicoletta Armstrong)
This example shows the importance of basing development on the concept of human rights rather than the concept on charity. Longer-lasting effects can be achieved if project participants are not considered to be helpless recipients; but rather as people dispossessed of rights that need to be respected. One of these rights is knowing what our rights are, who or what is depriving us of our rights and how we can reclaim them.
Within the Susila Dharma network, project leaders, workers and supporters around the world strive to defend human rights: the rights to education, health and a decent livelihood, among others. While many work consciously for human rights, others (both people at the grassroots and in donor countries) still speak of this work as ‘development work’ or sometimes as ‘charity.’
Looking at this kind of work as charity portrays poverty and inequality as personal misfortunes rather than recognising them as a failure of the state to provide basic services and guarantees. In the charity approach, beneficiaries are seen only as victims and passive recipients, not as active participants in their own destinies and as rights holders equal to all other citizens.
SDIA has a role in assisting its members to ensure that the lack of access to basic goods and services is understood as a systemic failure of the state first and foremost, and also of the international community. Action needs to be taken to ensure protection of the full range of human rights. It is the responsibility of projects to help people claim and maintain those rights.
Human Rights Defenders
The wide acceptance of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, particularly in developed countries, provides a multicultural and near-universal agreement upon which to define development objectives. By focussing on economic, social and cultural rights as well as civil and political rights, it is simple to ground a development agenda on the provision and protection of human rights. Seen from this perspective, SDIA can easily frame its work on a rights basis. All SDIA members are striving to ensure that human rights are respected. There are many Susila Dharma sponsored projects which demonstrate this. (Human Rights in the Susila Dharma Network, page 4.)
What are Human Rights?
(click here).
Some of these Susila Dharma members, like the Mithra Foundation in India, have gone a step further from the basic provision of services that uphold people’s rights. They can be considered Human Rights Defenders. Although the term ‘human rights defenders’ evokes the image of lawyers or NGO activists, in reality they may be people from all walks of life. For example, a journalist who reports objectively on a demonstration that was brutally suppressed by police, the editor who agrees to publish, and a policewoman who stops one of her colleagues beating up a demonstrator, are all human rights defenders. In the same way, a development project which consciously raises awareness about the rights of the project participants and/or actively campaigns on their behalf is also a human rights defender.
Changing the lives of mothers in prison
In Argentina, children under four are kept in special prison facilities with their mothers, who are mostly guilty only of minor offences. Tierraviva Asociación Civil, an SDIA member, began its work in the defence of the women prisoners and their children in Buenos Aires.
UNICEF has stated that young infants, children of convicted female offenders, should be kept with their mothers where possible. This may be less traumatic than separation. However, the prison environment is an unnatural and very unsuitable one for a child. Children sometimes leave prison with a fear of grass, men or aeroplanes—things they never experienced behind bars.
According to Rasjid Cesar, Coordinator of Tierraviva, human rights abuse of both mothers and their children is rife. One inmate gave birth to a stillborn baby that could have been saved by cesarian because the authorities took so long in deciding to hospitalise her. Even when the mother only has a few months of her sentence left to serve, very young children are often separated from their her simply because the child has reached the maximum age children are allowed to live in the prison. This can be extremely traumatic for the child.
Tierraviva started its work on awareness-raising among the mothers in prison using art, dance and bodily expression in order to help improve mother-child relationships. Life behind bars and the repressive attitudes of prison staff were factors which impaired the development of nurturing relationships. The project workers began to advocate for the mothers and were eventually helped to accelerate and monitor legal processes to obtain changes, such as home imprisonment and psychological care for the women and children. The project has gained the trust of the Attorney General’s Office, which is expanding the use of these strategies to prisons in other provinces. The work has also been extended to include awareness-raising among female prison guards, which has been well-received.
The extension of its work gives Tierraviva wider institutional impact and the subject of childhood behind bars has begun to be incorporated into the agenda of the prisons involved. The project’s achievements have been recognized by the public. This was demonstrated in October 2008 when Rasjid Cesar was a panellist at the UNICEF-organised conference on ‘The Rights of Pregnant Women or Women with Young Children in Detention’. He was the only participant (among deputies, senators, ministers and authorities of the penitentiary services) whose organisation had a concrete strategy with demonstrable results in its approach to this complex problem.
