Cultural Anthropology/Human Rights

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[edit] Human Rights

Human rights are the "basic rights and freedoms to which all humans are entitled". Human rights are distinguished from general American rights or human privileges in that they are "guaranteed by international standards, legally protected, focus on the dignity of the human being, oblige states and state actors, cannot be waived or taken away, [and are] interdependent, interrelated, and universal."^[1]

Countries vary widely in their approach to human rights and their record of human rights protection. Therefore, how we may know human rights within United State boarders may be different elsewhere. ^[2]

[edit] Civil and Political Rights

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a United Nations treaty based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, created in 1966 and entered into force on 23 March 1976.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is monitored by the Human Rights Committee (a separate body to the Human Rights Council which replaced the Commission on Human Rights under the UN Charter in 2006) with permanent standing, to consider periodic reports submitted by member States on their compliance with the treaty. Members of the Human Rights Committee are elected by member states, but do not represent any State. The Covenant contains two Optional Protocols. The first optional protocol creates an individual complaints mechanism whereby individuals in member States can submit complaints, known as communications, to be reviewed by the Human Rights Committee. Its rulings under the first optional protocol have created the most complex jurisprudence in the UN international human rights law system.

The second optional protocol abolishes the death penalty; however, countries were permitted to make a reservation allowing for use of death penalty for the most serious crimes of a military nature, committed during wartime^[3].

[edit] Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

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The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) is a multilateral treaty adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 16, 1966, and in force from January 3, 1976. It commits its parties to work toward the granting of economic, social, and cultural rights (ESCR) to individuals, including labour rights and rights to health, education, and an adequate standard of living. As of December, 2008, the Covenant had 159 parties.^[4] A further seven countries had signed, but not yet ratified the Covenant.

One example of this organizations efforts includes the UN's many attempt to create peace in Northern Uganda. As discused in Sverker Finnstrom's article in American Ethnologist, The Acholi peoples of Uganda despite having been largely displaced into refuge camps have continued to make steps toward a more stable enconomy. Their humans rights have been at stake for over two decades. The UN's various programs are working to put the rebel forces out and regain this cultures natural human rights.^[5]

The ICESCR is part of the International Bill of Human Rights, along with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including the latter's first and second Optional Protocols. ^[6]

[edit] Reproductive Rights

Reproductive rights are more than the women's right to her birthing process but also the right of the women to have the child. Although abortion is a large issue around the world the question remains on wether a women should have the right to abortion if she so chooses. As reproductive rights are more clearly defined later on in this section it is important that we keep in mind the issue of abortion and what this could mean for womens reproductive rights. Does it fall into the rights of the women or not?

According to Craven a woman's right to choose a midwife is center to reproductive rights. ^[7]

Reproductive rights are rights relating to reproduction and reproductive health.[1] The World Health Organisation defines reproductive rights as follows:

"Reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest standard of sexual and reproductive health. They also include the right of all to make decisions concerning reproduction free of discrimination, coercion and violence."[2]

Reproductive rights were first established as a subset of human rights at the United Nation's 1968 International Conference on Human Rights.[3] The sixteenth article of the resulting Proclamation of Teheran states, "Parents have a basic human right to determine freely and responsibly the number and the spacing of their children."[4][3]

Worldwide, issues related to reproductive rights are some of the most vigorously contested, regardless of the population's socioeconomic level, religion or culture.[5] Reproductive rights may include some or all of the following rights: the right to legal or safe abortion, the right to control one's reproductive functions, the right to access quality reproductive healthcare, and the right to education and access in order to make reproductive choices free from coercion, discrimination, and violence.[6] Reproductive rights may also be understood to include education about contraception and sexually transmitted infections, and freedom from coerced sterilization and contraception, protection from gender-based practices such as female genital cutting (FGC) and male genital mutilation (MGM). ^[8]

[edit] Rights versus Culture, Rights to Culture

Rights to Culture ensure that an individual or group of individuals have all their rights to enjoy and participate in their culture. This includes such aspects as the right to take part in cultural life, the right that will guarantee that a culture will be conserved, yet still developed, and finally, the right to still be protected from any harmful cultural practices.

In discussing rights and culture there are two assumptions that people often make:

•One is that cultures are unchanging.

