Human Rights v Tyranny
There are, of course, many other rights (civil and political) that humans should have including the right to free speech and dissent, but there is a particular reason why I assert that the seven I listed are the most basic and should have priority.
Way back in the early 1970′s I devoted two years of my life to producing the first ever and to date only documentary film on the everyday reality of global poverty and its implications for all. My production team and I researched in more than 130 countries and filmed in 70. The end product was an epic, two-hour documentary with the title Five Minutes To Midnight.
The most shocking statistic the film gave to the world was that every year an estimated 15 MILLION children under five were dying from malnutrition and related, easily preventable disasters such as diahorrea, measles and whooping cough. In a word they were dying from POVERTY – abject and absolute poverty.
To that was added the estimate that each year another 300 MILLION were born irreversibly brain-damaged because of malnutrition in the wombs of their mothers.
For me the single most revealing statement in the documentary was that of an Indian mother who was living, as was her whole community, on the margins of life. I asked her what was the one thing she wanted most of all. She replied:
“Education for my children so they don’t have to live LIKE ANIMALS as we do.”
On camera I asked the poorest of the poor in countries on each and every continent of the world the same question. Almost all of them echoed in their own way the answer of the Indian mother I have just quoted.
In the nearly four decades that have passed since my presentation with Five Minutes To Midnight of the everyday reality of global poverty, there has been some progress in addressing it, but not nearly enough.
Under that heading – not nearly enough – India today is probably the outstanding example of how development and wealth creation driven by unregulated capitalism, assisted by rampant corruption, is not benefitting the majority. The figures speak for themselves – 100 million Indians are wealthy (to some degree or another) and 800 million are poor and getting poorer. According to the latest research 40 percent of India’s children are malnourished, and half the entire population of India is without sanitation.
As things are I truly fear for India’s future. Why? Once upon a time the poor of India did not know they were poor. Today they (like the poor of the world) do know. To be more explicit, they know they are poor not only in relation to those of us who are fortunate enough to live in the still rich nations of the Western world, but also in relation to their own elites. I think you don’t need a crystal ball to see the very real prospect of India one day being torn apart by an explosion of the despair of poverty for the many in the midst of plenty for the few.
Today I believe that if there is to be the understanding needed to generate a truly effective effort to end global poverty and all it implies for the absence of even the most basic human rights, a new approach to getting the message across is required. What could it be?
My suggestion is that all who seek to promote human rights should take their cue from the Indian woman I quoted and give priority to campaigning for
THE RIGHT TO BE HUMAN.
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