The Eye of the Beholder
Economist would have us think there are too few resources to meet the expanded needs of the world’s population. We can deduce from Professor Ajay Mahal’s lecture two premises to challenge. One is, do human needs truly exceed the existing goods and services relative to their resources and the other, how can societies avoid cases of unequal distribution. I would argue that the situation is not one of scarcity or only a surpassing of available goods but of distribution and access. I would also argue that the ratio of needs to resources will always be unbalanced if need and acquisition can be unlimited and subjective and resources hoarded.
Peter Uvin in Human Rights and Development clearly acknowledges poverty, lack of resources and extreme need as going far beyond tangibles to include lack of “access to health and education, vulnerability, voicelessness and powerlessness.”[1] These assets cannot be attained and more importantly incorporated into useable commodities if the value given to them is more expensive, than the masses can afford. Furthermore, chronic illness as a result of inadequate health care will lead to hopelessness and depression. When these features are coupled with unequal opportunity for education a cycle of poverty prevails.
In the context of the cycle of poverty, one begins to see relativity to needs and resources. If education and adequate housing for example are the commodities that would raise individuals from poverty the issues is not a lack of resources but the social structure, which includes racism that determines to a great extent the possibility for some individuals to have and others to have not. Similarly, there have been standards agreed upon that determine how much need is acceptable which in turn decides how goods are distributed, goods that include education, transportation, health care equal opportunity.
This is where human rights collide with human wants and needs. How can basic human desires be subjected to something such as the Human Development Report or a report from the World Bank? Uvin makes the charge that these highly intellectualized documents focus on development in a manner that is “erudite, methodological and theoretically sound” and acknowledges the need for standards and norms and the strengthening of human rights organizations. What they do not do is describe how in this 21st century we could have large populations who are illiterate and will likely die from either tuberculosis or AIDS.[2]
Political advocacy and the advance of democracy must be the way to effectively advance the cause for and solution to the human rights dilemma. Who would not be in favor of human rights? The term is cleverly used along with terms such as disparities to mask the more heartless issues of disregarding those who seem less capable to succeed. This leads us finally to the merging of development with the notion of human development and the beginning of an understanding that access to ‘goods’ is as much a part of poverty and inequality as the often false notion of scarcity.
Dependencia or the Dependent Theory of Raul Prebisch describes this idea of imbalance in relations, in this case to global trade as it pertained to Latin America. “The terms of trade would always work against the periphery (developing countries), meaning that the center would consistently exploit the periphery. The rich would get richer and the poor would get poorer. International trade, in this formulation, was not a method to raise standards of living but rather a form of exploitation and robbery, committed by the industrial nations and their multinational corporations. The victims were the peoples of the developing world.[3] This theory can be used as a metaphor for all of the ethno centric political decisions that filter out the needs of individuals who do not have their own voices, who many not add to the overall economic growth of a region or country and in have set a standard for millions of individuals.
Human needs and the access available to obtain what is needed is in fact a human right. With the understanding of human development that supports the intangibles such as self respect, dignity and confidence, the conversation will be less subjective for more individual will have found their voice. The debate now turns to redistribution, resource management and new standards that include the capabilities of all individuals based on their attainment of the understood basics. Now on to sustainability….
[1] Peter Uvin, Human Rights and Development, (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2004) Pg. 123
[2] Peter Uvin, Human Rights and Development, (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2004) Pg. 126
[3] From Commanding Heights, Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, Copyright 2002 by Daniel A. Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc., N.Y.
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