Human Rights Nambawan priority

Mana (Auckland), Volume 2, Issue 1, 6 April 1978, Page 2

Human Rights Nambawan priority

An edited report on West Indian academic Dr Neville Linton by staff reporter, Norman Tuiasau. (Dr Linton is senior lecturer in International Studies at the University of the West Indies. He attended the recent law conference in Auckland where he presented a paper on ‘Human Rights and the Third World’). The debate on human rights is a crucial one, especially to the third world, as the very concept of human rights has been traditionally Western-oriented, says Dr Linton. Western institutions thought to be best for third world countries, e.g. rights to property, Westminister rules of government, have infringed on the traditional institutions and human rights of these countries. Third world countries now seem to be more concerned with human rights as compared with civil and political rights, and with this have gained new insight into the inadequacy of old colonial structures like those affecting civil, party and army administration, says Dr Linton. The inheritance of colonial bureaucracies and a system geared purely to the manipulation of capital, labour and resources has been a stumbling block to newly independent and developing nations. There has been a move to the

establishing of a basic, irreducible minimum, on a human level, in third world countries, i.e. human rights adds Dr Linton. He says the concept of human rights has been traditionally a Western one and this reflects the way in which the world’s history has been written.

- “The developed world (a small portion of the world), has accepted its own version of what history is. The basic problem with this is that the majority of the world had nothing to do with writing the history of the world. The history has been one of Western imperialism and the powerlessness of the remainder of the world,” he says.

Western influence has meant the imposition of political systems and ideas. Third world countries are now in the process of defining for themselves what human rights are. Dr Linton says there are three irreducible rights; sustenance, shelter and safety. He adds that past western political thinkers and social scentists have regarded these things as a privilege. Until the basic three “irreducibles" are met, developing third world countries will be riddled with problems. Human rights are to be the basis of new economic and political developments in the third world. Only when man is above just surviving, i.e. having and exercising human rights, can society then go forward.