a human rights/social justice approach to research … · approach to research-action projects for...

5A Human Rights/Social Justice

Approach to Research-ActionProjects for the Helping and

Health Professions

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those whohear it.

—William James

Research is doing what one already does, only more rigorously. Whenbeginning a college or graduate program, some might informally look

for the easy graders, because they have always felt that good grades are aticket to a good job. Taking a more rigorous, structured approach, they couldfind the easy markers by making an educated guess, or, in scientific parlance,a hypothesis, about what might provide the most information. They couldchoose a sample, like alumni(ae), develop questionnaires, and hand out sur-veys asking them to rate their instructors’ grading behaviors from a score of1, being easy, to 5, being hard. They could also do a correlation analysisbetween professors’ grading before and after tenure or between a professor’sfamily size and grading style. They might randomly or selectively choose

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206——Building From the Foundation

a few persons, perhaps their peers, if alumni(ae) were too difficult to obtain,to interview in depth about professors’ teaching and grading styles; for exam-ple, are they more likely to give good grades to students’ whose names theyknow or is class participation high on the list of professors’ grading criteria?

In general, numerical methods of finding data, primarily through measure-ment and operationalizing of variables, is often referred to as quantitativeresearch; eliciting findings through meaningful dialogue and rigorous conver-sation is often called qualitative research. It is not the purpose of this work toelucidate the differences and similarities of these two approaches. Nevertheless,in general, quantitative research is often concerned with method, manipulation,and control of variables, works with individual subjects, and generalizes data tothe broader population; qualitative research is phenomenon bound rather thanmethodologically centered, seeks understanding and meaning rather than loyalty to a system, works with coresearchers (Moustakas, 1990), and viewsfindings as suggestive, based on the situation studied.

The debate over the superiority of quantitative versus qualitative research,dating back to the Platonic tradition that mathematics is music of the godsversus the Aristotelian tradition of catharsis, has set up an unfortunate divi-sion between these two camps of thought on ways of knowing. Each has itsown merits, and the best alternative may be a yin/yang approach viewing theformer as masculine and the latter as feminine (Reinharz, 1993), and acknowl-edging the strengths and weaknesses of both.

Human Rights Documentsas a Means of Defining the Problem

A human rights/social justice approach to research is largely the same as thepreceding hypothetical example of the easy-grade-seeking student. RobertLifton (1967), in his classic work Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima, moreeloquently described, research as a kind of recreation, urging researchers totake professional risks to confront great historical and other events that do notlend themselves to established approaches or categories of thought.Acknowledging his “delicate-Kafkaesque” (p. 8) position, as an American psy-chiatrist talking with Japanese survivors about their feelings toward the atomicblast, he nevertheless, after extensive introductions and exhausting hourswalking on the hot Hiroshima streets, interviewed the Hibakusha, whichmeans literally, “explosion-affected person,” victims of the atomic blast. Hisextensive interviews revealed the Hibakusha’s tremendous sense of guilt, hav-ing survived when their families and friends had died needlessly.

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Lifton’s work is striking in his willingness to tackle difficult questions andrisk professional confrontation. He does not mention human rights documentsin Death in Life. That needn’t be a weakness, yet incorporating human rightswould have highlighted the urgency of the problem. The concept of nondis-crimination based on national or social origin in Article 2 of the UniversalDeclaration and right to life in Article 3 are fundamental human rights pre-cepts, both violated by the bombing of Hiroshima. Defining the research prob-lem is one of the most difficult tasks for a research project. Human rightsprinciples could provide tools for defining the problem and researching it withqualitative and/or quantitative approaches.

Closer to home, Americans seem to now be working longer hours thantheir parents, with barely enough time for family or the pursuit of leisureactivities necessary for the development of the human personality and theenhancement of human dignity. We have an intuitive sense that this is a prob-lem, but human rights documents can legitimize this feeling that humans needsocial interaction with their families and friends and time to rest from workand time for renewal by concretely defining the problem. A researcher couldrefer to Article 24 of the Universal Declaration: “Everyone has the right torest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and peri-odic holidays with pay.” Or one could refer to one or a few of the humanrights conventions that followed the Universal Declaration, like CESCR’sArticle 7, which speaks of “remuneration which provides all workers with. . . a decent living for themselves and their families . . . safe and healthyworking conditions . . . [and] rest, leisure and reasonable limitation of work-ing hours and periodic holiday with pay.” Researchers could engage in vastepidemiological studies, select people randomly and survey them to determinethe number of hours worked, comparing this with data of an earlier genera-tion. That would be a longitudinal survey. In the qualitative approach, theycan also ask people if and how they spend time with their families. They couldalso ascertain if quality time with one’s family had increased, although thequantity of time spent had decreased.

The only difference between the first example of the student and the secondon right to rest and leisure is that human rights documents in the latter servedas a way to define our problem. What we research is as important as how. Wemay have an intuitive sense of what must be done to get good grades, buthuman rights research, with human rights documents as guides, can be waysto easily, clearly, and most important, persuasively define the problem. Recallthat no government wants their citizens to believe they have abrogated humanrights! Article 24 of the Universal Declaration and Article 7 of CESCR areclear about the human right to rest and leisure and periodic holidays with pay.

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Researchers could show governments how they are doing in regard to thisbasic human right, share their knowledge with the intellectual community, anddevelop social action strategies to realize that fundamental freedom.

The Challenge of the Interdependency of Rights

As human rights are interdependent and indivisible, a major challenge inresearching a right is acknowledging its interdependence and integrating itwith other rights. Social research has found, for instance, that lack of stresscan be stressful (Selye, 1978). Watching TV for hours, strolling the malls forhours, or hanging out at a street corner or bar till the early morning hours maybe enjoyable for awhile, but forever? Essential to the human condition arehuman needs to produce, participate in community building, and be part ofa team, which can be done in a work setting.1 Then, of course, as workerswe need time to rest, and voilà . . . “the right to periodic holidays with pay.”

One may have sympathy with students entering a university program, butthe energies spent on finding ways to outsmart what is perceived as a politi-cal game may be futile. Why care only about grades in the first place? Areeasy graders the same as good teachers? Teachers prone to anger students byopposing killing strangers in faraway lands in wars they consider unjust or byquoting thinkers like Karl Marx, often vilified in academia and the media,might be good teachers but have mediocre student evaluations. Getting backto those hypothetical students, they might have found their college experiencewas rather superficial. Other students may have followed their bliss, studyingwith whomever they pleased, without a concern for grades. Those who fol-lowed their bliss may have received mediocre grades. But they knew that atti-tude, when the time came, was the prime predictor of landing a job and weremore successful anyway. Some who had to work at two jobs, raise a childalone, or care for an ailing relative during college may have become streetwiselater in life, making up for nonstellar academic performances by publishingin mainstream journals and engaging in good and solid networking.

Acknowledging the interdependency of rights in this hypothetical situa-tion, one might use the Universal Declaration as a guide, to explore a possi-ble relation between pressure for good grades and a “social and internationalorder . . . in which rights can be realized” (Article 28). The pressures onstudents to perform exceptionally well may force them to put their family lifeon the back burner and give up a part-time job; and professors, especiallyadjuncts, may have limited protections in their jobs to protect them againstsubtle pressures to be easy graders. Student debt may follow students through-out their lives, and the jobs they get may leave them barely able to find thetime and social supports to engage in social action. The social order is nei-ther easily recognizable nor easily measurable.



The Human Dimension Behind Knowledge

What, then, is a researcher concerned about human rights and social justice,who wishes to integrate notions of the interdependency of rights, supposed todo? A first suggestion is to acknowledge that behind any statistical analysis isalways a qualitative world of meaning, the instruments themselves often inter-fering with the very phenomenon they are used to investigate. This is knownas the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Heisenberg wanted to measure thespeed of electron in its natural state. But the only way to observe an electronwas through a light source, which immediately affected the electron’s speed.Electrons can’t speak, but humans can. That is why researchers must alwaysbe open to the voices of those whose reality they think they are defining in astatistical matrix. Even as researchers talk with people, however, their presencewill affect their findings in some way. Practice Illustration 5.1 addresses thisissue with my reflections on doing research in Cuba.

Practice Illustration 5.1Reflections on Research in Cuba

When researching social policy in nonmarket countries, and more particularly themental health/substance abuse system in Cuba in the late 1980s, I was allowed towalk anywhere I wanted and speak with whomever I pleased. I went there as partof a field trip sponsored by the School of Social Work at Boston College. I wasvery impressed to see pictures of the Havana Mental Hospital before the revolu-tion of 1959 when Fidel Castro came to power, which showed many patientsclothed in rags sleeping in tight quarters, on tattered mattresses with visiblesprings. After the revolution, the mental hospitals were set in clean landscapedlawns, with patients in well-lit, well-ventilated quarters with soft beds.Psychoanalysis— seen as an elitist treatment modality—was not practiced there,I was told; rather, work therapy was the primary treatment.

At that time, numerous articles were being published in the New York Timesabout the abuse of psychiatry in Soviet hospitals, where dissidents were oftendiagnosed as mentally ill and sometimes shuttled off to the Gulag, an area nearlythe size of France to which rapists, murderers, and the like were exiled. On shar-ing this information with health personnel in Cuba, I was told that this allegedabuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union was all lies. At that time Cuba and theSoviet Union were strong allies and reacted strongly to negative criticism of eachother. Mental health personnel told me that substance abuse was not a majorproblem in Cuba, certainly not like in Puerto Rico, a U.S. colony where alcoholismand heroin addiction were major concerns.“Alcohol is just not a profitable indus-try here. . . . Therefore, we have no alcoholism.”



People did tell me that excessive criticism of Castro was not allowed, but inthe same breath, they said:“But he gave us everything.Things were so bad beforethe revolution.Today, we have health care, no homelessness, and security in oldage.You think that because of your constitution, you have human rights, becauseyou have a right to criticize government officials. But we have no reason to criti-cize him.What did your government give you?” I thought of the estimated 3 millionhomeless in the United States; our elderly having to choose between medicationand food; and the roughly 47 million who had no health insurance.

To this day, I am not sure if the information given would have been different ifpersons interviewed didn’t know I was an American. Cuban people were excep-tionally simpatico (somehow the English “nice” doesn’t quite express their wonder-ful hospitality) to all of us Americans, perhaps indicative of the Cuban commitmentto internationalism, that is, a concern for all humanity whatever the person’s nationalorigin. During my 2 weeks there, I observed (and observation is a form of research)not one shopping mall, but only one homeless person. “He has a civil right to behomeless,” said a professor teaching French to Cuban doctors going to Angola.I also saw hospital, after hospital, after hospital, dotting the landscape much as mallsdo in the United States.Health personnel commented proudly that health care wasfree, actually paid for by taxes, and motivated by a concern for the common good.Every hotel even had its own doctor.

If one considers that the right to life is a fundamental human right (Article 3of the Universal Declaration), and that to realize this right, we mustn’t discrimi-nate on the basis of “political opinion” (Article 2 of the Universal Declaration),can the U.S. decision to turn down Cuba’s offer of approximately 600 doctors tohelp the victims of Katrina be justified? Despite political differences, human livesmust never be used as pawns, and Cuban medical personnel are exceptionally welltrained in hurricane humanitarian disaster relief. How many lives could they havesaved? Is not the right to life fundamental to all major religious teachings, ethicalcodes, and basic precepts of social justice?

