Wealth through Development
It is normal for human beings to demand their rights, no matter what the cost. There is no pleasure in living if one’s rights have been deprived. A good lifestyle does not rely only on material survival alone. A decent life requires human rights that the individuals should enjoy without interference from the government. One of the major rights that is recognized in the United Nations Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights is “the right to the enjoyment of just and favorable conditions of work.” This right, like all of the other rights that the United Nations has articulated, is unquestionable, and it should be protected by the state, and respected by people who have the power and the wealth to provide this right. Yet, when wealth and power come together under the shadow of development and globalization, they often prevent people, especially the poor, from enjoying this essential right. Therefore, development, meant to be a way to make life better for the lower classes and to enhance human rights, has become a way to enslave them within economic institutions in many of the developing countries. Development, as a tool of positive change has become a tool for creating inequality.
Development is an economic process designed to improve and enlarge the field of the economy to make positive change that a society and its citizens can enjoy. When I say citizens, I mean all social classes, not only minorities, like upper and middle classes. Poor people must not be excluded. Ideally, development should be one of the human rights tools to improve the lives of working class people, and establish standards of ethics in the workplace. Usually, development is controlled by either the state or by wealthy minorities, and consequently the wealthy are the ones who benefit. In his book World Poverty and Human Rights, Thomas Pogge argues that in many places in the world in close to be divided to two half. One half is very wealthy, and that do to the economic development that is being controlled by people who have power and wealth. The other half is the poor people that earn extensively less than annual income, which add to their poor situation more inequality. Based on a study of the distribution of household wealth in the world, he states, “In 2000 the bottom 50 percent of the world’s adults together had 1.1 percent of global wealth while the top 10 percent had 85.1 percent and the top 1 percent had 39.9 percent.” This is an indication that human rights and development are in the same boat. On the one hand, development is working to support the economy and make rich individuals wealthier. The institution of human rights, on the other hand, is in the corner, protecting itself from the power that is related to the economy.
The late 20th century industrial revolution in developing countries is creating drastic income inequality within these countries. Before I explain this point, I should pause for a moment and examine consumption patterns here in the U.S. If we look closely at what we wear, what we drive, what we communicate with, and even what we eat, we will find almost all of these products come from developing countries. Many of us know that people who work in factories to produce our comfort are being paid less than three dollars per day, but we hardly ask the question: Is less than three dollars per day enough for living? What conditions do these factories have?
The answer to this question makes part of the unjust treatment that those workers are facing everyday. Let us take one example to answer these questions, which is one of the biggest American companies, Nike. Nike has 25 contract factories in Indonesia. More than half of the workers are women 23 years old and younger. According to a BBC News report, people who work in these factories are being paid around a dollar per day. Moreover, these women are being are being subjected to different types of abuses. According to the report, “30% reporting being bullied and sexually molested, between 60% and 90% find it difficult to get medical care or sick leave, and are forced to work overtime.” The company admits these abuses and others. The punishment for being late is to clean toilets or run around factory grounds, as one of the workers reported. The company also reported that in the year before the abuse report, it earned $292 million in profits, 22% more than the year before.
Americans pay around $100 for pear of Nike shoes that cost less than $4 to produce. Those shoes also cost the dignity of hundreds of Indonesians. In his book, Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, Kevin Bales argues that this is a continuation of slavery from the past. He states, “People get rich by using slaves, and when they’ve finished with their slaves, they just throw those people away… People become completely disposable tools for making money.” In his book, Bales investigates laws and economic norms that enslave those workers, as he claims, through their personal stories.
Development should be established as a right to all human beings in the world. Without human rights values, not all citizens will be able to enjoy this right. In the meantime, development has been used to enlarge the amount of wealth for wealthy individuals in the world. Development, through globalization, is connected with the rest of the world through cosmetics, but with no connection to human. Everyday we wear shoes from Indonesia; we wear cloths from Pakistan; almost have of what we enjoy in our life come from developing countries. We became global economy, rather than global human beings.
Works Cited
BBC NEWS. “Nike admits abuse at Indonesian plants.” February, 2001. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/1184103.stm.
Kevin Bales. From Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy, edited by Zoe Trodd in American Protest Literature. Harvard University Press. 2008. pp. 124-129.
Thomas Pogge. “ Moral Universalism and Global Economic Justice.” World Poverty and Human Rights. Polity Press. 2002. p.105.
The Huffington Post. “When Will Nike ‘Just Do It’ On The Sweatshop Issue?” October, 2009.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-keady/when-will-nike-just-do-it_b_308448.html
The UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights recognizes, among others. Quoted in: Peter Uvin. “Background, The Big Picture.” Human Rights and Development. Kumarian Press. 2004. p, 11.
© 2010, nidal-alazraq@wphr.org. All rights reserved.