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	On Human Rights Crimes and Hope by Yvette Alberdingk Thijm Executive Director, WITNESS   When I meet people outside of WITNESS and talk about what we do, I get this question frequently: “What motivates you and your colleagues to dedicate your lives to dealing with some of the darkest aspects of humanity?”   My constant reply is that in a tumultuous world, partnering with and supporting people who fight for human rights change is the exact opposite of what makes humanity dark.   I thought about this question when the news of the most recent ISIS attacks in Beirut and Paris reached us last week, and shock and concern about the state of humanity was echoed by so many.   In our work to support people to expose human rights abuses through visual imagery, we see many cases of brutal, horrific crimes being committed. Often, the lives of people who are the most vulnerable or marginalized are the most affected.   And every time that a new violent act is committed, such as those committed by ISIS in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and France, we cannot help but be saddened by it.   Yet, it is the unwavering belief of our partners and peers, in dignity, in rights, and in a just society that, time and time again, gives me hope and faith in humanity. The light of their beliefs shines brightly these dark moments.   When I heard about ISIS newest attacks, my thoughts went to Youssef, a lawyer who lived a quiet suburban life in Aleppo with his family, until the conflict broke out in Syria. When the Assad regime started indiscriminately killing civilians in his neighborhood, he made it his purpose to collect evidence of human rights crimes, ensuring that stories of the brutalities against his neighbors and friends would not be forgotten.   I remember the moment that Youssef reported that he was now facing yet another threat: ISIS had entered his community and was brutalizing it. Many brave Syrian civilians, turned human rights defenders, have been documenting ISIS’ crimes in the towns and villages that once were the places where they would walk their children peacefully to school.   Faced with Assad’s barrel bombs as well as ISIS’ unspeakable acts, Youssef told me that he was doing this work because he believed in human rights. “Some day,” he said, “rule of law will return and Syria will be a humane and just society again.” His resolve gave me hope.   At WITNESS, we show up every day because we are committed to promoting and protecting human rights. Each one of us has a deep, personal sense of purpose. For each of us there may be different, personal reasons why we chose to work in human rights. Those range from growing up in a conflict zone to having mothers who instilled a sense of responsibility for others in us, or both.   None of us at WITNESS believes we are doing anything extraordinary. We all operate on the simple conviction that we want the world we all live in to reflect the universal values that many of us share: dignity, freedom, security. And we will work in solidarity with people around the world to ensure those values are extended to each and every single person, that is our purpose.   Every day, we are inspired by and work with citizens like Youssef. He and many others like him around the world are the beacons of light that will root out the darkness.   In the past few weeks, I have seen so many messages of empathy and solidarity emerging from human rights defenders around the world. People who in different ways in different countries, stand up against perpetrators who take away or threaten our dignity, our freedoms, our lives. They all share one thing in common: their steadfast belief that what makes us human are the human rights values we uphold.   Our daily work at WITNESS reminds me of this commonality every day. “There are many more of us,” I say silently when I see news headlines that would lead us to believe that evil is winning the battle.   In the middle of these tumultuous times, what is needed most is our collective commitment to universal human rights, to defending rule of law, to solidarity with others around the world who share the belief that human dignity is the (only) corner stone of a stable, safe future for all.   This is a moment when global solidarity and standing up for the rights we all treasure truly matters. In the words of our co-founder, the activist, and musician Peter Gabriel: “The move toward global citizenry has never been more urgent.” Visit the related web page
	Rethinking the Purpose of Economics by GDAE, New Internationalist   Rethinking the Purpose of Economics, by Neva Goodwin.   Humanity appears to be heading toward many kinds of disasters in the 21st century. Most obvious are the ecological dangers of climate change, water shortages and species destruction.   The social and spiritual dangers of widening inequality, along with cultures of envy, fear and materialism, make it difficult for leaders to even mention that in order to address ecological realities there will be a need for behavior changes toward simpler, less consumerist lifestyles.   The social sciences have developed over the last couple of centuries with the goal of bettering human conditions. Economics is the discipline that should help humanity understand long-term as well as short-term goals and the trade-offs that need to be made in a context where not all goals can be achieved at once.   Unfortunately, while professing to be “value-free,” the dominant, neoclassical theory of economics that was elaborated during the second half of the 20th century has in fact promulgated goals that lead us toward, rather than away from, the looming crises of our times.   Questionable Assumptions   At the micro level, neoclassical economists claim to derive all of their results from a single axiom about human behavior—that most people are rational, and that rational behavior may be understood as the pursuit of self-interest. From this statement about psychology, the claim is made that all of the efficiencies of the market arise out of the maximization of individual self-interest.   