Nearly 20 years later, having attended the first 2 days of the Human RightsCouncil meeting in Geneva in March 2007 as an official observer for theInternational Federation of Social Work, I found it noteworthy that the speech byCuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Felipe Perez Roque, lambasted the UnitedStates for its unwillingness to provide continuing support for its SpecialRapporteur on the Right to Food, in a world, he said, “where 852 million peopleare starving” (p. 3). He continued:

Faced with the reality of international torture centers as the one established in the U.S.Naval Base of Guantanamo and the operation of secret flights for the kidnapping andmovement of people through Europe in order to be tortured in underground jails, howcould we allow the mandate of the Rapporteur on Torture to be discontinued. . . . Howcould we turn our backs on the tens of thousands of families that are still demandingjustice and the right to the truth on their missing or executed relatives during the mil-itary dictatorships imposed and supported by Washington in Latin America. . . . As longas the Palestinian people is prevented from its right to establish its own State and the



Israeli occupiers continue to engage in the serious harassment of the civilian populationin the occupied territories, this Council will not be able to do without this relevantissue. . . . We will know how to represent a people that has been able to endure andovercome the aggression of the Empire for nearly five decades, which has resisted withdignity and steadfastness the tightening of the genocidal blockade. (Roque,2007,pp.4–5)

I noticed that he received a long and loud applause, totally different from reac-tions to other government speeches.While I continue to be critical of Castro’sendorsement of the death penalty and skeptical of the state of freedom of expres-sion in Cuba, my experiences there and later the positive response at the UN,only reinforced by Michael Moore’s observations in his film Sicko (2007), stronglysuggest that this small island overall has positively taken up the struggle for socialjustice, especially in regard to economic, social, cultural, and solidarity rights.Thechallenge is to humanize those we consider the “enemy” and humbly engage in arespectful, creative dialogue to learn from each other how to fulfill human rightsfor all, ultimately leading us back to the Golden Rule,“to do unto others.”

I also recall my then 9-year-old son, Chris, struggling feverishly to get hiswoolen ski hat off on returning from school on a cold New England day,looking up at me and saying: “Whew! It’s over. I feel great!” “What’s over?”I asked, looking down at this 40-pound, 4-foot some-odd-inches boy, cheekschafed red from his woolen hat and still catching his breath from running infrom the cold. With apparent utter exasperation, he said, “The MCAS.2 Wehad tests all week!” Two years later, my daughter Carolyn, assigned to makea card with reasons for liking her parents, listed one reason that “my dadsaid ‘don’t worry,’ you’ll do OK on the MCAS.” Both incidents illustrate atremendous preoccupation with that exam.

The MCAS, like other standardized tests, is based on research and designedto determine each child’s standing in comparison with other children of thesame age. Yet the question remains if such tests measure achievement, or merelya person’s class and level of opportunity. Furthermore, if a child is watching thesnow fall, as many children do when the tests are administered, wouldn’t thataffect the results? The point is that everything we do has a social and environ-mental context, which research ought to at least acknowledge. We also need toquestion whether the way that knowledge is taught and assessed encourages theright to education, which would include “the full development of the humanpersonality and . . . the strengthening of respect for human rights . . . [and doesit] promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial orreligious groups” (Article 26 of the Universal Declaration). Does education alsoencourage the “right to know one’s rights,” a fundamental tenet of the newDeclaration on the Right to Education?



The Researcher as Searcher of Truth

It is a truism that a researcher must be a person in search of truth. Ultimately,research must go back to square one, struggling with the most fundamentalissue of life: What is Truth? It must bring to light fundamental questions of exis-tence posed by the Oracles at Delphi: Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? And how am I going to get there? Those are the essential questions, butresearchers too easily resort to elitist language—f-tests, t-tests, laws of probabil-ity, log of the odds, chi-square, Spearman’s rho in quantitative methodology;heuristic methodology, grounded theory, meaning constituents, and dynamici-ties in qualitative approaches. Such technical terms infiltrate the research land-scape like an ominous cloud of locusts swarming over people who simply wantto understand the enigma of human existence, to live the best way possible, cul-tivating their garden to the best of their ability.

Research can be a terminological quagmire of misunderstanding thatprevents our free movement to explore the world unfettered with concep-tual baggage. But locusts, f-tests, and dynamicities can serve a purpose inhelping us understand the world, as long as we know the danger thatalways lurks in any crisis, if one acknowledges an ongoing tension betweensometimes lofty conceptual tools of a discipline and their ostensible goalsto improve the quality of life. There is also unlimited opportunity if oneuses research tools wisely. The Sanskrit term for crisis means both dangerand opportunity. It may come as no surprise, for instance, that in match-ing up statistics of infant mortality with incidences of violence, one findsthat high infant mortality rates, a proxy for lack of female and child par-ticipation in policy making, are correlated with racism, unemployment,poor environment, lack of access to health care—that is, human rights vio-lations in general are prime predictors of violence in a community. Usingquantitative and qualitative means, avoiding the dangers of easy retreat toelitist language and an expert-oriented mentality, researchers can obtaininformation to use wisely in working to undo sexism, ageism, racism, andan unjust social and international order inimical to the fulfillment ofhuman need.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Project

These introductory comments stress that research is merely a more rigorousway of understanding the world through quantitative and qualitativeapproaches that need to take into account social-environmental contexts anduse human rights documents as a frame of reference. This section presents theStatement of Purpose of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Project,



which originated in the Center for Social Change at Brandeis University’s HellerSchool. Here it is (Practice Illustration 5.2) with slight modifications, but writ-ten initially with Dr. David Gil, who serves as primary consultant to the pro-ject. Although this project considers other human rights documents, theUniversal Declaration is the authoritative definition of human rights standards,from which all other human rights documents flow. A major aim of humanrights work is to expand awareness of at least the Universal Declaration toinspire informed debates on ways to fulfill human need.

Practice Illustration 5.2The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Project

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights Project

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this action-research project is to assess progress toward com-pliance with human rights standards as defined by the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights and its progeny, the human rights declarations and conventionswhich follow it.The Universal Declaration, adopted without dissent by the UnitedNations General Assembly on December 10, 1948, is gradually being perceived ascustomary international law, which all peoples of the world must abide. Internationalconventions which have the status of treaty must also be considered “law of theland . . . and the judges bound thereby,” as asserted in the Supremacy Clause,Article VI of the U.S. Constitution.

Project Aims:

A. Expanding awareness of the Universal Declaration and human rights docu-ments which followed it, as a frame of reference for assessing progress toward therealization of internationally acknowledged human rights;

B. Studying public discourse and actions of legislative, judicial, and executivebranches of governments,concerning compliance with standards set by the UniversalDeclaration and its progeny, in order to trace transformations of human needs intolegally acknowledged and enforceable rights;

C. Expanding peoples’ awareness of, and concern with, apparent significant vio-lations of human rights standards as defined by the Universal Declaration and itsprogeny and suggesting potential avenues to overcome them.

While supporting the goals of all human rights organizations, this project, acknowl-edging the interdependency and indivisibility of rights and that rights entail correspondingduties, concerns itself with the vision as enunciated in the Universal Declaration andsubsequent human rights documents. It will concentrate especially on economic,



social, and solidarity rights contained in the Universal Declaration, because thoserights are often neglected, even when civil and political rights are assured.

This project recognizes the global scope of the issues it addresses, but willfocus initially upon advances toward the realization of human rights in the UnitedStates. Attempts will be made to stimulate similar projects in other countries, andto cooperate with such projects as they evolve.

Human rights/social justice research and social action and service initiativesemanating from it are inseparable and should inform the other levels of interven-tion. Research might examine the extent to which educational curricula, federaland state constitutions, administrative fiat, and clinical practice integrate humanrights principles, and suggest ways to incorporate them in a lived way. It is impor-tant to alert the world in oral, written, or other creative format to these findings.Before giving specific examples of quantitative and qualitative approaches, weneed to examine the importance of informed consent in doing research.

Toward a Culture of Informed Consent

The use of informed consent in contemporary research protocols emanatedfrom atrocities committed by Nazi medical personnel, who were prosecuted atthe Nuremberg Trials and sentenced on August 20, 1947. The court consid-ered experiments that included, but were not limited to, freezing, infectionwith malaria, exposure to mustard gas and sea water, sterilization, and poison-ing. Health personnel would, for example, force subjects to remain in a tankof ice water for periods up to 3 hours; inject malaria into healthy concentra-tion camp inmates to test various drugs’ efficacy; deprive subjects of food, thengive them only chemically processed sea water; experiment on inmates with x-rays,surgery, and various drugs to develop a suitable method for mass sterilizationswith a minimum of time and effort; and secretly administer poison to exper-imental subjects in their food (Sebring, Beals, & Crawford, 1999) Social work-ers also complied with such fascist exclusionary policies of that period, the“profession’s unwitting service as pawns of the Nazi state” (Lorenz, 1994, ascited in Van Wormer, 1997, p. 176). Such studies resulted in unspeakablephysical and mental anguish and pain. Fifteen of the 23 defendants were foundguilty; 7 sentenced to death by hanging, and the rest to serve varying times inprison up to life imprisonment. The only female defendant, Herta Oberheuser,was given 20 years (Sebring et al., 1999).

Most astonishing was that such experiments were not isolated, casual actsof health personnel working solely on their own responsibility. They were the



products of coordinated governmental policy making! The trial resulted inbasic principles that satisfied the highest standards of public morality, ethics,and legal codes. Principle I of the Nuremberg Judgment is quoted fully here,because its legacy is perhaps the most readily apparent in ethical codes on theresearch of human subjects. The notion of “subject” may also pose some dif-ficulty as it implies being subjected to the researcher’s manipulation and con-trol. The very act of getting information from someone may itself be inimicalto human dignity. Certainly it may be seen as robbing if it is done without theperson’s or coresearcher’s informed consent. Principle I states:

The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This meansthat the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should beso situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the interven-tion of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulte-rior form of constraint or coercion; and should have sufficient knowledge andcomprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable himto make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter elementrequires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experi-mental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, andpurpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be con-ducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and theeffect upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participa-tion in the experiment. The duty and responsibility for ascertaining the qualityof the consent rests upon each individual who initiates, directs, or engages inthe experiment. It is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be del-egated to another with impunity. (Sebring et al.,1999, p. 298)

Other Nuremberg principles state that a study should yield fruitful results,unprocurable by any other methods; it should be designed to avoid all unnec-essary physical and mental suffering; the degree of risk should never exceedthat determined by the humanitarian importance of the problem; the highestdegree of skill by qualified personnel should be required through all stagesof the experiment; the human subject should be at liberty to bring the studyto an end; and the person in charge must be prepared to terminate the studyif there is positive cause to believe that continuation will likely result ininjury, disability, or death (Sebring et al., 1999).

Fast-forward to the Tuskegee studies in which 400 African American meninfected with syphilis were monitored for 40 years (1932–1972) despite avail-ability of a proven cure by the 1950s. Helping and health professionals may beaghast at this blatant violation of the right to life, believing we have movedbeyond such experimentation, but medication studies continue to be practicedon subjects in Third World countries. For example, Johns Hopkins (1999) con-ducted studies in Africa in which pregnant women with HIV were randomly



assigned to groups, one of which was given a placebo. The women assigned tothis group had double the rate of transmission of the virus from mother tochild! Cornell (1999) also conducted a study in Haiti that offered HIV tests andtreatment to subjects, but denied the best treatment to study the progression ofthe disease (Wronka, 2001b). With continued debates over whether widelyused antidepressants cause suicide, the inclusion of Pfizer in the Dow JonesIndustrial Average, and recent lowering of the informed consent standard forprison inmates, it is questionable whether a culture that often places profitabove human need, rights, and dignity has truly moved beyond Tuskegee.

Generic Points in theConstruction of an Ethics Consent Form

In spite of the legacy of Nuremberg and revolt over Tuskegee, continuedquestionable ethical practices among the helping and health professions and aprofit-oriented society may necessitate emphasis on informed consent andadherence to the humanistic thrust of human rights documents. The followinggeneric points should be considered in constructing an Ethics Consent Form.

