The editorial by Professor Shivji (PAMBAZUKA NEWS Edition 80) captures brilliantly the dilemmas facing proponents of social justice in developing countries seeking to use the discourse of human rights to advance pro-poor policy choices. This is particularly important in the current global world order, where rights arguments are increasingly being used to justify particular sets of policies imposed, or expected of developing country populations. By locating human rights correctly within a political economy and historical context, the nature of rights as products of social construction enable us to better understand how we can better make use of human rights arguments, and how human rights arguments may be used against us.

Some comments:
1. By understanding human rights as products of contestation, we recognise the role of human rights as essential to contributing (positively or negatively) to struggles around power. Rights can in practice be deployed as much in defence of privilege and the powerful in society, as they can be to advance the interests of poor and marginalised. Witness the way in which corporates are able to use rights machinery (e.g. Freedom of Information) to silence publication of critical research results, to oppose regulation and to threaten and implement litigation to achieve desirable policy goals. Hence, it is not possible to judge the role of human rights in advancing pro-poor choices and social justice, without referring to the integument in which human rights operate. If human rights mechanisms prioritise the needs of the poor and the marginalised, then rights become powerful mechanisms whereby democracy can be advanced. However, if rights mechanisms operate independent of the power imbalances that exist between and within countries, then rights are easily co-optable in the service of those who already benefit from inequity and imbalances of power.

2. So, how do rights mechanisms put the poor first? Only if civil society is able to mobilise to assert itself in structural and institutional ways. South African civil society, though much weaker now than during the heyday of anti-apartheid resistance, has successfully achieved a set of institutional mechanisms which (we hope) are successful at placing the interests of the poor and marginal first - a Constitutional Court operating within a framework of a Bill of Rights, a Human rights Commission that is attuned to the needs of the poorest sectors of society, etc.

3. From the above, flows the implication that not only are human rights strengthened by an active civil society, but human rights mechanisms need to reinforce the opportunities for organisation and mobilisation in civil society. While the Western preoccupation with "good governance" makes a misnomer of what this role should be, it is at the level of public participation that a human rights culture can be sustainable. The success of a human rights approach should be judged not only on the court decisions, on the policies adopted, on the implementation of pro-poor policies, but also on the capacity of human rights instruments to strengthen the agency of the least powerful in society to act in their own interests, individually and collectively.

4. The above throws up a number of difficult, maybe uneasy contradictions:
- How do individual rights and group rights get traded off? It isn't sufficient to argue that they are naturally compatible.
- If rights are about power, is there an inherent incompatibility to talk about individual and collective interests under the rubric of "agency of the least powerful in society?"
- How can strengthening that agency resolve these possible differences? In the health field EQUINET is increasingly seeking to consider how human rights approaches can help to strengthen pro-equity policies in health. How can we ensure that human rights leads to reduced inequalities? A preliminary look at the area is suggesting that the answers lie in resolving these difficult questions.

It is also evident that when different people, agencies or organisations use the notion of human rights, they may be using the term in completely diverse ways:
- as a set of standards derived from international human rights law;
- as an approach to monitoring and analysing policy with a view to holding governments accountable;
- as a lobbying and advocacy tool to mobilise civil society.
While the above are all inter-related, they represent different ways of conceptualising and acting, and all can range on the spectrum from the completely ahistorical to the most dialectic of interpretations. What is clear is that in trying to advance our understanding of human rights and the role it plays, we need to critique rights in the context in which they are to be deployed.

* Leslie London, MD, is Associate Professor, Occupational and Environmental Health Research Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Health Care, University of Cape Town

* For last week's editorial see

*Would you like to respond to this editorial? Send your views to [email protected] and we will publish them in our Letters and Comments section next week.