The basic assumption on which this article has been based is that despite many well intentioned endeavours, the human rights situation of most developing countries has not improved; in fact, in many countries, the situation has become much worse in the recent decades.
The implication of this is the usual recommendation that is made by the United Nations (UN) human rights agencies and also developed countries’ authorities like the European Union (EU) and others to conduct inquiries and prosecute offenders whenever serious violations of rights occur, but the fact of the matter is that they have failed to produce much change for the better at the ground level in such countries.
Despite such failure, almost all discourses end in the repetition of the same formula – “investigate and prosecute”.
The name that has been given to the recognition of this failure is “impunity”. Perhaps, the most often used word in the human rights discourse is “impunity”. The valiant call for ending impunity is being made almost every day to investigate and prosecute. Such repetition is itself a proof that these calls have not produced positive results. In fact, calls for “ending impunity” are another way of restating the formula “investigate and prosecute”.
Studies based on ground research done in 10 Asian countries from 2001 to 2017 on the causes for the prevalence of impunity demonstrated that within the given legal systems in the relevant countries, the defects of the public institutions for the administration of justice, namely, police investigation, prosecution, and judicial systems themselves were the cause of the failure to investigate serious human rights violations. Thus, these institutions were designed in a way to ensure a guarantee of impunity. Further, there is a clear distinction between legislation and the actual implementation of the laws by these institutions. While legislation may be based on principles opposed to impunity, law enforcement is practiced in a way so as to ensure impunity.
This problem has not been addressed by international agencies, although their reports show that they are aware of the problems. In making recommendations, international agencies seem to consider it inconvenient to consider the existence of institutions that negate the possibility ensuring accountability.
The ground realities in developing countries
The book, Body, Mind, Soul, Society, attempts to give a detailed account from several countries in Asia of the kind of problems or nightmares caused to the people by the virtual absence of state institutions that enjoy public confidence in their capacities to protect the basic rights of the people. It provides details of actual incidents and events which have been witnessed, to study and also to intervene to some extent about the kinds of situations faced by the people for which they find that there is hardly any solution, either at the domestic level or even at the international level.
One major difficulty in writing the book was that the kind of situations that are described through various actual incidents would be very difficult for a person living outside that particular experience to grasp or to comprehend. Even within a domestic situation itself, people living in more affluent circumstances would find it beyond their belief if they come across detailed accounts of what some of their fellow country folk have faced under various circumstances.
This is, of course, aggravated when the communication is between persons from developing countries and those who are from nations known as developed countries. The developed countries are those which have had a few centuries of experience of the traditions of enlightenment, and methodologies and attitudes which have developed in terms of rational thought and in terms of science. These developments are also supplemented by technological advances which have created a new kind of people in the developed countries, who would consider the normal experiences that the ordinary people go through in the context of developing countries as simply abnormal or exaggerated or even untrue.
The result is that despite the massive changes brought about by communication, changes which humanity has been experiencing particularly during the last few decades, the actual understanding of the people about each other has not improved. In fact, it could be said that what has increased is a great deal of confusion. The average person who grows up in a developed country and has acquired a degree of attachment to the traditions of science and rationality would, when confronted with narratives of actual situations that people have faced elsewhere, feel that they simply cannot fathom how something could have happened, if they had happened at all.
This huge confusion has resulted in making even well intentioned attempts to be of some assistance to resolve some problems, particularly in developing countries, to end in creating greater confusion rather than resolving these problems. Influenced by the way things are done in countries where traditions of science and rationality have been established and where urbanisation of the most of the population has been achieved as a reality, one would often find it difficult to deal with societies that have not had those levels of urbanisation and also have not established the use of traditions of science and rationality over a long period of time.
In this book, these are explained in greater detail, particularly about two countries. One is my own country of origin, Sri Lanka, and the other is Cambodia where I had the opportunity of working while the UN Transitional Authority of Cambodia was in operation and for a short time thereafter.
Regarding Sri Lanka, the developments that took place there for about the last 50 years have been explained. Instead of relying on a lot of data, which is nowadays freely available via Google or through other means, it attempts to narrate direct experiences of people who have had to face some horrific experiences. For most Sri Lankans reading this book, the narratives that have been mentioned would resonate with their own experiences which they would have heard from persons who were known to them or it may even be that the readers themselves would have had experienced similar problems as have been described. For them, the idea of the normal is the kind of things which are revealed in the narratives that have been recorded.