First, it might be more appropriate to refer to coresearchers rather thanhuman subjects (subjected perhaps?). The concept of coresearcher is moreamenable to the notion of human interconnectedness. Or, if the term “humansubjects” is used, it should be with a sense of the need to arrive at mutualunderstandings with the person studied in ways consistent with human dig-nity and rights. Second, the purpose of the research protocol should be fullyexplained in words that coresearchers can understand. Third, they must alsoknow the length, time, and duration of the project, or perhaps more accu-rately stated, coproject. Fourth, there must be full information of possiblerisks, as well as benefits. Certainly researchers must be attentive to these risksthroughout the project, terminating it if coresearchers appear to be experienc-ing excessive emotional strain. Coresearchers must know, therefore, thatthere are safeguards, such as counseling, if they need it. Every effort must bemade to minimize risks. Fifth, coresearchers must be aware of possible remu-neration for their time, at minimum, a token compensation illustrative of thevalue of their time and viewpoints. Sixth, given that all research has hiddenagendas, whether for the researcher to obtain a master’s, PhD, promotion, ortenure or to fulfill requirements for a grant, coresearchers must be aware ofthese possible hidden agendas, including an understanding of the researcher’scredentials.3 Seventh, coresearchers need to know who will have access to thedata and how these data will be used. Finally, they need to have relevant contact information for the researcher and an institutional review board(IRB) that might oversee the project. It goes without saying that researchersshould be truly concerned about the human dignity of coresearchers; that the



research be conducted in safe and secure premises; and that coresearchershave the option to stop the project at any time, no questions asked.

An IRB must also be competent to monitor the study. Members must nothave conflicts of interest. Testing the effectiveness of a medication is ver-boten if the IRB has ties to pharmaceutical companies who market the drug.Researchers also must not go IRB shopping and have the responsibility toask if the board members have any conflicts of interests. In cases of perceivedpossible conflict, they have a duty to rectify the situation in the spirit ofunderstanding, tolerance, and friendship as asserted in Article 26 of theUniversal Declaration. As helping and health professionals, researchers mustalways be on guard not to get lost in the banality of evil, a dulling of themind and senses to the violence inflicted on the human person in the nameof the search for knowledge and truth.

Quantitative Research

The etymology of the word quantitative is from quantus, meaning “of whatsize, how great.” Quantitative research primarily deals with measurement, con-cepts of what and how to measure constantly haunting the polis, communitymembers struggling to create a better life (Stone, 2001). But finding a number,like the score on an achievement or IQ test, a personality profile, or a person’stemperature or blood pressure, does not necessarily constitute understandingthe person. On the macro scale, knowing a country’s per capita income andGross National Product may be one way to measure its wealth, but this infor-mation will not necessarily help in assessing human happiness there. Similarly,knowing the number of state constitutions that incorporate particular rightslike health care or security in old age may be of severely limited value if theserights are not implemented. Qualitative data that help us understand people,assess human happiness, and evaluate the implementation of rights in the com-munity are important. Yet quantitative indices, though limited, can also givemuch-needed information. Numerical indices, statistics, can provide easily mea-surable and recognizable standards (the word statistics is from the Latin stare,meaning “to stand”) with which one can assess progress in mathematical terms.

The objectives of the American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) are to further scientific understanding, facilitate cooperation among sci-entists, foster scientific and academic freedom and responsibility, improve theeffectiveness of science in promoting the general welfare, advance education inscience, and “increase public understanding and appreciation of the importanceand promise of the methods of science in human progress” (Spirer & Spirer,1993, p. xiv). In its publication Data Analysis for Monitoring Human Rights(Spirer & Spirer), AAAS expresses the importance of mathematics and statistics



for the social activist. Statistics is needed in human rights work to “get the mes-sage across to the public, governments, world bodies, non-governmental orga-nizations and the media; make successful presentations in legal cases; assess themagnitude and scope of human rights violations; find patterns of human rightsviolations that can target perpetrators, regions, victim groups etc., give a basisfor decisions and recommendations” (p. 1). Statistics create good visibility,helping others to see the situation as a human rights defender does; providegood credibility, if they are accurate; and lead to understanding, which is largelythe capacity to develop general statements from the data.

One often hears that statistics lie. True, total objectivity is a myth. Numberscan easily be manipulated and the human rights defender/social activist must bewilling to be a scholar, going beyond mere numbers. Examining government statistics on unemployment, as a case in point, a person is counted as employed ifhe or she works 1 hour per week in a formalized work setting (Wronka, 1998a).One can easily see that such a method of counting could inflate the actual employ-ment numbers, making an incumbent politician look good. However, usinghuman rights principles as a guide, and taking into consideration the interdepen-dency of rights, a person is actually employed if the work situation has favorableconditions; fair remuneration; the right to join trade unions; adequate time off;benefits, such as medical care and protection in the event of unemployment; andpensions to guarantee security in old age. The challenge is to create ways ofincluding such human rights variables in research that would truly inform the pol-icy debates in ways that enhance human dignity and social justice.

Numbers can give a dimension of reasonableness that ought not be dismissedlightly. But the figures should be based on fundamental freedoms and humanrights. For example, I did a content analysis of the U.S. Constitution, as a study ofa legislative movement, as stated in the preceding Statement of Purpose, towardcompliance with the document increasingly considered customary internationallaw, the Universal Declaration. Comparing the federal Constitution with theUniversal Declaration, though not corresponding precisely, various phrases nev-ertheless agreed in substance and sense; however, this textual comparison foundthe following phrases and substantive portions of crucial notions in the UniversalDeclaration absent in the U.S. Constitution: human dignity, rights to an effectiveremedy, the importance of the family as the fundamental unit of society, specialprotections for motherhood and children, and almost every economic, social, andcultural right, such as rights to work, favorable conditions of work, and favorableremuneration for work, right to join trade unions, rights to rest and leisure, andrights to food, clothing, housing, medical care, security in old age, education, andparticipation in the cultural life of the community. The only positive freedom inthe Constitution was protection of an author’s interests. There was also no men-tion of solidarity rights. The “equal protection clause,” furthermore (AmendmentXIV of the U.S. Constitution), is really a rather “weak” way of asserting the



need for nondiscrimination related to gender, race, class, and national origin asenunciated in the Universal Declaration. The Constitution, however, was excep-tionally strong in the areas of civil and political rights and freedoms of speech, thepress, religion, and peaceful assembly (see Wronka, 1998b).

Heeding former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’s assertion that statesshould act as “laboratories of democracy” to extend rights not found in the U.S.Constitution, I continued the comparison with all 50 state constitutions.

Though the federal Constitution contained no explicit statements concerningnondiscrimination based on such characteristics as race or gender, states weremore definitive about such categories. The grid in Table 5.1 depicts those statesthat incorporate categories of discrimination consistent with the spirit of theUniversal Declaration. It is important to recall that the Universal Declarationasserts an important, but only select group of characteristics. More work is nec-essary to cover other areas of discrimination, such as sexual orientation, medicalcondition, family makeup, or marital status. The table displays phrases in stateconstitutions that correspond with rights in the Universal Declaration.

Table 5.2 shows which states are in compliance with select economic,social, and cultural rights of the Universal Declaration.


Figure 5.1 Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. Brandeis felt thatgovernment was our omnipresent teacher and wanted states to actas laboratories for democracy to extend rights not found in theU.S. Constitution.


220

Tab

le 5

.1A

Hum

an R

ight

s G

rid

Dep

icti

ng S

tate

s’ C

ompl

ianc

e W

ith

Non

disc

rim

inat

ion

as D

efin

ed b

y th

e U

nive

rsal

Dec

lara

tion

of

Hum

an R

ight

s

Pol

itic

al

Nat

iona

l P

hysi

cal

Soci

al

Stat

eR

ace

Col

orSe

xR

elig

ion

Opi

nion

Ori

gin

Pro

pert

yB

irth

Han

dica

pA

liens

Dis

abili

tyO

rigi

n

AL

AK

XX

XX

XA

ZA

RC

AC

OC

TX

XX

XX

XD

EFL

XX

XG

AH

IX

XX

XID IL

XIN IA K

SK

YL

AX

XX

XX

XX

ME

MD

MA

XX

XX

XX

MI

XX

XX

XM

NM

S

(Con

tinu

ed)


221

Tab

le 5

.1(C

onti

nued

)

Pol

itic

al

Nat

iona

l P

hysi

cal

Soci

al

Stat

eR

ace

Col

orSe

xR

elig

ion

Opi

nion

Ori

gin

Pro

pert

yB

irth

Han

dica

pA

liens

Dis

abili

tyO

rigi

n

MO

MT

XX

XX

XX

NE

NV

NH

NJ

NM

NY

XX

XN

CX

XX

XN

DO

HO

KO

RPA R

IX

XX

SC SD TN

TX

XX

XX

XU

TV

TV

AX

XX

XX

WA

WV

WI

WY

XX

X



Table 5.2 A Human Rights Grid of States’ Compliance With Select Economic,Social, and Cultural Rights of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Right Limitation Right Favorable Favorable to of Importance

to Conditions Remuneration Join Working of the State Work of Work for Work Unions Rest Hours Family Food Clothing Housing

ALAK XAZ XARCACO XCTDEFL X XGA XHI XID XILINIAKSKYLAMEMDMAMIMNMSMO X XMT XNENVNHNJ XNMNY X XNC XNDOHOK XOR XPARISCSDTNTXUT XVTVAWAWVWIWY X



Right to a

Respect Just for Right Right to Social

Security Special Special Human to Share in and Need Medical in Old Care for Care for Rights in Cultural Scientific Int’l for

Care Age Motherhood Children Education Education Participation Advancement Order Duties

X XXX

XXXXXX X XX

X X X

XXX

X X XXX X

XXXXXX X XXX

XXXXXXXXXXX XXX

XXX XX X XXXXX



Table 5.3 Correspondence of the Massachusetts Constitution With Select HumanRights Principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Human Right Massachusetts

Race X

Color X

Sex X

Religion X

Political opinion

Disability X

Physical handicap X

Right to work

Favorable conditions of work

Favorable remuneration for work

Right to join unions

Rest

Limitation of working hours

Importance of the family

Food

Clothing

Housing

Medical care

Security in old age

Special care for motherhood

Special care for children

Education

Respect for human rights in education

Right to cultural participation

Right to share in scientific advancement

Right to a just social and international order

Need for duties X

Researchers can also review the constitution of one state, as I’ve donewith my present home state of Massachusetts (Table 5.3), and show in tab-ular format how it is doing in regard to the rights defined by the UniversalDeclaration.

Pictorial images can also be powerful tools to get one’s point acrossand move others to social action. During the 1980s, at the height of the



Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, an AtomicClock was displayed with a minute hand that would move either closeror farther away from midnight, the initiation of nuclear war, dependingon the mood of the time, that is, the tensions between the two superpow-ers. Whether it was successful in halting a hot war is questionable, butthe image was compelling. A Human Rights/Social Justice Scale depict-ing the imbalances between rights in the Universal Declaration and thosein the U.S. Constitution, such as that in Figure 5.2, could also be a pow-erful image.

U.S. Constitution

Right to Rest and Leisure (24)

Right to Meaningful andGainful Employment (23)

Right to EffectiveRemedy (8)

Right to FamilyProtection (16)

Right to Health Care, Security in OldAge, and Special Protections forMotherhood and Children (25)

Right to Education (26)

Right to Participate inCommunity and Share inScientific Advancement (27)

Right to a Just Social andInternational Order (28)

Right to Duties to theCommunity (29)

Right to Peace (30)

AHuman Rights/Social Justice

Scale

Human Dignity (1)

UniversalDeclaration ofHuman Rights

Thes

e rights need to go here

Figure 5.2 The Scales of Justice Depicting a Relationship Between theUniversal Declaration and the U.S. Constitution. The challenge isto create a human rights culture that would inevitably result in theincorporation of human rights principles into the federalConstitution.