The implicit goals of microeconomics rest on three additional assumptions: that the maximization of consumer satisfaction is the only way to maximize well-being (the Marxian emphasis on the well-being of the worker is virtually ignored in the neoclassical psychology); that rationality includes the prediction that consumers know what will make them happy (e.g., they are not affected by advertising, except as a source of information); and that more happiness results from more consumption of the goods and services available through the markets.   These micro assumptions about human psychology and behavior support the basic macro-level goal which is generally the focus of economic advice. Growth in GDP (i.e., a nation’s total domestic economic transactions) is the ultimate macro goal on the grounds that this permits continual increase in the consumption of marketed goods and services. Milton Friedman’s writings in the 1950s and 60s popularized an additional assumption— that the social optimum of maximum national consumption could best be achieved by “freeing” markets as much as possible from nonmarket constraints, such as those imposed by government regulations on labor relations and environmental impacts.   All of this has come into question in recent decades. Behavioral economics, drawing upon advances in the understanding of the brain, makes it clear that the “rational economic man” assumption is a very poor description of reality. Psychologists have put forward strong evidence that happiness stems from many other things besides consumption through markets, and that, in fact, there is significant correlation between a materialistic outlook and unhappiness or mental illness.   Increased attention on the growing inequalities in wealth, power and opportunity emphasizes the social ills that accompany such inequality. “Free” markets are increasingly revealed as markets in which the rich and powerful are freed to off-load social and environmental costs onto those without power. And the looming dangers of climate change have made it clear that the pursuit of private profit (e.g., through the extraction and sale of fossil fuels or environmentally unsound resource use), rather than achieving a social optimum, is often carried out in direct opposition to the general well-being of present and future generations.   A better set of ideas about the economy is needed. In developing with my colleagues the principles and understandings that we call “contextual economics,” we begin by emphasizing the goals and values that motivate human beings in all aspects of their lives including in their roles as economic actors. We recognize that the goals implicit in most economics texts today—such as increased wealth, consumption, efficiency or economic growth—are often extremely important as intermediate goals that can lead toward the final goal of well-being.   However, there is increasing evidence, on scales ranging from the individual to the nation and the planet, that without a steady orientation toward a broader understanding of humankind within our social and ecological surround, even the most successful pursuit of these intermediate goals can result in reduced well-being.   Our approach emphasizes that human well-being is the ultimate purpose of economic activity. In that term we include future as well as present generations and recognize that ecological health is critical to human well-being, whether viewed instrumentally or as a goal in itself. We also assume (in an overt value judgment) that a broader conception of well-being inevitably leads to a greater emphasis on distributional issues. The question “Whose well-being counts?” cannot, we believe, have any acceptable answer other than “Everyone’s, equally.”   Putting the Economy in Context   Contextual economics aims to provide a realistic understanding of the workings of local, national, and global economies and economic forces. We believe that such an understanding is only possible when the economy is studied within its full social and psychological contexts—including human motivations, ethics, culture, norms, history, politics and institutions—as well as the physical contexts, which include technology and the built and natural environments. This is a radical reversal of the decontextualization that has taken place within economics over the last century.   A few examples of its implications follow:   Adequate consideration of the natural context suggests an ultimate limit to the scale of economic activity. It is not possible for a subsystem—the economy—to grow indefinitely if it is bounded within a finite, super system—the ecological context.   In fact there are strong signs that the ecological boundaries that make human life and human economies possible have been reached and surpassed. If the total global economy does not very soon cut back on the use and degradation of natural resources, severe ecological collapse will force us to accept local and global limits that will become ever more restrictive, the longer we overstep them.   The technological and institutional contexts, seen together, indicate more potential for adaptive technological change than is often recognized in cost-benefit analysis. Economists, and those they influence, are so used to assuming that growth is essential for a healthy economy that they ignore technological and institutional creativity that could achieve human goals with less use of material resources.   Too often cost-benefit analysis emphasizes the costs we would face if we impose regulatory or other limits on economic activity, while ignoring the benefits that will be achieved if the acceptance of limits forces people to come up with creative alternatives.   Recognition of the social and psychological contexts suggests the need for more realistic assumptions about the goals that motivate people and the culturally and historically related norms that shape much of human behavior. Human beings are not just greedy consumers; we are also citizens, parents, friends and community members. We are affected by other people’s emotions as well as their beliefs and expectations. We care about how we are viewed by others, which in turn relates to how we fit into the norms of our society.   