But for almost everyone else who reads these narratives, if they are from the background of a developed country, they are very much likely to be seriously puzzled about or become greatly confused by what they read.
For example, one of the worst experiences that Sri Lanka has witnessed in the recent decades is the experience of large-scale enforced disappearances. In fact, Sri Lanka is regarded as the country which has the second highest number of enforced disappearances. For many people, even in developed places in Asia like Hong Kong and Singapore, the term “enforced disappearances” is something that they could not make any sense out of. If it is explained to them that this means the kidnapping of somebody in place of arrest, insulting and torturing that person while in custody, then killing that person and disposing of the body in secret so as to avoid the possibility of any legal consequences, the reaction of the listener is often one of skepticism or an admission that it is simply not possible to understand this.
The difficulty is simply not about providing more and more evidence of actual instances as proof, because the listener's problem is not about proof but about the very possibility of such things taking place except in some rare instances. If the situation described itself is regarded as something that cannot be true, then no amount of proof is going to be of use to convince a person that this is an actual reality faced within particular contexts.
In such situations, conversations break down not so much by way of disagreements but simply by way of failures in comprehension. The failures in comprehension are a major obstacle in the modern world for resolving many of the problems that are faced in the developing countries. When solutions are proposed to problems which have not been thoroughly comprehended, then such solutions will end up in failure when there is an attempt to implement them. In the end, the mere fact that a large amount of resources may be allocated in order to attempt to implement such solutions, does not however, make much of a difference.
(The writer is the Asian Human Rights Commission’s Policy and Programmes Director)Comprehending human rights: The developed countries vs. developing world divide
21 Sep 2021
Comprehending human rights: The developed countries vs. developing world divide
21 Sep 2021
The basic assumption on which this article has been based is that despite many well intentioned endeavours, the human rights situation of most developing countries has not improved; in fact, in many countries, the situation has become much worse in the recent decades.
The implication of this is the usual recommendation that is made by the United Nations (UN) human rights agencies and also developed countries’ authorities like the European Union (EU) and others to conduct inquiries and prosecute offenders whenever serious violations of rights occur, but the fact of the matter is that they have failed to produce much change for the better at the ground level in such countries.
Despite such failure, almost all discourses end in the repetition of the same formula – “investigate and prosecute”.
The name that has been given to the recognition of this failure is “impunity”. Perhaps, the most often used word in the human rights discourse is “impunity”. The valiant call for ending impunity is being made almost every day to investigate and prosecute. Such repetition is itself a proof that these calls have not produced positive results. In fact, calls for “ending impunity” are another way of restating the formula “investigate and prosecute”.
Studies based on ground research done in 10 Asian countries from 2001 to 2017 on the causes for the prevalence of impunity demonstrated that within the given legal systems in the relevant countries, the defects of the public institutions for the administration of justice, namely, police investigation, prosecution, and judicial systems themselves were the cause of the failure to investigate serious human rights violations. Thus, these institutions were designed in a way to ensure a guarantee of impunity. Further, there is a clear distinction between legislation and the actual implementation of the laws by these institutions. While legislation may be based on principles opposed to impunity, law enforcement is practiced in a way so as to ensure impunity.
This problem has not been addressed by international agencies, although their reports show that they are aware of the problems. In making recommendations, international agencies seem to consider it inconvenient to consider the existence of institutions that negate the possibility ensuring accountability.
The ground realities in developing countries
The book, Body, Mind, Soul, Society, attempts to give a detailed account from several countries in Asia of the kind of problems or nightmares caused to the people by the virtual absence of state institutions that enjoy public confidence in their capacities to protect the basic rights of the people. It provides details of actual incidents and events which have been witnessed, to study and also to intervene to some extent about the kinds of situations faced by the people for which they find that there is hardly any solution, either at the domestic level or even at the international level.
One major difficulty in writing the book was that the kind of situations that are described through various actual incidents would be very difficult for a person living outside that particular experience to grasp or to comprehend. Even within a domestic situation itself, people living in more affluent circumstances would find it beyond their belief if they come across detailed accounts of what some of their fellow country folk have faced under various circumstances.