Table 5.4 U.S. Implementation of Select Human Rights Principles as Substantiveto the Universal Declaration of Human Rights*

Percentage Whose Human Right Right Is Violated In U.S. Constitution?

Health care 15.9 NoEmployment 5.1 NoLiving wage 12.7 NoWell-being of children 17.6 NoFood 11.9 No

*Rights are interdependent, requiring governmental obligations to fulfill them.

Those tables and the figure are merely textual comparisons. They are impor-tant, certainly, a means of providing valuable information people need todecide for themselves whether their country and state are really committed tohuman rights. People coming to their own conclusions are perhaps the quin-tessential policy instrument (Stone, 2001). The possibilities for grids is almostendless. One could, for instance, depict similar comparisons with other inter-national documents, such as the Protection of Persons With Mental Illness andPrinciples of Medical Ethics with governmental and domestic policy state-ments and documents. One might also compare ethical and other codes of thehelping and health professions, defined as public discourse in the Statement ofPurpose of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Project. Public dis-course is often a precursor to changes in government policy. Some documentsmay even go beyond human rights documents, which can stimulate open dia-logue, expanding on definitions of social justice.

What is put on paper is not always implemented; on the other hand, onecan behave decently toward others without written statements. Thus,another approach might be to merely list rights, such as health care, employ-ment, and human dignity, and then show how the population is faring inthat regard. For example, 46,577,000, or 15.9% of the U.S. population hadno health insurance in 2005; 7,591,000 people in the United States wereunemployed in 2005, equaling 5.1% of the population; 36,997,000 peoplein the United States, meaning 12.7% of our population, were living belowthe poverty level in 2005; 12,896,000 children lived in poverty, that is,17.6%; and 13,494,000 people, 11.9%, experienced food insecurity4 (U.S.Census Bureau, 2007). Table 5.4 depicts one way of relating this informa-tion, with the proviso of the interdependency of rights.

Hopefully, such tables can be used to expand the debate and assist in community organizing. Questions posed might be: Why doesn’t the Universal

05-Wronka-45430.qxd 11/16/2007 4:28 PM 6

Declaration mention discrimination based on sexual orientation and/or med-ical condition? What does it mean that the United States was a leader in itsdrafting, but is so negligent in providing some rights to its own citizens? Howdoes the U.S. government count someone as employed? Given the interdepen-dency of rights, is such a counting method consistent with human rights prin-ciples of just and favorable remuneration for work? How would one alsodepict other social malaises in the United States such as an additional 1% ofunemployment translating into 3,300 commitments to state prisons and37,000 early deaths (20,000 of those from heart attacks); one in threechildren having never seen a dentist; a ranking of 70th worldwide inpreschool immunization rates (Anelauskas, 1999); or that one in fourAmericans has no paid vacation leave? (“Numbers,” 2007). It is also usefulto compare governmental with nongovernmental data. The Children’sDefense Fund (2007), for example, reports that 18.1% of children experiencefood insecurity. Nothing substitutes for an open, respectful, honed discussionof the issues in a spirit of creative dialogue, and with the intent to guaranteehuman rights for all.

The preceding information only recounts federal and state constitu-tional legislation moving toward compliance with human rights stan-dards. Federal and state judicial pronouncements are also concerned withsuch rights as health care, education, and security in old age. What didpresidents, governors, mayors, federal and state judges, and legal casessay regarding human rights that might move us a little closer to a humanrights culture? One example is President Clinton’s Executive Order 13107of December 10, 1998, which declared as law “all treaties ratified bythe United States,” which at that time included ICCPR, CERD, and CAT, further buttressing Article VI, the Supremacy Clause of the U.S.Constitution.

Referring to the Human Rights grids, a major challenge is to fill in theblanks, that is, to have the rights in human rights instruments taken seriouslyand implemented. It is always amazing that governments based on the willof the people are so often reluctant to provide for such rights. One would behard pressed to find anyone—radical, liberal, or conservative—who is not inagreement with the principles of the Universal Declaration. Certainly peoplecan have the right to health care, security in old age, special protections formotherhood and children, and the like without going through the rigmaroleof human rights. If social justice can occur without human rights, so be it.Such a strategy ought to be encouraged. But, as I’ve argued throughout, theidea of human rights can move people. The next section looks at how we canuse qualitative research to elicit the meaning of human experience to createsocial justice.



Qualitative Research

The etymological root of qualitative is qualis, meaning “of what sort, what kindof.” It is one thing to know “the size” or “how great” something is, another toknow “what kind” it is. For instance, the United States has the greatest GrossNational Product in the world. But we need to know “what sort” of meaningthis money has. Qualitative information is the meaning that one attaches tothings, whether money, events, or situations. Phenomenologically speaking,humans are intentionalities, that is, they are always conscious of something(Moustakas, 1994; Sartre, 1957).

Things like money, or any object or situation, cannot be divorced fromthe meaning we attach to them. Without such meaning, a “thing” is like atree falling with no one to hear it. In that sense, a tree does not make asound, unless there is someone to hear it fall. Similarly, money may be mean-ingless to an Inuit, who lives a subsistence lifestyle; a subsistence lifestylemay be meaningless to a person of European ancestry who values money.Whereas money is generally viewed as a guarantee of happiness, State of theWorld reports that despite its riches, the United States has a general lack ofconnectedness among its people, showing less and less engagement in civicaffairs and trust in government, declining membership in formal organiza-tions, and even fewer informal interactions among friends and relatives suchas playing cards, going on picnics, hanging out on stoops in urban areas onsummer evenings, and the like. In the industrialized world, the United Stateshas the highest levels of alienation (Gardner, Assadourian, & Sarin, 2004).Quantitatively, one therefore can assess income, but such an assessment is amere statement of fact, if it is not viewed in a meaningful context.

The ultimate purpose of qualitative research is to elicit meaning, henceattunement to the voices of coresearchers within a culture of informed con-sent; any form of recreation that takes other viewpoints seriously couldenhance human rights principles. Eliciting different voices is important, butany research that does not explicitly deal with numerical analysis can becalled qualitative, though there is also some blurring. Results of question-naires, for example, which are records of people’s viewpoints, can easily bequantified. The more in-depth discussion of the issues in qualitative research,however, might ascertain meanings that instruments such as questionnairesalone cannot capture. Wisdom cannot be quantified, but it may be under-stood to some extent through questionnaires.

Qualitative research can take many forms, each with its own strengths andweaknesses, including: observation, participant observation, individual inter-viewing, focused group interviewing, document review, narrative, life andoral histories, historical analysis, film, questionnaires, psychological assess-ment, and unobtrusive measures. Observation has the strength of capturing



the subject in a natural setting, and can be useful in obtaining data on non-verbal behavior and communication, providing contextual information, andfacilitating nuances of meaning in culture; weaknesses might be that it isfraught with ethical dilemmas such as privacy, subject to the presence of theobserver, and highly dependent on the researcher’s resourcefulness, system-atic approach, and honesty (Marshall & Rossman, 1999)

Whatever the specific strengths and weaknesses of the method used, datafrom qualitative research is suggestive, rather than definitive as the datafrom quantitative research, which can be generalized from a small randomsample. Some argue that qualitative research has a more feminine orienta-tion (Rheinharz, 1992), emphasizing cooperation over the more machoapproach of quantitative methodology (e.g., rejecting the null hypothesis,manipulating and controlling variables, and generalizing to the entire humanrace from a small sample).

In essence, any eliciting of voices—bearing witness, in human rights/socialjustice circles—can be seen as qualitative. The rest of this section presents afew examples of the numerous ways of doing this. In the previous illustra-tion of my research experience in Cuba, after 2 weeks’ immersion in thecountry with freedom to speak with anyone and travel anywhere, I foundthat health care was readily available to everyone and homelessness wasnearly nonexistent. It is difficult to imagine that by taking the same approachin the United States, with a per capita income more than five times that ofCuba, one would find adequate shelter and health care were available to all,principles of the Universal Declaration.

Toward Implementing Rights of Indigenous Peoples

Qualitative studies can be more formal. One example is a Michigan study onAmerican Indian grandparents who are parenting their grandchildren (Gross,2005). The study consisted of 31 individual interviews and 27 focus groups (anaverage of 9 per group). Although grandparents raising children is part of agrowing phenomenon in the United States, as Gross points out, in NativeAmerican culture grandparents raising grandchildren is a long-held tradition.Elders are highly respected in the culture, and often viewed as historians, trans-mitters of culture and language. There is also a strong legacy of fear from cen-turies of Indian children being removed without informed consent to fosterplacements, often in white residences, where their identities were threatened.

Researchers first developed a comfort level between themselves and partic-ipants, who often invited them to attend fish fries, pow-wows, and art exhibitsand repeatedly asked if they could come back. The following were the majorfindings of the study: (a) fewer than one third of participants found the IndianChild Welfare Act helpful; (b) parental issues, such as lack of day care, death,



substance abuse, and teen pregnancy, necessitated the grandparents’ involve-ment, which was further buttressed by cultural traditions; (c) parents still keptin contact with their children, though not on a day-to-day basis; (d) mistreat-ment at boarding schools was often discussed at length; and (e) some felt thatgrandparent support groups would be beneficial (Gross, 2005).

Many of these issues can easily be discussed within the context of humanrights principles. First, there is a need for a just social and international orderto realize human rights, as stated in the Universal Declaration (Article 28), likerights to work and education. If Native American communities have highunemployment rates, has government failed in establishing a just order? Howis the educational system? Are there jobs for graduates? Second, documentsfollowing the Universal Declaration, like CEDAW, assert support groups,especially for rural women, as a human right, as well as quality day care. TheICCPR and CESCR address the right to self-determination in Article 1 in bothconventions. Is the Indian community freely determining its political status andpursuing its economic, social, and cultural development? Based on the inter-views, was genocide taking place, as defined in Article II of the Genocide Convention as “forcibly transferring children of one group to another group”?One could also look at the Draft Declaration on the Rights of IndigenousPeoples. Its principles, such as the “right to be educated . . . in a matter appro-priate to cultural methods of teaching and learning” (Article 15), and govern-ment’s responsibility for “special measures for immediate, effective andcontinuing improvement in economic conditions . . . in housing, sanitation,health, social security, and rights of indigenous elders, women, youth, childrenand disabled persons” (Article 22), support a persuasive argument that those inpower have a duty to make available the necessary opportunities to realize thebasic human rights of Indigenous Peoples, in this instance, Native Americans.

Student Projects IntegratingHuman Rights Into Qualitative Studies

Practice Illustration 5.3 shows how students have integrated human rightsprinciples into their qualitative research projects.5

Practice Illustration 5.3Examples Integrating Human Rights in Student Qualitative Projects

Interviewing four social workers and one psychiatrist, Diaz (2005), in his qualita-tive study of Views on Managed Care and Mental Health Productivity Standards,found “disempowerment encountered by practitioners” (p. 2) and that “billable



productivity was not considered a factor that contributed to job satisfaction.”Instead, aspects such as “the ability to establish an alliance, to increase copingskills, and to have the autonomy to make treatment recommendations weredeemed more meaningful than billable units” (p. 12). He continues:“Human rightsare relevant in social work practice. Senseless productivity standards that sacrificethe quality of care and silence the voices of practitioners do not assist in thedevelopment of a professional identity and self-esteem as social workers. . . .Article 22 of the UDHR affirms: Everyone, as a member of society, has the rightto a social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and inter-national cooperation and in accordance with the organization and resources ofeach State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignityand the free development of his personality” (p. 14). He concludes that “healerstend to measure their productivity by how many hearts they touch.”

