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	Financial crises should not become human rights crises by Koldo Casla Ombudsman of the Basque Country in Spain Spain - Basque region   I recently took part in an “expert meeting on promoting a rights-based approach to financial regulation and economic recovery”. The meeting took place at the UN office in Vienna and it was co-hosted by the OHCHR and the Center of Concern, as part of the ongoing work of the OHCHR on the issue of human rights and the financial crisis (see further information here; I´ve been told that the statements and presentations will be available there soon). The meeting gathered UN human rights experts (Treaty Bodies and Special Procedures), OHCHR representatives, experts from the financial sector, NHRIs, NGOs and academic experts. I attended the event on behalf of the Ombudsman of the Basque Country (Ararteko) to present our views about the impact of the economic crisis and austerity-led policies on the enjoyment of human rights in the Basque Country.   According to the 1978 Spanish Constitution (Article 54) and the 1979 Basque Statute of Autonomy (Article 15), the Ombudsman of the Basque Country is defined as the High Commissioner of the Parliament of the Basque Country for the protection and promotion of the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution, which must be interpreted in line with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and international human rights law (Article 10.2 of the Constitution).   Therefore, the mandate of the Basque Ombudsman is not only dealing with individual complaints (although this is definitely our main task from a resource perspective), but also constructing and defending a human rights approach to public policy and fostering human rights values and principles in the Basque society.   I believe the most productive ingredient of this meeting was that it brought together very different people and made them discuss the same topics, namely, the crisis, economic policies, financial regulation and human rights. Human rights people and financial regulatory services seldom talk to each other. It often seems they speak in different languages. To tell the truth, I don´t think we managed to break this sound barrier last Monday but at least we paid attention to what each other had to say, which is no mean feat.   I would summarize the main points of my intervention as follows.   The financial crisis in itself is not what we all are concerned about. In fact, we could make the case that crises are just inherent to capitalism. The problem began when the financial crisis turned into a human rights crisis. We must pay try to understand and respond to the material and ideological underpinnings of this transformation.   Even though the general economic situation and welfare state in the Basque Country is stronger than in other regions in Spain, the number of complaints and queries addressed to the Ombudsman of the Basque Country since the crisis began has gone up really fast. Complaints grew by about 50% between 2010 and 2012, and the vast majority of them now refer to social exclusion, basic income and necessary benefits to ensure a minimum standard of living. Ararteko’s own research shows very worrisome data about the rise of child poverty in the Basque Country since the crisis began in 2007/08.   One of the main goals of the Ararteko is to win the frame battle in public policy making. The Ombudsman defends the added value of human rights and attempts to make a persuasive case in favour of a human rights-based approach to public policy making. This translates into the need to guarantee the minimum core obligations of all human rights, the requirement to adapt domestic law to the highest international human rights standards, the prohibition of discrimination and non-retrogressive measures, the need to pay particular attention to the most vulnerable groups, etc. A comprehensive human rights approach is particularly necessary in a time of economic crisis. I believe these four elements are of key strategic importance right now.   a) Ensure citizens’ right to know and freedom of information. Official documents must be made publicly available unless there are good and limited democratic reasons not to.   b) Assess the impact of public policy. Governments bear the burden to prove that their policies are best suited to achieve progressively the full realisation of socioeconomic rights.   c) Protect the right to remedy and hold to account those who are responsible for the current human rights crisis. Non repetition is a key element of the right to reparation.   d) Respect the right to dissent and protest. We must apply the highest standards of freedom of expression and association when policing demonstrations.   What can Ombudsman offices and other national/public human rights institutions do in this context?   a) First and foremost, exist. As pointed out by the former Human Rights Commissioner of the Council of Europe, Thomas Hammarberg, “Ombudsmen and human rights bodies are crucial” in a time of austerity. In the last few years we have observed a very worrying political campaign in Spain to get rid of some Ombudsman offices. I believe this is a step backwards in the institutional protection of fundamental rights.   b) Be humble and work with others to reach further. This means working hand in hand with local and regional civil society organisations, listening to their concerns, developing strategic partnerships and building bridges between public officers and civil society.   