This is, of course, aggravated when the communication is between persons from developing countries and those who are from nations known as developed countries. The developed countries are those which have had a few centuries of experience of the traditions of enlightenment, and methodologies and attitudes which have developed in terms of rational thought and in terms of science. These developments are also supplemented by technological advances which have created a new kind of people in the developed countries, who would consider the normal experiences that the ordinary people go through in the context of developing countries as simply abnormal or exaggerated or even untrue.
The result is that despite the massive changes brought about by communication, changes which humanity has been experiencing particularly during the last few decades, the actual understanding of the people about each other has not improved. In fact, it could be said that what has increased is a great deal of confusion. The average person who grows up in a developed country and has acquired a degree of attachment to the traditions of science and rationality would, when confronted with narratives of actual situations that people have faced elsewhere, feel that they simply cannot fathom how something could have happened, if they had happened at all.
This huge confusion has resulted in making even well intentioned attempts to be of some assistance to resolve some problems, particularly in developing countries, to end in creating greater confusion rather than resolving these problems. Influenced by the way things are done in countries where traditions of science and rationality have been established and where urbanisation of the most of the population has been achieved as a reality, one would often find it difficult to deal with societies that have not had those levels of urbanisation and also have not established the use of traditions of science and rationality over a long period of time.
In this book, these are explained in greater detail, particularly about two countries. One is my own country of origin, Sri Lanka, and the other is Cambodia where I had the opportunity of working while the UN Transitional Authority of Cambodia was in operation and for a short time thereafter.
Regarding Sri Lanka, the developments that took place there for about the last 50 years have been explained. Instead of relying on a lot of data, which is nowadays freely available via Google or through other means, it attempts to narrate direct experiences of people who have had to face some horrific experiences. For most Sri Lankans reading this book, the narratives that have been mentioned would resonate with their own experiences which they would have heard from persons who were known to them or it may even be that the readers themselves would have had experienced similar problems as have been described. For them, the idea of the normal is the kind of things which are revealed in the narratives that have been recorded.
But for almost everyone else who reads these narratives, if they are from the background of a developed country, they are very much likely to be seriously puzzled about or become greatly confused by what they read.
For example, one of the worst experiences that Sri Lanka has witnessed in the recent decades is the experience of large-scale enforced disappearances. In fact, Sri Lanka is regarded as the country which has the second highest number of enforced disappearances. For many people, even in developed places in Asia like Hong Kong and Singapore, the term “enforced disappearances” is something that they could not make any sense out of. If it is explained to them that this means the kidnapping of somebody in place of arrest, insulting and torturing that person while in custody, then killing that person and disposing of the body in secret so as to avoid the possibility of any legal consequences, the reaction of the listener is often one of skepticism or an admission that it is simply not possible to understand this.
The difficulty is simply not about providing more and more evidence of actual instances as proof, because the listener's problem is not about proof but about the very possibility of such things taking place except in some rare instances. If the situation described itself is regarded as something that cannot be true, then no amount of proof is going to be of use to convince a person that this is an actual reality faced within particular contexts.
In such situations, conversations break down not so much by way of disagreements but simply by way of failures in comprehension. The failures in comprehension are a major obstacle in the modern world for resolving many of the problems that are faced in the developing countries. When solutions are proposed to problems which have not been thoroughly comprehended, then such solutions will end up in failure when there is an attempt to implement them. In the end, the mere fact that a large amount of resources may be allocated in order to attempt to implement such solutions, does not however, make much of a difference.
(The writer is the Asian Human Rights Commission’s Policy and Programmes Director)Kapruka
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Discover Kapruka, the leading online shopping platform in Sri Lanka, where you can conveniently send Gifts and Flowers to your loved ones for any event. Explore a wide range of popular Shopping Categories on Kapruka, including Toys, Groceries, Electronics, Birthday Cakes, Fruits, Chocolates, Automobile, Mother and Baby Products, Clothing, and Fashion. Additionally, Kapruka offers unique online services like Money Remittance, Astrology, Medicine Delivery, and access to over 700 Top Brands. Also If you’re interested in selling with Kapruka, Partner Central by Kapruka is the best solution to start with. Moreover, through Kapruka Global Shop, you can also enjoy the convenience of purchasing products from renowned platforms like Amazon and eBay and have them delivered to Sri Lanka.Send love straight to their heart this Valentine's with our thoughtful gifts!