A society’s patterns of interaction, social connections, levels of mutual trust and expectations of honesty and other behavioral norms are understood as “social capital,” which is critically important to the good functioning of an economy.   Three Economies   In the process of developing the idea of contextual economics, we have found that human economies are best understood under at least three headings: the business economy which is nearly all that is examined in standard texts; the public purpose economy of government, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations including international agencies; and the core economy of households and communities. Actors in each of these spheres carry out the four basic economic activities: the standard three—production, distribution (sometimes in the form of exchange) and consumption—and a fourth, not commonly included, resource maintenance.   The following descriptions of the meaning and importance of resource maintenance illustrate how our understanding may be enhanced by the image of multiple economies:   The business economy must maintain in good order such resources as machinery and inventories, worker skills and morale, and relations with suppliers and creditors.   The core economy maintains critical human and social capital by nurturing children and maintaining physical health and constructive norms of behavior. It is also responsible for maintaining domestic and neighborhood physical environments.   The public purpose economy plays critical resource maintenance roles in situations where actors in the other economies lack the ability (often due to poverty) or the motivation (especially where there is a conflict with immediate profits) to maintain the social and physical capital necessary for the present and future well-being of the broader community.   Examples range from transportation infrastructure, environmental regulations and financial accounting standards to nursery schools, farmland preservation trusts and boycotts of goods that are produced using child or slave labor.   The economic ideologies that have been dominant for the last half-century have emphasized economic growth to continually increase production and consumption. This narrow approach has had great success in lengthening human lives, reducing child mortality and providing a high level of material affluence in many parts of the world. However, humanity has reached an inflection point: continuing on the same path seems likely to reverse these achievements by increasing inequality and envy in the context of shrinking quantity and quality of essential resources.   The contextual approach allows us to reconsider economic goals—for example, to replace the goal of growth with the goal of well-being—within a fuller understanding of what actually contributes to human well-being. It allows us to explore the contributions to well-being that are made by the core (household and community) economy and the public purpose (government and nonprofit) economy instead of focusing solely on business.   As we grapple with the real ecological and social limits to continuing on the path of growth as the highest goal, a fuller understanding of the contexts for the economy will open up possible solutions and satisfactions that are not available to a narrower, less integrated conception of human psychology and the natural world.   * Neva Goodwin is co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute (GDAE) at Tufts University: http://ase.tufts.edu/gdae/ http://bit.ly/2glFKGk   10 economic myths we need to junk, by Dinyar Godrej, David Ransom. (New Internationalist)   Never underestimate the power of cherished ideas. They are clung to ever tighter when we are suffering reality’s harshest knocks.   When it comes to economics, today’s over-riding article of faith is of the rule of the market. If only it were completely free and global, with notions of governance and workers’ rights out of the way, then the good capitalists would usher in an era of plenty with pickings for everyone, from top to bottom. Regulation, social provision, public ownership are all getting in the way, believers claim. Down with the public good, up with individual responsibility. You get what you deserve.   This economic orthodoxy is called neoliberalism – ‘neo’ because it is a 20th/21st-century revival of the 18th-century school of liberal economics which called for the abolition of government intervention in manufacturing and trade.   It finds particular favour when elites govern. But it has no solutions for the economic crashes we have seen in recent years.   We need a more social, ‘real world’ vision of the economic sphere. Demands for this change are on the street and also in the academy with students protesting against the orthodoxy they are taught. It’s in this spirit that we present 10 of the most damaging economic myths that we urgently need to ditch.   Does repeating a thing make it true? The followers of mainstream economic dogma must surely think ‘Yes’. After the financial crash of 2008 and the malaise ever since, they haven’t changed their tune much. Their prescriptions don’t work but the patients – you or me – are still being dosed with ‘freemarket’ medicine. We’ve worked on this edition in the spirit of providing something of an antidote. The economic bottom line is inevitable, say the powers that be. Just the way things are. Well, we and an ever-growing legion of dissenting economists and fed up members of the general public – say, ‘No’. These cherished myths are causing real harm and we need to ditch them.   http://newint.org/issues/2015/12/01/ http://www.socialeurope.eu/2016/07/the-popular-revolt-against-globalization-and-the-abdication-of-the-left/ Visit the related web page
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