McQuillar (2005), in a qualitative study of the effects of schizophrenia on familyrelationships from the perspective of the person diagnosed with schizophrenia,cites that most of the literature on this topic was from the perspective of familymembers. Citing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “all humanbeings are born and equal in dignity and rights.They are endowed with reason andconscience and should act toward one another in a spirit of brotherhood,” sheurges the need for more research in this area, concluding that, “because . . . indi-viduals have developed a mental illness does not mean we take their dignity awayby disregarding . . . their experience” (p. 13). Her coresearchers felt their familiesunderstood them better after they were given a diagnosis, but felt they and theirfamilies could still benefit from more education about their illness.

Foresta (2005) in examining the experience of child welfare workers, cited theUniversal Declaration’s Article 23, “the right to just and favorable conditions ofwork . . . [and] favorable remuneration”; Article 25, “Motherhood and childhoodare entitled to special care and assistance”; and Article 28, “the right to a justsocial and international order,” commenting that his coresearchers were all highlycommitted to helping children, but often felt overwhelmed by heavy caseloads andgenerally low pay.As Foresta states: “It is nothing short of miraculous that thesecoresearchers are able to assist children and families while operating in a contextthat consistently violates their human rights” (p. 18). Expressing the need for ahuman rights culture, which includes adequate health care, meaningful employ-ment, and a standard of living worthy of “human dignity,” all substantive to theUniversal Declaration, he urges human rights advocacy for child welfare workersthat would empower families, rather than the current system, which has “a seriesof punitive measures for ‘faulty’ parents” (p. 20).

Research Leading to Social Action

Human rights/social justice research that does not lead to action is meaning-less. From the Latin acts, meaning “driving or moving,” research that searches



for truth must drive or move people to act. But acting doesn’t necessarilyhave to be on a purely physical plane. Thinking is also acting, if changingone’s thinking will eventually result especially in socially just actions. RecallRev. Martin Niemoeller’s (1892–1984) famous words inscribed on the NewEngland Holocaust Memorial in Boston:

They first came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t aCommunist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’ta trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was aProtestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time no one was left to speak up.

If people think it is all right to stay within their comfort zones, not tospeak up, the action will most likely result in indifference. Similarly, if a per-son thinks that the United States is in the forefront in adherence to humanrights principles, he or she may do nothing. But just knowing that researchshows a lack of adherence can move someone to write on behalf of or speakup for those whose human rights are violated. The line between research andaction is thin. This section discusses ways to get across information abouthuman rights violations. There is no reason why evil must triumph becausethe good are silent.

Yet, when it comes to speaking, some cultures may find it egotistical, flam-boyant, and genuinely downright rude to stand in front of an audience andlecture for an hour or two, a practice not that uncommon in academia. Suchindividuals may care about human rights and dignity, but unfortunately, theaudience may not get that impression from the way they express themselves.There are also certain groups who may not have had adequate educationaland other opportunities to learn to write well. Although it is important toacknowledge issues pertaining to diversity and opportunity, it is also neces-sary to acknowledge that the world may not be so sympathetic. It may notbe a good idea to wait for the world to become compassionate about one’scultural background where opportunities to hone one’s writing and speak-ing skills were severely limited. To do so would be like the vagabondsEstragon and Didi, in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, holding out for



something to “give us the impression that we exist.” The time to act is nowto improve on writing and speaking skills, and be aware that the world inwhich we live may not be very accommodating. Whatever our reticence,there is an ethical obligation to share our understandings of the worldthrough our experiences and research as a step to engage each other in dia-logue. Individuals must come to these decisions in their meditative lives.

On Writing

When a person writes something, it is for the world to see. With theInternet, that it is literally true. The adage what comes around goes aroundis very pertinent when it comes to writing. If the writer cares enough to com-pose grammatically correct and flowing paragraphs, the reader will careenough to read them. Respecting the reader with diligent work will result inrespect for the writer. Respect for the dignity of other persons is fundamen-tal to human rights and social justice.

Practice Illustration 5.4 is from my home page. Although admitting muchtrepidation in writing something for the whole world to see, my overridingmotivation was the need to get the word out about the importance of creat-ing a human rights culture.

Practice Illustration 5.4A Writing Example for a Home Page on the Internet

A human rights culture is a “lived awareness” of human rights principles amongpeople throughout the world. By “lived awareness” I mean that the principles ofsuch documents as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are not knownmerely cognitively, that is, in the “head,” but also on the feeling level, the “lived”level of the heart. It is not good enough for society to only “know,” for example,that health care, shelter, and security in old age are human rights; it is importantfor a society to act on this knowledge in ways that can guarantee these rights forevery person, everywhere. Issues, of course, are complicated. Every right doeshave a corresponding duty, according to the Universal Declaration, such that it caneasily be said that what we are talking about is a culture of human duties.Thus,the right to health care requires the duty for each of us to keep healthy, eat cor-rect foods or exercise, for instance.Yet we must remember that it is the duty ofgovernment to create a “social and international order,” as stated also in theUniversal Declaration, so that food is nutritious, accessible, culturally relevant atan affordable cost, and our towns and cities have ample opportunities for us todevelop not only in body, but in mind and spirit as well.



Finally, as we shall see, such a culture will necessitate a “lived awareness” ofthe interdependency and indivisibility of rights. In other words, as organs of thehuman body function interdependently, so, too, do human rights. In brief, the rightto health care, for example, is dependent on such rights as education (our healthpersonnel must be educated), employment (they must receive a meaningfulwage), and rest and leisure (they must have ample time to rest).What furthercomplicates matters is what has become known as “cultural relativism.” Thus,some cultures might believe that it is appropriate for a couple to be betrothed,rather than “choosing” each other, but choice of spouse is considered a humanright according to the Universal Declaration. While we may also have a “kneejerk” response to condemn such cultures that engage in practices like femalegenital mutilation (FGM), we must recall the ancient injunction to examine thelog in one’s eye before plucking it from another’s.Thus, some cultures condemn-ing such practices may condone conditions resulting in deaths from anorexianervosa or they may stockpiling weapons of mass destruction that threaten thebasic human right to peace.

Creating a human rights culture, then, is a kind of paradox. On the one hand,we have the standards set out in major human rights documents drafted by theUnited Nations and to some extent regional organizations like the African Union,the Organization of American States, and the European Union.On the other hand,as Eleanor Roosevelt, Chairperson of the Drafting Committee of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, said of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,it was a “good document . . . not a perfect one,” and human rights discussions can-not take place in a philosophic-historical vacuum. Perhaps it is our questioningtogether, acknowledging the importance of incorporating the voices of theoppressed in the policy debates, or what the philosopher Merleau-Ponty hascalled the “happiness of reflecting together,” that may help us bring about such aculture where we treat one another with decency and human dignity.

There is no cookbook approach to writing. Famed author AldousHuxley, whose wisdom the drafting committee of the Universal Declarationsought, wrote Brave New World, about an overly medicated and behav-iorally manipulated society, and Island, about a land of sharing and caring,where the birds chirped, “Be here now.” Huxley said that to write, one mustget a pen and lots of paper and . . . well . . . write. Whereas there is a strongelement of truth to Huxley’s advice to just get on with it, commitments tohuman rights and social justice can take people beyond themselves. Writing,like any skill, must be practiced and honed, like learning a musical instru-ment. But if one loves what one is doing, it can just get better and better. Thechallenge is to choose what will be a labor of love. As Eric Fromm in his Artof Loving reminds us, love is willed. So, too, good writing is willed.



Some Suggestions

The first point is to only say something that must be said and use as fewwords as needed to express the point. In other words, make every wordcount. The sign “Buy your fresh fish here” bears that point. Obviously, theyare selling fish. Would they sell stale fish? Is the fish being sold over there?No need for the sign at all, as one could smell the fish. Second, it is impor-tant to do an inventory of rituals of procrastination (Wolcott, 2001). Whenbeginning to write, it is only too easy to start the laundry, pick up theremote, clean the house, or reach in the fridge for those final two scoops ofBen & Jerry’s ice cream.

Third, think display. The reader shouldn’t go fishing for the main points.Don’t hide behind flamboyant language and long, involved sentences. Theymay give the impression of profundity, but your readers may not know whatyou’re saying, but be afraid to admit their ignorance until one day, someonepoints out that the words are as naked as the emperor who had no clothes.Be forthright and easy to understand. Fourth, write like you do math. Youmust have good intrasentence, paragraph, and overall organization. Havesubjects agree with the verb; all sentences support the paragraph’s openingsentence, and good transitions from paragraph to paragraph. Everythingmust add up. Recall the five crucial notions in the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights. They were listed one by one, with a brief discussion of themeaning of each.

Fifth, integrate human voice with scholarship. Writers are free to expresstheir opinions, which should be based partly on experience, but also onscholarship, that is, the work of scholars in the field, preferably from peerreview journals and those generally recognized as authorities. Then, it mustall be put together with one’s own personal style and in an interesting way.Sixth, write so that the reader can take it in. A case could easily be made thatwriting is an act of arrogance by an author, who expects the reader to plowthrough hundreds of pages of his or her wit, wisdom, and charm. But thisattitude can be changed if the writers keep to the script, care about what theysay, and write in ways that readers find reasonable. True, there may neverbe agreement on what is reasonable, but it is easy to spot an unreasonableperson merely flouting opinions without context.

Seventh, get feedback from others, but only after a near-final copy.Otherwise, it suggests the writer wants someone else to do his or her work.Commit to rewrites, then, near the final copy, get feedback. Eight, writesomething that stands the test of time. It is here perhaps that integratinghuman rights into one’s writing will make it eternal—yes, eternal, everlast-ing, timeless. Human rights and social justice often reflect millennia of social



teachings of major spiritual systems regarding human dignity, nonviolence,duties to humanity, and getting out of one’s comfort zone, a sine qua non ofsocial action. Such issues are ancient and may very well be around till theend of time. The missions of major religious leaders, like Moses, Christ,Mohammad, and Buddha were all reflected, to varying degrees, in humanrights principles. Ideally, one’s writing, especially if it integrates humanrights and social justice, shares this mission and sense of adventure. Finally,it is necessary to care about one’s writing, which reflects caring about theworld. It is a way to let your light shine, giving others the opportunity toshine theirs as well.

Practice Illustration 5.5 is an example of an editorial I wrote for a localpaper, the Amherst Bulletin, about an Annual Reading of the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights during human rights week in 2005.

Practice Illustration 5.5Writing Example of an Editorial on

Human Rights for Every Person, Everywhere

Human Rights for Every Person, Everywhere

Soon, the Amherst Human Rights Commission will display its banner over SouthPleasant which reads:“Human Rights for Every Person, Everywhere.” The week ofDecember 10th, the day that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, theauthoritative definition of human rights standards, was endorsed by the GeneralAssembly in 1948 with no dissent, is globally recognized as human rights week.Although originally meant to be a hortatory document, urging governments toabide by its principles, today in this new millennium it is often referred to as cus-tomary international law not only in academic circles, but also a number of courtcases, such as the case precedenting Filartiga v. Pena-Irala where U.S. federal judgesruled against a torturer for an act committed in Paraguay.