Testing Yodigo literacy software in India (photo by Oliver Zwielke)
A recent change in the law has allowed judges to sentence offending pregnant women or women with young children to home imprisonment instead of condemning them to prison life behind bars. This has resulted in a more than 50 percent decrease in the number of women in prison with their children.
‘It would be pretentious to say that this change came about because of the conference organised by the National Ombudsman’s Office and by UNICEF in October,’ says Rasjid. ‘Nevertheless, two of the people who were instrumental in getting the law changed, Diana Conti and Senator Marita Perceval, were also panellists at this event.’
Tierraviva’s work has had a more far-reaching impact than if it had been limited to giving workshops for inmates. Just as in my first example, Kavitha’s education will probably have a greater impact on her chances in life (and those of her peers) than a regular education would have. Tierraviva’s advocacy work on an institutional level will also have a wider and longer-lasting effect than if it had limited its work to providing services to inmates alone.
From a developed world perspective
Donor awareness of a rights-based approach is just as important as an attitude shift at the grassroots. If potential donors and other supporters realise that the work is not just supporting a small, isolated group of beneficiaries, but is a sustainable effort that is changing the situation at the policy, legislative and societal level, they are more likely to give. Moreover, if supporters understand that they are not giving to charity but are helping empower people to claim their basic rights, they are likely to participate in a variety of different ways in order to support this process.
Save the Children, the international development and humanitarian organisation, is an excellent example of this approach. From the 1920s, the organisation had an awareness of child rights that was expressed by its founder Eglantyne Jebb: ‘I believe we should claim certain rights for the children and labour for their universal recognition…’ Hand in hand with this rights-based approach went the intention to eradicate poverty on a permanent basis: ‘The [Save the Children] Fund must not be content to save children from the hardships of life—it must abolish these hardships…’ (Eglantyne Jebb).
Uraida Vacacela, Rasjid Cesar and Charlotte Ndona use a rights-based approach in projects (photo by Illène Pevec)
To attain this aim, the Fund has continued to run campaigns and carry out advocacy work throughout its history, often spurring shifts in attitude and policy. According to its most recent annual report:
‘Coordinated advocacy…has generated a high political profile for the financing of education in countries affected by conflict. The United Kingdom has increased its spending in these countries as a result; the United States government has promised to, subject to approval by Congress; and other G8 countries have made pledges to do so.’
The next step
A logical next step in the process of awareness-raising and shifting attitudes is to use the tools we have at our disposal to help grassroots members achieve the policy changes needed to protect the interests of rights-holders and ensure that those in positions of authority are meeting their responsibilities. SDIA is ideally positioned, for example, to use the United Nations system—including its various human rights mechanisms to bring about lasting changes on regional, national and international levels. We have ECOSOC 1 and UNICEF accreditation and representatives in the main United Nations centres—Geneva, New York and Vienna. We are a worldwide network and we have already proved that our members can make linkages with other NGOs, government bodies and UN agencies.
We need to continue to move in this direction and to link Susila Dharma projects more closely with our representatives to the UN and with international fora where pressure is put on legislators and decision-makers. To do this, member projects could contribute to their country’s Universal Periodic Review, whereby a country’s human rights situation is evaluated every four years, or participate in the visit of a Special Rapporteur or Independent Expert on a specific issue of concern to them.
Of course, there is a limit to what our network can do, but by working together strategically and with other organisations, we can become a tiny but intense irritant, the stone in the shoe of legislators, or the mosquito in the bed of government rights-abusers. Sooner or later, they will have to make changes to ensure the enjoyment of human rights for all.
1 United Nations Economic and Social Council
Solen Lees Gratiet
Solen worked as a teacher and linguist before taking a masters degree in Social Development. She was involved in community projects and schools in Colombia and Eritrea, and with a children’s charity in France, she has been with SDIA since 2008. She recently attended a course in International Human Rights Law and Advocacy at the International Service for Human Rights in Geneva.