Global Solidarity

LIFT is proud to announce our association with COMPA – Convergence of Movements of the Peoples of the Americas.

The Right to Equality is for People, not Corporations

It is widely understood that economic globalization, its processes and institutional frameworks affect human rights in numerous ways. It is also clear that growing inequality is a central feature of neo-liberal economic policies. Those who formulate the policies and operate the institutions driving economic globalization must be legally and morally challenged on the basis of equality and non-discrimination. That these same principles have been co-opted and misused to justify trade rules such as “National Treatment”; designed to ensure foreign corporate interests can over-ride local needs and democracy, must also be challenged.

Equality and Non-Discrimination

Two of the most central concepts to the ethos of human rights instruments and practice are equality and non-discrimination. The Universal Declaration and its related covenants clearly state that all persons are equal, and that the right to non-discrimination is basic to the realization of all human rights. The grounds of prohibited discrimination are also clear and have been evolving to accommodate new forms of intolerance. The prohibitions of discrimination based on race, colour, gender, religion and ethnicity have the status of enforceable law worldwide. Thus there is no circumstance, including war that can be used to justify discrimination on these grounds. Still other grounds have the force of international law as well, including economic status.

Racism and Discrimination

Yet the vast majority of people whose rights are violated; from displaced and rural populations lacking basic services, to migrant and sweatshop labourers in the north, to workers in maquialladoras and export processing zones, are living in, or are from, non-white countries, illustrating the racism and discrimination of corporate globalization. The rise of intolerance, hate crimes, targeted policing towards non-white minorities in the northern countries is no accident, while lip service is paid to the notion of equality, these states increasingly rely on these cheap and “flexible” labour forces.

Women Bear a Disproportionate Share

That women bear a disproportionate share of the negative impacts of globalization, is evident in statistical data and acknowledged by a host of U.N. agencies commissions and human rights bodies. Yet substantive measures and programs established to respect the equality of women have been sacrificed by many nations engaged in the race to liberalize their economies. While economic globalization has had the effect of pushing growing numbers of women into the paid labour force, appropriate supports such as childcare and health benefits have not followed in most cases.

At the same time, women primarily engaged caring for their families and/or subsistence farming have had to engage in the informal economy as their markets are overwhelmed by imports or they are displaced from their land. Women in many countries are sought after for their adept hands and the fact that to feed their children, they will often persevere in the face of the most disgraceful working conditions and the lowest possible pay. The migration of women working overseas and sending remittances home has increased to the point where in the Philippines, women’s labour is one of the largest export markets.

The situation of women has a host of implications for human rights treaty bodies including for example the right to fair working conditions, support for families, the right form unions and associations, the right to healthy work places, the right to an adequate standard of living, to name a few, the challenge is to where to place responsibility. Whether it is the state or the employer or both and how then to hold the violators accountable is a complex yet urgent task requiring cooperation among the relevant treaty bodies and institutions. Some work has been done to incorporate a gender analysis into the work of wide range of actors including the World Bank, but much remains to be done to translate analysis to substantive action. Women themselves need use these tools as part of the struggle for equality, only in this way can the ideals of human rights treaties become more than values on paper.

Also of concern, are the vast populations experiencing multiple forms of systemic discrimination who are distinct due to their condition of poverty. From the obvious violations of economic rights, to the more subtle effects of state neglect, such as the concentrations of poor people obliged to live in or near toxic environments, the disparity in respect for the rights of the poor compared to the rest of the population, is blatant in both wealthy and poor nations.

Social Exclusion

With poverty comes social exclusion, now more widely understood as a factor leading to the breakdown of social cohesion. The sometimes extreme isolation of social exclusion is a little understood effect of experiencing poverty in a wealthy society, similar to the indignity of racialised exclusion. Great strides have been made in Europe towards framing poverty and social exclusion as human rights issues and efforts are underway to address these problems anew from this perspective. This approach deepens the understanding of poverty beyond material concerns and further defines impact of poverty on human dignity, work which could prove useful to U.N. Human Rights bodies in developing a more comprehensive approach to poverty.

Workfare schemes requiring those in need to work for their benefits, as directed by the system, legislate human rights violations by denying recipients the right to choose a livelihood, access to education, the right to join a union, the right to privacy, and especially the right to recourse or remedy. All of these policies impede the right to income security, especially when minor errors or random mistakes cause the termination of subsistence income, and thus absolute poverty. Demeaning and inhumane treatment of the poor, inherent in the very systems set up to provide supports to those in need, is another growing concern, though this form of acute humiliation is rarely understood as a human rights issue. Yet if these modern privatised income security systems, as seen the U.S., Chile, Australia and Canada, continue to expand in the very regressive manner they were introduced, this will become yet another serious form of systemic discrimination requiring the combined attention of the treaty bodies.

In some of even the most supposedly progressive nations, there are no laws or mechanisms protecting the poor from discrimination on the grounds of economic status or circumstance. Thus many other protected grounds are completely undermined as they are so often a factor in the causes of poverty and social exclusion. How much responsibility for the recent regression and/or chronic lack of social security and other social programs for the poor can be laid directly at the door of economic globalization needs to be fully examined.

Indeed economic globalization, with its values of freedom from interference in the pursuit of profit, “competitiveness” and efficiency, relies heavily on forms of exploitation founded in historic racism and class oppression. There are numerous crosscutting issues spinning out from systemic discrimination and the disproportionate suffering it causes. Which is why the human rights committees; CERD, (racism) CESCR, (economic and social) CEDAW, (women) the CRC (children) the UNCHR, (high commission) the ILO, (labour rights) and other parties should work together to prevent the main actors from perpetuating further human rights abuses. For these bodies to act, the people affected must report to them and demand recourse, in the process of claiming human rights, people’s movements around the world can work together on a common project to build a foundation for a sustainable global economy.