What are the principles of the Universal Declaration? Sadly, Eleanor Roosevelt’sdream, that American school children will know about the Universal Declarationlike they are aware of the American Bill of Rights, has not materialized.Thus, manyAmericans equate human rights with the Bill of Rights, a beautiful document indeed,but one that expresses only one facet of the entire body of what has becomeknown as international human rights law,with the Universal Declaration at its core.In brief, the Universal Declaration consists of five crucial notions: (1) human dig-nity (Article 1); (2) non-discrimination (Article 2); (3) civil and political rights, likefreedoms of speech, the press, religions, and peaceful assembly, and democracy ingeneral (Articles 3–21); (4) economic, social, and cultural rights, like rights to health



care, shelter, security in old age, meaningful and gainful employment, rest andleisure, and education (Articles 22–27); and (5) solidarity rights, the notion thatevery right has a corresponding duty and the right to a social and internationalorder, from which rights to a clean environment,peace,humanitarian disaster relief,and international distributive justice get their sustenance (Articles 28–30).

What also needs emphasis is the fact that all rights are interdependent andindivisible.Thus, the third crucial notion, civil and political rights, which are largelyconsistent with the Bill of Rights and generally equated with human rights in thiscountry, are ultimately meaningless without their “linkages” with the other sets ofrights. Let me ask you:What is freedom of speech, to a person who is homeless,unable to provide for her or his family, and lives in a world at war? And, if rightsare interdependent, can we rightfully speak of representative democracy, if it is anunderstatement that it often takes millions to run for major political offices, andthat perhaps only the voices of the rich and powerful are heard?

Radical? Perhaps.After all, when asked if the Universal Declaration of HumanRights was dangerous to governments, Eleanor Roosevelt, who, it is often said,had “an FBI file larger than a stack of phone books,” replied: “Yes. . . . Oh, yes”!But, if we are to truly get to the roots (and radical comes from the Latin radix,radicis meaning “root”) of the matter, we need a cultural shift in values and theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights may assist by expanding our awarenessof what human rights truly are. So, our only criteria to have rights should not bebased on whether a person is, for example, poor, rich, black, white, gay, lesbian,old or young to mention just a few ways that we tend to discriminate, or, for thatmatter, American, Iraqi, victims of a tsunami or earthquake, or the forty percentof the world who live on less than two dollars per day.The only criteria is thatwe are human, and every person, everywhere on this planet is a human, worthyof dignity, a notion that also mirrors millennia of teaching in most of the world’smajor spiritual belief systems.

We invite you to come to the reading of the Universal Declaration of HumanRights, followed by a candlelight vigil on the Amherst Common at 6 PM.

On Speaking

In human rights/social justice work, and particularly in the helping andhealth professions, it is often necessary to speak before groups. What good isit to keep one’s thoughts to one’s self? They must be communicated, a term thatcomes from the Latin, communire, meaning “to fortify, strengthen together.”The human rights defender must communicate as a way of strengtheningtogether. If a social activist is shy, time to get over it. But it may not be thatsimple. It might help to ask if being shy serves the aims to improve the humancondition. It is always important to listen to one’s inner muse.



Some Suggestions

After deciding on the importance of speaking in front of groups, reflectingon what it might mean culturally or ethically, it is important first to have gooddiction, enunciating words properly, slowly, loudly enough, and with a rhythmthat is understandable to the audience. The Greek orator Demosthenes used toput pebbles in his mouth to improve his diction. That might have worked forhim, but it might be better to just sit with a friend, share some words of afavorite text, and get feedback on the mechanics of your presentation.

But diction, proper volume, and cadence aren’t everything. Second, have aphysical presence appropriate to your audience. Dress respectfully for theoccasion, establish eye contact, don’t swing from side to side, and keep yourhands out of your pockets. A good physical appearance is often importantbecause when giving testimony, you may have only 2 or at most 15 minutesto get the point across. Many are loathe to admit, but literature consistentlystresses that attractiveness, whatever that might entail in your specific culture,is very often a predictor of credibility. Don’t ignore such findings. Third, beinteresting, and funny if the occasion warrants. Nothing is worse than a boar!Yes, a play on words. A boar is a pig, but if someone is boring, he or she willliterally muddle through a presentation at best. There is no need for that,especially nowadays when time is at a premium for almost everyone.

Putting aside for the moment that the Greeks had slaves and almostentirely excluded women from the democratic participation, their notions ofethos (ethics), logos (logic), and pathos (feeling) are seen as important topublic speaking. But of those three, ethos, which simply means having anethical character, was the most important. Therefore, fourth, always be eth-ical. It is obvious that no one will listen if the speaker is not considered trust-worthy, fair, honest, and just. Over time, merely giving the appearance ofpossessing such attributes without having them will work against the publicspeaker. People will see the hypocrisy in the speaker’s eyes and face. Eyesdon’t shine, wrote Emmanuel Levinas (2001), the philosopher of the face,“they speak.” One needn’t be perfect. But having a good ethical reputationmight get the most points with the audience. If listeners see someone whoputs needs of others before her or his own they are more likely to listen.Paradoxically, if one speaks with humility, people are more likely to listen.Such a speaker also knows that he or she can learn a lot from the audience.Paulo Freire, the educator/social activist, was good at sharing what he knewabout philosophy or literature with the audience. But when speaking withfarmers, he would ask what they knew about raising crops or agriculture. Anhonest give and take after a speech should further buttress one’s sincerityand ethical reputation overall.



Fifth, the presentation must be logical (logos). Its argument must be sensi-bly and persuasively supported by facts. Both quantitative and qualitativedata are persuasive in presenting a logical portrayal of facts. Research, forexample, has demonstrated that low self-image and a poor high school expe-rience are predictors of teenage pregnancy. Williams (1991), who adminis-tered a self-image scale to her coresearchers (30 in all) found the relationshipbetween self-esteem and education to be statistically significant at the .0058level. Those who were not enrolled or did not graduate high school (11) hada lower self-image than those who were enrolled or graduated high school(19). But she also integrated voices from coresearchers, with one remarkinghow poor her high school experience was. But the coresearcher said that inpregnancy school they treat you nice. Implications are the need for betterschools, and taxes to pay for them, rather than malls, which outnumber highschools in the United States, and reasonable salaries for teachers. Recall thateducation, special protections for mothers and children, and reasonablewages are human rights.

Sixth, the presentation must have emotion (pathos). Putting one’s heartinto speaking might just create the fervor needed to light that spark inanother’s heart to work for human rights, dignity, and social justice for all.Seventh, acknowledge your humanity. Be mindful of Eleanor Roosevelt’swords that the Universal Declaration was

not a perfect document. . . . On the whole, however, it is a good document. Wecould never hope for perfection no matter how many times we revised theDeclaration, for one could always see something a little better than one mightdo. (Department of Public Information, 1950, pp. 15–16)

In other words, the world could be on the verge of disaster, while thesocial activist is worrying whether the reader is going fishing or if sentencesare grammatically correct. Defenders are human, like anyone else. Whenthey feel they have done a good job, not a perfect one, it might be time tomove on. Martin Luther King, Jr. had some wisdom to share on that point,as we will see at the end of Chapter 6.

Using the Media

The broadcast media also pose unique opportunities to relate to a broadspectrum of people. The key to speaking in the media is to establish a personalrelationship with one person, the listener. Think of it as finding a way to reada telephone book and have the listener cry. As silly as that might sound, thekind of interaction characteristic of the broadcast media can be summed up in



Humphrey Bogart’s classic words in the film Casablanca, “It’s just me and youkid.” The listener is in the living room or in the car, often alone with the speakerand engaging in a kind of inner personal dialogue with this one other person.

Don’t kid yourself—the media can have tremendous influence. Going toand from work, it may be just you and the radio. Television personalitiesoften have a subtle relationship with their viewers. The broadcasters duringthe holocaust in Rwanda, who referred to Tutsi as cockroaches, developedthese personal relationships with their audience effectively. But they promul-gated hate, leading to massacres of nearly 1 million in 3 months! The humanrights defender will promulgate love, not hate. Speak in ways that are close-up and personal, not too fast, not too slow, but caringly and tenderly.

Examples of a Public Testimony and Presentation

In Practice Illustration 5.6, I would like to share an example of a testi-mony given in regard to the human rights bill discussed in Chapter 3. Note,it is important to always have contact information.

Practice Illustration 5.6A Human Rights Testimony

Testimony for MA House Bill 706, June 7, 2005

Joseph Wronka, PhD, Board Member, Coalition for a Strong United Nations;Professor of Social Work, Springfield College; Principal Investigator of theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights Project, Brandeis University, HellerSchool for Social Policy and Management

Contact Info: [email protected] page: www.humanrightsculture.org

Good afternoon. I am Dr. Joseph Wronka. It was I who had originally con-tacted my representative Ms. Ellen Story in December 2000, asking her to spon-sor a bill to incorporate international human rights law into Massachusetts lawsand policies. After some discussion, we felt that it would be better to at least ini-tially sponsor a bill that would establish a commission to examine howMassachusetts laws and policies compare with international human rights law,which consists in part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as the for-mer Pope John Paul II called a “milestone in the long and difficult struggle of thehuman race” and (to use his words again) the “long train of covenants and decla-rations following it,” such as the Rights of the Child (ROC), Convention on theElimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), and the Convention on



the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Our rationale for such a com-mission was in large measure because research has consistently demonstratedthat only chosen values endure. No one can force international human rights onanyone.People must see for themselves how laws and policies measure up to suchdocuments as the Universal Declaration and then make up their own mind, Ithink, whether they wish to incorporate such principles into their domestic lawsand policies.

Cosponsors of then House Bill 850 were Anne Paulsen (Belmont) and PatriciaJehlen (Sommerville). Dr. David Gil of Brandeis, Chair of my dissertation whichcompared the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with the U.S. Constitutionand all fifty state constitutions, was a strong supporter of the Bill, as well as theMassachusetts Chapter of the National Association of Social Work, the Interna-tional Fourth World Movement, an organization dedicated to the eradication ofextreme poverty, and, of course the Coalition for a Strong United Nations. It didnot get out of committee, but two years later, we reintroduced it as House Bill2840.Then, Benjamin Swan, Susan Fargo, and Kay Kahn were additional co spon-sors. Other groups joined on, such as the Men’s Resource Center in Amherst.During both hearings, no one gave testimony against the Bill. During that time,moreover, the Pennsylvania legislature had passed a similar bill, based on MA 850,with no dissent, 200 to 0!

Now there are roughly 40 organizations supporting the latest bill, HR 706, afew of the most notable being Physicians for Human Rights, the NortheastRegional Office of Amnesty International, and the Women’s International Leaguefor Peace and Freedom.

Let me now briefly share with you some of my work in my dissertation whicheventually became published as a book, Human rights and social policy in the 21stcentury, as an example of some of the things such a commission might do. Here isa copy of my book for the committee’s consideration.

Briefly, the Federal Constitution has numerous correspondences with theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights, but also, significant gaps. Using themethod of content analysis and comparing relevant phrases that may not be totalor precise, but agree in substance and sense, the U.S. Constitution is roughly sim-ilar to the Universal Declaration from Articles 1 through 21, which substantivelydeal with civil and political rights, such as freedoms of speech, the press, assembly,and from arbitrary interference with privacy.There are, however, no correspon-dences with notions of human dignity (in Article 1); the right to effective remedy(in Article 8); and protection of the family (in Article 16).

Furthermore, apart from protection of an author’s interest, there are no cor-respondences between articles 22 and 30 of the Universal Declaration which dealsubstantively with economic, social, cultural, and solidarity rights, including, but notlimited to, health care, food, adequate shelter, meaningful and gainful employment,rest and leisure, security in old age, and education.