c) Be humble (again) and use new tools. Legal analysis is not enough anymore. Human rights institutions must make use of the whole array of analytical tools, such as quantitative research and public policy and budget analysis.   d) Network across Europe. Many of the public policies and pieces of legislation that are applied domestically have their origin in the European Union. Ombudspersons and other human rights offices must develop networks in order to exchange best practices, identify similar concerns and come up with a shared strategy to target the policy roots of many of the problems that lie at the core of the social and democratic downturn Europeans face nowadays.   * Koldo Casla is Chief of Staff of the Defensoría del Pueblo (Ombudsman) of the Basque Country in Spain (Ararteko). Visit the related web page
	The Pope Versus Unfettered Capitalism by John Nichols The Nation USA   December 10, 2013   Nelson Mandela''s Universal Declaration of Human Rights.   “Everyone has the right to have access to health care services, including reproductive health care,” the document declares, adding that: “The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to achieve the progressive realization of each of these rights.”   At a time when the United States is engaged in an archaic debate over whether to even try and provide universal access to health care, most other countries well understand the absurdity of conditioning access to basic human needs – including access to health care, housing and education -- on the ability to pay.   That understanding was championed by Nelson Mandela, whose life and legacy is being honored this week by President Obama, members of Congress and leaders from around the world. Fittingly, the memorials for Mandela will coincide with this week’s 65th anniversary of the adoption (on December 10, 1948) by the United Nations General Assembly of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – a document that the former South African president revered as a touchstone for nation building and governing.   Mandela, a lawyer by training and a student of constitutions, steered South Africa toward a broad understanding of human rights. When his country adopted its Constitution in 1996, he announced that: “The new constitution obliges us to strive to improve the quality of life of the people. In this sense, our national consensus recognizes that there is nothing else that can justify the existence of government but to redress the centuries of unspeakable privations, by striving to eliminate poverty, illiteracy, homelessness and disease. It obliges us, too, to promote the development of independent civil society structures.”   There are many reasons to honor Mandela. And there is much to be borrowed from his legacy.   But it is absolutely vital, as we focus on this man, to recall his wise words with regard to human rights – and the role that government had in assuring access to those rights.   Mandela embraced the great vision of the 20th-century idealists who, at the end of World War II, recognized a responsibility to address the inequality that fostered fear, hatred and totalitarianism. It was an American, Eleanor Roosevelt, who reminded Americans seventy years ago that: “At all times, day by day, we have to continue fighting for freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom from fear, and freedom from want— for these are things that must be gained in peace as well as in war.”   President Franklin Roosevelt had, with his 1941 “Four Freedoms” speech, begun to scope out the broader definition of human rights, speaking not just of First Amendment liberties but also of a “freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.”   After her husband’s death in 1945, Eleanor Roosevelt carried the vision forward in her dynamic role as the first chairperson of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. She oversaw the development of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that affirmed: “Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.”   The declaration also held out the promise that: “Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.”   When the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was celebrated in 1998, Mandela addressed the UN General Assembly.   “Born in the aftermath of the defeat of the Nazi and fascist crime against humanity, this Declaration held high the hope that all our societies would, in future, be built on the foundations of the glorious vision spelt out in each of its clauses,” said Mandela, who had in the preceding decade made the transition from prisoner to president of South Africa. “For those who had to fight for their emancipation, such as ourselves who, with your help, had to free ourselves from the criminal apartheid system, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights served as the vindication of the justice of our cause. At the same time, it constituted a challenge to us that our freedom, once achieved, should be dedicated to the implementation of the perspectives contained in the Declaration.”   Mandela accepted that challenge, and explained that it remained unmet in much of the world.   “The very right to be human is denied everyday to hundreds of millions of people as a result of poverty, the unavailability of basic necessities such as food, jobs, water and shelter, education, health care and a healthy environment,” he said. “The failure to achieve the vision contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights finds dramatic expression in the contrast between wealth and poverty which characterizes the divide between the countries of the North and the countries of the South and within individual countries in all hemispheres."   The president of South Africa was explicit in his criticism of leaders who failed – by “acts of commission and omission” – to address civil and economic injustice.   “What I am trying to say is that all these social ills which constitute an offence against the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not a pre-ordained result of the forces of nature or the product of a curse of the deities. They are the consequence of decisions which men and women take or refuse to take, all of whom will not hesitate to pledge their devoted support for the vision conveyed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” he explained.   Looking to the future, Mandela concluded, “the challenge posed by the next 50 years of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by the next century whose character it must help to fashion, consists in whether humanity, and especially those who will occupy positions of leadership, will have the courage to ensure that, at last, we build a human world consistent with the provisions of that historic Declaration and other human rights instruments that have been adopted since 1948.”   http://www.thenation.com/blog/177541/nelson-mandelas-universal-declaration-human-rights   November 2013   The Pope Versus Unfettered Capitalism.   Remember when the Occupy movement demanded that issues like income inequality, race-to-the-bottom globalization and the failures of the free market be placed on the agenda?   Remember the silly critique of Occupy that said the movement’s necessary challenge to austerity lacked specifics?   Problem solved. The pope has gotten specific.   Condemning the “new tyranny” of unfettered capitalism and the “idolatry of money,” Pope Francis argues in a newly circulated apostolic exhortation that “as long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems.”   The pope has taken a side, not just in his manifesto but in interviews, warning: “Today we are living in an unjust international system in which ‘King Money’ is at the center.”   He is encouraging resistance to “the absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation” that creates “a throwaway culture that discards young people as well as its older people.”   “What I would tell the youth is to worry about looking after one another and to be conscious of this and to not allow themselves to be thrown away,” he told a television audience in his native Argentina. “So that throwaway culture does not continue, so that a culture of inclusion is achieved.”   The reference to a “culture of exclusion” is not casual.   In his manifesto, the pope decries the current “economy of exclusion and inequality.”   “Such an economy kills,” he explains. “How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality. Today everything comes under the laws of competition and the survival of the fittest, where the powerful feed upon the powerless. As a consequence, masses of people find themselves excluded and marginalized: without work, without possibilities, without any means of escape.”   What makes the contribution from Pope Francis to the emerging global dialogue about the next economy so significant is his explicit rejection of the basic underpinnings of the broken economic models that have created the current crisis—of the failed ideas that, remarkably, continue to be promoted by fiscal fabulists like House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.   “Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” writes the new pope in his manifesto. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed.”   As a global figure with a significant following and an ability to speak to the political and corporate elites, Pope Francis’ voice may be heard where others are dismissed. And the fact that he is embracing a critique of capitalism that has come from the streets—rather than the apologias issued from the suites—has the potential to move the debate. The point here is not to suggest that the dictates of any religious leader will be followed by Wall Street or Washington—nor that pronouncements from the Vatican are going to guide the economic and social discourse of secular society.   The point is to recognize that an alternative argument has taken shape. And new voices are being added to the chorus of complaint about an austerity agenda that would undermine universal guarantees such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, cut food stamps, and barter off basic services such as the Post Office, while at the same time restructuring tax and regulatory policies in order to redistribute wealth upward.   The world is in the midst of a rapidly evolving—and absolutely vital—debate about “the dictatorship of an impersonal economy lacking a truly human purpose.”   On one side are the billionaires and their political pawns, angling for more of the income inequality that has so benefited them.   On the other side are labor unions, anti-poverty campaigners, Occupy activists—and a pope who argues that “money must serve, not rule!” Visit the related web page
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