States, which ought to act as “laboratories of democracy” according to formerSupreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and extend rights not found in the U.S.Con-stitution, have, indeed, extended such rights. Most states, for example, guarantee



the right to education; the text of the Massachusetts Constitution does not.Whereas the U.S. Constitution does speak of “equal protection of the laws,” itdoes not, however, distinctly assert the need for non discrimination based, forexample, on race, gender, property, or political opinion as in the UniversalDeclaration.The State of Massachusetts, however, does assert non discriminationbased on race, religion, color, sex, nation origin, and disability.

The State of Massachusetts, however, does not mention human dignity, right toan effective remedy, protection of the family or any of the other economic, social,cultural, and solidarity rights not found in the U.S. Constitution. Massachusetts,however, does mention the need for duties to the community, an essential notionalso of the Universal Declaration (in Article 29).

I urge you to support House Bill 706.Thank you for your attention.

I gave another talk on Human Rights and Sudan in Holyoke, Massachusetts, atthe Talking Drum Café on June 3, 2005, as depicted in Practice Illustration 5.7.This talk also mentions some of the issues discussed in this book, such as thehypocrisy of governments and the importance of human rights reports.

Practice Illustration 5.7A Presentation on the Darfur Situation

Presentation on Human Rights and Sudan

I must say that it is a pleasure being gathered here today with people concernedabout those almost entirely strangers in a land thousands of miles away, Sudan,where since its independence from England in 1956 has seen all but 10 years sincethen caught up in a bloody civil war.We have come, thankfully, a long way from theConference of Evian, called by the United States in 1938 urging members of theinternational community to stop the abuses of the Third Reich.The conference wasa failure largely because many of the countries there did not want to bring atten-tion to their own human rights abuses, such as lynchings in the United States, itssprawling urban ghettos, concentration camps in the Soviet Union and policies ofapartheid, taxation without representation, and torture by some countries ofEurope in Africa, of which I think the problem in Sudan, like Rwanda, is a legacy.

The conclusion of that conference, wrought by fear and hypocrisy, was that noone had the right to interfere with another’s domestic affairs.What occurred wasthe killing of 10 million innocents, largely Jews, but also such groups as gays (les-bians were spared apparently), Roma, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and one fourth ofPoland. In order not to let this happen again the United Nations was formed in



1945 and soon thereafter under the able leadership of an American Ms. EleanorRoosevelt. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, was endorsed by theGeneral Assembly with no dissenting vote in 1948 and was called a “Magna Carta”for humanity by Ms. Roosevelt. Today, however, no country would dare say it isagainst human rights.What goes on in one country, if it is an affront to human dig-nity, it is the world’s business whether it is apartheid in South Africa, children liv-ing in extreme poverty in the United States, or in this case, Genocide in Sudan.

Genocide, from the Latin, genus meaning “tribe or loosely connected families”and caedo meaning “to cut or slay,” adequately depicts some of the situation inSudan. Select concerns, for example, of the Human Rights Monitoring Committeeson the Convention on the Elimination against Racial Discrimination for Sudan are:

1. Concern over continuous reports of the abduction by armed militia of primarily,women, and children belonging to other ethnic groups. The Committee does notbelieve that these abductions are due to traditions deeply rooted in certain tribes asthe State contends and it is the State’s responsibility to bring this practice to an end.

2. Concern over the large number of internally displaced communities and in partic-ular the forced relocation of civilians from the Nuer and Dinka ethnic groups inthe upper Nile region.The Committee urges the state to uphold their fundamen-tal rights to personal security, housing, food and to just compensation for propertyconfiscated for public use.

Select concerns of the Human Rights Committee on the Convention on theRights of the Child (which I must add the United States has not ratified and onceratified become law, as it is now the case in Sudan) are:

1. That structural adjustment policies are affecting the cost, quality, accessibility andeffectiveness of services for children calling for a study in that regard

2. While praising Sudan for the establishment of the Sudan National Committee forthe Eradication of Harmful Practices, including campaigns against female genitalmutilation and the encouragement of child spacing, expresses concern that it hasnot ratified major human rights documents like the African Charter on the Rightsand Welfare of the Child,The United Nations Convention against Torture, CEDAWand the Optional Protocol to the Rights of the Child on the involvement ofchildren in armed conflict, child prostitution and child pornography

3. Concern that there are significant inequalities regarding access to basic health andeducation services between children, most especially between southern Sudan andthe rest of the country and that discrimination against children, particularly dis-crimination based on religious beliefs must end

4. Concern that as much as 70% of children in parts of the country are not regis-tered, leading among other things to sex trafficking

5. Concern that corporal punishment is widely practiced in the state, in the families,schools, and communities and by the police. Acts of torture, rape and other cruel


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acts have been committed against children in the context of armed conflict callingfor their immediate end and for the proper prosecution of perpetrators

6. The Committee urges that all child victims of violence and abuse have appropriatemedical and psychological support, including recovery and social reintegrationassistance for their families

7. Given that 40% of deaths of children under 5 are due to inadequate and unsafedrinking water calls for immediate action to have access to clean water

8. End the practice of recruiting child soldiers and give particular attention to theending of the stigma of children with disabilities and also giving particular attentionto ensuring the enrollment of girls, refugee children and children from nomadicgroups in schools.

Well, I could go on and on. I see this as one of my jobs to tell people aboutthese human rights reports, which must be submitted to human rights monitor-ing committees every few years or so, as a gauge to see how their country isdoing. And, let me add that you may also wish to provide input into these reportsas well, which many countries take seriously.

But in our zeal, for our concern to end racism or for the children of Sudan, letus be mindful of the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis:“Men bornto freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-mindedrulers.The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men ofzeal, well meaning, but without understanding.” My point is that with a roughly95% Muslim majority, and the fact that Sudan has only begun exporting oil in 1999,we must on guard to hidden agenda. Do we really care about those persecutedor is the government in a perverse kind of collusion with the media trying to whipup anger toward our Muslim brothers and sisters, because our economic andsocial system needs an enemy to survive and let us not forget oil. Let us also notforget that free market economics appears to have played a major factor in thefact that presently only 5% of the land in Sudan is arable.And, if the average ageis roughly 18, Sudan like much of the world is undergoing what has been referredto as a “youth bulge” and globalization efforts to maximize profit at the expenseof human need and development is leaving too much of our youth, the youth ofSudan or for that matter the United States (which in the industrialized world isthe highest in terms of alienation) looking for identity in gangs, the military, andterrorist groups.

We must be concerned about Sudan certainly, but our rallying cry must behuman rights for every person, everywhere. If you think this is impossible, whowould have thought with the invention of gunpowder that the world wouldeventually be able to destroy every person, everywhere in a matter of days. Butsome people have had such nightmares which have become realities. Surely,Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of a Beloved Community can and shouldbecome our reality.



Finally, in Practice Illustration 5.8 is a presentation that I gave in Geneva,on September 24, 2007, before the Human Rights Council meetings urgingfurther consideration of extreme poverty as a violation of human rights andthe promotion of human rights education from the primary to professionallevels.

Practice Illustration 5.8 Joint Statement on the Eradication of Extreme Poverty and the

Need for Human Rights Education and Training

To: Human Rights Council as pertaining to Agenda Item 4, HR situations thatrequire the HRC’s attention

Fr: Joseph Wronka, (PhD), Affiliate for the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and Ms. Ellen Mouravieff-Apostol, UN GenevaRepresentative for the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) to the6th Human Rights Council Meeting, Geneva, September 10–28, 2007

Date of Delivery: September 24, 2007

Dear Esteemed Colleagues . . . May I say friends?The International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and the

International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW), having consultative status withthe UN, request further consideration of: (1) extreme poverty as a violation offundamental human rights and dignity and (2) the incorporation of human rightseducation and training in our educational systems.

The problem of extreme poverty is urgent and of increasing gravity.Nearly onebillion people go to bed starving each night and even in wealthy countries like theUSA, one out of three children go to bed hungry or are at risk of being hungry,according to the Children’s Defense Fund.The ratio between the world’s richestand poorest countries has grown in recent years and is now 1 to 103. FormerPresident Jimmy Carter in his acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002said: “The citizens of the ten wealthiest countries are now seventy-five timesricher than those who live in the ten poorest ones, and the separation is increas-ing every year, not only between nations, but also within them.The results of thisdisparity are root causes of most of the world’s unresolved problems, includingstarvation, illiteracy, environmental degradation, violent conflict, and unnecessaryillnesses that range from Guinea worm to HIV/AIDS.”

Please consider further debate on the Draft Guiding Principles on “Extremepoverty and human rights: Rights of the poor” (A/HRC/Sub.1/58/36, 11September 2006) with an eye toward an internationally legally binding convention.This report echoes the Report on the Realization of Economic, Social, and



Cultural Rights (E/CN.4/Sub.2/1996/13, 28 June 1996) which referred to povertyas the world’s most pitiless killer and viewed the eradication of poverty as one ofthe founding ideals of the UN system.

Mindful of this World Decade of Human Rights Education, we also urge oureducational systems to incorporate human rights into their curricula from pri-mary to professional levels. The helping and health professions, such as socialwork, psychology, nursing, and medicine, ought to include human rights principlesin their training, which would include some lesser known, but equally importantdocuments like the “Principles of Medical Ethics and the Protection of Personswith Mental Illness.” Only chosen values endure. Research consistently demon-strates that once youth inculcate values, it is extremely difficult to change them.We will stop extreme poverty once we decide to and human rights education canplay a pivotal role.

Recognizing the interdependence and indivisibility of human rights, let us worktogether developing proactive and reactive strategies to eradicate extremepoverty in a spirit of peace, tolerance, and friendship. In conclusion, we affirm theGeneral Assembly’s endorsement of the Draft Declaration on the Rights ofIndigenous Peoples and we urge personal reflection on the wisdom of a majorspiritual leader of the Sioux nation, Tashunkewitko, commonly known as CrazyHorse who said:“A very great vision is needed and the man [person] who has itmust follow it as the eagle seeks the deepest blue of the sky.”

Thank you for your attention to this urgent problem of extreme poverty.

Summary

This chapter examined the sixth level of intervention, which is research.Human rights documents are excellent means for defining the research prob-lem. Given the power of this idea, such a framework can serve as a solidbasis for socially just action projects, bearing witness to the violations ofrights not generally considered human rights, for example, parental leave,support groups for rural women, and quality day care. Quantitative approachescomparing, for example, paid parental leaves in various countries, and qual-itative approaches eliciting the voices of parents who had no paid leave area couple of viable possibilities for such research. Such re-creations of theworld through quantitative and qualitative lenses should pay particularattention to the ethical principles that arose, in large measure, out of the carnage of the Holocaust, and were enunciated at Nuremberg.

Examining executive, judicial, legislative, and public discourse move-ments toward compliance with human rights principles is another way toengage in human rights social action-research. One legislative example givenwas the paucity of economic, social, and cultural rights in U.S. federal andstate constitutions. Human rights principles also place findings in context,



such as viewing the historical legacies in some Native American communi-ties from forcibly removing children to boarding schools as possible viola-tions of the Genocide Convention.

Research is a worthless enterprise if this knowledge is not shared. Speaking,writing, and using the media are ways to get the message across. In brief, writ-ing ought to be clear and easy for the reader to take in. Speaking ought to fol-low the basic principles of ethos, pathos, and logos, especially ethos, that is,having a strong ethical character. Working in the broadcast media requires,foremost, developing a personal relationship with the audience.

Finally, armed with this social justice framework, with human rights as itscornerstone, one must engage in social action and service. But is this “finning”actually the “beginning,” to quote Norman O. Brown, a major figure of thecounterculture movement in the 1960s, referencing James Joyce’s Finnegan’sWake?6 The end of this book is only the beginning in the reader’s quest to heedDr. King’s call to implement the human rights principles that are on paper.

Questions for Discussion

1. What has helped you with your writing and speaking? What has nothelped? Do a self-inventory. What were your experiences as a writer orspeaker? Were they positive or negative? In other words, do you feel you aredealing with a little stress in the writing and speaking department? What doyour experiences teach you about the educational system? What can you doto get out of your comfort zone? Should you get out of your comfort zone?What results would you like to see by leaving your comfort zone?

2. Does your profession follow basic precepts of the Nuremberg Codeand ethical principles as discussed here? Give examples. Does your profes-sion go beyond some of the ethical principles discussed? If so, how? If yourprofession does not follow basic ethical principles in your view, give exam-ples of what it does and suggest ways to rectify the problem.

3. Are some forms of “Tuskegee-like” studies still going on? Is it neces-sary, for example, to study the effects of homelessness, when it is reasonableto assume that lack of adequate shelter leads to numerous psychological andphysical illnesses? Can the same be said for studying where people go afterthey get off welfare or studying the effects of unemployment? Would time bebetter spent changing the social structures that lead to unemployment, ratherthan trying to understand its deleterious effects?

4. The challenge as always is to make research relevant, so it can be a catalyst for social change. How can this be done? Is Jean Paul Sartre (1993)



correct that a lot of research is merely about meaningless facts, rather thanmeaningful essences? Recall Hitler’s assertion that if someone takes over acountry, it would be necessary to keep intellectuals occupied by providingfunding for research grants of dubious utility. Do you feel that is true? Whatcan be done so research plays a major role in social change and social justice?

5. Retrieve a human rights document on the Internet and use it to define aresearch problem. For example, if the document asserts (as in CEDAW)“maternal leave with pay” is a human right, how could that principle serve asbasis for your research? How would you construct a quantitative study? Onecould, for example, study other countries that offer paid maternity leave andcome up with a “Maternity Paid Leave Grid.” Given an increase in the numberof men actively taking part in child rearing, should one also include paternityleave? How might one construct a qualitative study on paid maternity (and/orpaternity) leave? One could, for instance, interview legislators about their per-spectives on that notion of paid parental leave, write reports, and submit themto their constituencies. One could also interview mothers who had paid leaveand those who didn’t. Compare their stories with legislators’ pronouncementsand, while keeping to ethical guidelines, disseminate them to the community.Try to play with other human rights principles. Be creative.

6. Are certain instruments, like standardized tests, IQ tests, ScholasticAptitude Inventories (SATs), Graduate Record Exams (GREs), personalityinventories, and state achievement tests (like the MCAS) good indicators ofintelligence, personality, and knowledge? Given the vast number of peopleneeding placement in educational settings or therapeutic clinical groups, do theyhave good administrative utility? One wouldn’t put slow students with giftedstudents, nor place someone diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic in a group ofpeople struggling with obsessive-compulsive issues. How can standardized toolsbe improved? Or should they be scrapped for other alternatives? What alterna-tives? Are there any experiences that you wish to share? How did you feel whenPSAT scores were handed out in high school? Did it enhance your sense ofhuman dignity or was it an affront to your human dignity? Did everyone startcomparing one another, viewing each other as a number, rather than as John,Joan, Chris, or Carolyn with his or her own possibilities, rather than actualities,as a human person? What does all that have to do with human rights?

7. Do student evaluations of teachers with no qualitative feedback ade-quately reflect the experience of learning in the classroom? Do teacher evalu-ations of students adequately reflect their learning? What qualitative questionsshould be added to the evaluations so that professors and students can engagein true quality education? Given that every right has a corresponding duty,what duties do students and teachers have to adequately realize the right to



education? What duties do your professors have to students? Taking intoconsideration the levels of intervention discussed, how can students and pro-fessors fulfill their duties to realize the basic human right to education?

8. If you were to enact a bill similar to Massachusetts House Bill 760, AnAct Relative to Integrating International Human Rights into MassachusettsLaws and Policies, how would you construct an adequate research method-ology to monitor state compliance with international human rights princi-ples? To what extent would you use quantitative and/or qualitative measuresand procedures? Could you construct a grid? What would it look like?Whose voices would you include in monitoring your state’s compliance withinternational human rights principles?

9. Do you feel that researchers are truly in search of truth, or are theyhired guns for pharmaceuticals, hospitals, corporations, or places of employ-ment, employed to make them look good? Are pharmaceutical companies, forexample, more prone to tout the benefits of drugs that they trade on the stockexchange? Please try not to mystify or have an anticorporate animus. Just bea scholar and give examples. How about research by your professional orga-nizations? Are they truly in search of truth, or do they tend to reinforce theirown conceptual biases? Are the helping and health professions prone, forexample, to study the efficacy of a therapeutic intervention, like psychoanaly-sis, behaviorism, rational-emotive, and/or client-centered therapies to combatdepression? Why don’t they study the therapeutic benefits of conversationswith a grandparent on the porch on a hot summer day or the ongoing pro-tection and wisdom of a sibling who consistently comforts a scapegoatedfamily member? Given a trend toward strengths perspectives emanating fromthe humanistic psychologies of the 1970s and 1980s, like Maslow or ErwinStraus, or developments of earlier existential phenomenologists, like Sartreand Camus in Europe, do researchers study well-being as much as pathology?Although this trend acknowledges the importance of the strengths in one’senvironment and nontraditional healing interventions, do the helping andhealth professions subvert the notion that “the family is the fundamental unitof society” (Article 16 of the Universal Declaration) by basically looking atthe effectiveness of only professional clinical interventions?

10. Imagine the following scenario: You have just received your profes-sional degree. Now the expert, you want to implement universal human rightsprinciples. One principle you are particularly concerned about is female genitalmutilation. After researching this issue, and creating a well-written, structured,and targeted grant application, you receive funding to combat this procedure.You travel to Somalia, where roughly 90% of the female population undergoesthis procedure. At a meeting you have arranged of key community leaders, you



read parts of the Rights of the Child, which in essence prohibits traditional andcultural practices inimical to the health of the child. People in the communityrespond that you come from a hypercritical culture that has ruthlessly attackedand ruined the beautiful land of Africa, citing, for example, King Leopold ofBelgium’s ruthless killings and the collusion of the Catholic Church with theBelgian government granting privileged positions to the Hutu, which eventuallyled to the Rwandan holocaust in the mid-1990s. Your country, America, theycontinue, spends roughly $400 billion on military arms annually. That moneycould be used to feed the millions starving in Africa. Besides, they say, their cul-ture doesn’t believe in experts and FGM is a way that a woman can find ahusband. They add, angrily but sarcastically, that in American culture a womanhas to be dead from anorexia nervosa to get a husband. How would yourespond? Are they right, wrong, a little in between? What would you do, orshould you do? Please comment on the following: According to Supreme CourtJustice Louis Brandeis, government is our omnipresent teacher. In response toMichael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11, George H. W. Bush called him a “slime-ball.” What do you feel these government officials are teaching us?

Activities/Actions

1. Write an article integrating your human voice with scholarship, for apeer review journal. Send it in. Then write up an op-ed piece or letter to theeditor and send it in. Make rewrites on rewrites if necessary, until your workis published. As you write, have your classmates act as peers for constructivefeedback. How do you feel about giving and receiving feedback?

2. Try engaging in some activities where you must speak in public. Forinstance, write up and present a testimony on an issue of interest. Find a hear-ing where people have the power to make a difference. Follow up to see ifyour presentation and the presentations of others on the issue made a differ-ence. If you are working on or have finished a research-action project, presentit either as a work in progress or completed project at a conference of yourchoosing. Now try to get a spot on radio and/or television to talk about a par-ticular issue. Get feedback from your friends, peers, and spouse/partner onyour actions. Try to improve, do it again, and get feedback.

3. Develop a human rights survey and send it to professional organi-zations like the National Association of Social Workers, the PublicHealth Association, the American Nurses Association, the AmericanSociological Association, the American Medical Association, the AmericanPsychiatric Association, the American Political Science Association, theAmerican Anthropological Association, and the American Psychological



Association. Ultimately, the purpose of the survey is to determine if theseorganizations endorsed all of the rights in the Universal Declaration ofHuman Rights and whatever “select” rights you would like to include fromother conventions. Perhaps you may wish to merely have them check offrights that they endorse. Come up with a report on each of the professionalorganization’s endorsements of human rights principles. Send the report toeach organization and other interested parties. Try engaging in coalition build-ing by having professional organizations draft a letter to accrediting agencies,state, and/or federal governments urging them to include human rights prin-ciples in their laws and policies. But don’t stop there. Work positively withorganizations and governments with an eye toward implementation.

4. Do a content analysis of your state constitution in comparison with theUniversal Declaration and/or any other human rights document of interest.How does the state constitution stand in relation to the human rights docu-ments? Are there ways that the state constitution goes beyond the principlesof the Universal Declaration? Write government leaders—the executive (gov-ernor), legislative (representatives and senators), and judicial (judges)—aboutany gaps that exist between the two documents and ask them if they couldhelp to bridge this gap. Write a report on what they had to say, if they haveresponded to your communications. You may also wish to do comparisonswith other state policy documents on, for example, the rights of the mentallyill with the UN’s Protection for Persons With Mental Illness.

5. Using Article 24 of the Universal Declaration, which asserts the rightto rest and leisure and reasonable limitations of working hours, ask col-leagues how many jobs they have to support themselves and their families.Then ask them about some of their struggles in trying to juggle family lifewith work. Come up with a well-written report with both quantitative (e.g.,number of people with two, three jobs, and/or whether they have benefitslike health care and pensions) and qualitative (e.g., stories of their everydaystruggles) data. Note if the data appear to violate CEDAW, which stressesgovernment’s duty to help families coordinate family responsibilities withthe work of the world. Submit the report to the Department of State and askif some of the data could be used in a report to the UN human rights moni-toring committees.

Notes

1. Work can be defined as activities performed in formal settings, such as facto-ries, mental health/substance abuse centers, hospitals, environmental, and academicsettings. Also important is work in more or less informal settings, generally and



amazingly not considered work, like taking care of an ailing parent or relative,scrounging for food by a homeless person, or perhaps most important though oftenunderestimated for human survival, taking care of one’s own or another’s children.

2. The MCAS is a standardized achievement test intended to measure astudent’s knowledge of various subjects. Failing this test could have major repercus-sions in a child’s life, such as failure to graduate, extending perhaps over a lifetime.

3. Certainly, all human activities have their aims to fulfill human need, likehunger by eating, affiliation by providing for one’s family, and protection from theelements by having adequate shelter. Nevertheless, it is important for coresearchersto understand that a study may be part of a requirement for a course or master’sdegree or PhD, that is, a means to an end, to get a job, put food on the table, or haveadequate shelter.

4. Food insecurity is defined as lacking access to enough food at all times foractive, healthy living (Children’s Defense Fund, 2007). The percentage of 11.9%can be further broken down into food insecurity without hunger (8%); food insecu-rity with hunger (3.9%); and food insecurity with hunger among children (274,000or 0.7%). (The Census Bureau does not include food insecurity among childrenwithout hunger.) Furthermore, tables can be constructed in a myriad of creative andpersuasive ways. One could show how only 52% of eligible migrant children whoare citizens get food stamps compared with 82% of eligible children overall. Eventhen, food stamps amount to $1.05 per meal, hardly enough to provide a nutritious,well-balanced meal (“Hunger and Food Stamps,” 2007).

5. It is generally considered that at least eight participants are necessary before aredundancy of themes becomes apparent (McCracken, 1987). As a matter of expediency,students were required to interview five coresearchers. Results are suggestive, notdefinitive, yet could yield rich information to add to the implementation of effectivesocial action strategies. To protect anonymity, projects are not available.

6. From lectures at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Fall 1971.