•Another is that in a given society there is only one acceptable culture that everyone must abide by.

However, these assumptions may cause problems within a group of people in a few ways. When new rights are accepted in a culture that is normally unchanging, that new right may create conflict within the culture because of the varying viewpoints within the group. For example the issue of unveiling Muslim women so that they would no longer be oppressed. While Westerners are using the etic point of view without understanding fully what the veil means to the Muslim women. This is when rights and culture may not agree. Culture and human rights don't tend to agree fully, new human rights given may go against rights given within a culture.

In Farnaz Fassihi's book "Waiting for an Ordinary Day" explains the life of individuals in Iraq. Once Saddam was captured and the citizens were run by Americans, all hell broke loose. Not only did the citizens not know how to respond to the new freedoms they had, they soon came to rebel against the men who had given them that freedom. Their human rights of freedom were not of the norm in their culture and were unknown how to cope with. (2b) [[1]]

[edit] Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act

The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) touches on this topic. On 16 November 1990, a United States federal law passed that requires federal agencies and institutions to return Native American human remains and cultural items to their respective peoples. Some of these cultural artifacts include funeral objects, religious objects, and objects of cultural patrimony. These federal agencies and institutions receive funding in order to do this. In this way, people are entitled to their culture both during life and after death. However, when it is unclear as to who the remain belong to, NAGPRA made a outline of decesent for who should gain ownership of the remains. NAGPRA and Ownership 1. Ownership resides with any lineal descendants 2. If no lineal descendants, ownership resides with (in order) : A. The tribe on whose land the remains or objects were found or B. The tribe who has closest cultural affiliation with the remains and who stakes a claim or if undetermined C. The tribe who is recognized as aboriginally occupying land that was determined to be traditionally theirs by the Indian Claims Commission, unless D. Preponderance of the evidence shows that another tribe has a stronger cultural affiliation that the tribe id’d by the ICC

[edit] Rights as Culture

As a culture, certain rights are issued to provide a general guideline as to how people within that culture act, respond, and live. As it is common for many different cultures to share similar rights, it is equally familiar to have diverse rights among these same cultures. With differing views on how things work and what is acceptable, each culture has its own idea of what rights are issued to whom. It is not one cultures place to say that the rights issued within another culture are unacceptable, with the exception of universal rights (a term in itself that is often undefined among anthropologists). Each culture has a right to their way of living. Even though some cultures practices may seem cruel, like the circumcision of young girls in Africa, these cultures have been practicing their traditions for hundreds of years and do not see them as unreasonable or cruel. They can choose freely how to live and govern themselves as long as individual rights, specific to that culture, are still upheld. As a culture, you have a right to define your way of living. It is only when the line of human rights is crossed that the right as a culture can be questioned.

Rights as culture vary from people to people. As an individual participating in a culture, you are granted certain rights. Slavery, from an anthropological perspective is a violation of human rights. The idea of “right as culture” supports slavery as a violation of human rights. It is because of the rights of the enslaved that this can be said. The enslaved has rights pertinent to his/her culture that the person facilitating the slavery is overlooking. The violation of these rights cross the boundary of inhumane. It is therefore impossible to justify the idea of slavery when looking at it from a cultural perspective.

[edit] Human Rights and Cultural Relevance

It is the job of cultural anthropologists to study the world around them to better understand the differences of all the various cultures. Even with human rights clearly defined in a universal list of 30 articles; there still can be unclear cultural practices that question these articles by law and by morality of some.

Today many organizations have been formed to protect and fight for the rights of all man-kind.

Amnesty International: The oldest, biggest human rights group focused on individual, local human rights activism. Because AI stays strictly out of politics and avoids getting involved in issues outside its rather narrow mandate (area of concern), people from all sorts of political and religious backgrounds are members and work together.

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Founded to promote and extend the concept of civil liberties to on-line communications. While the EFF is a U.S.-based group whose main focus is on U.S. law, it has a number of "sister organizations" in other countries.

Human Rights Watch: Founded in 1978 as Helsinki Watch, is a coalition formed by a number of independent regional human groups. They are perhaps the best human rights researchers in the field at present -- their reports are extremely thorough, carefully written, and backed by impressive amounts of detail and numerous sources.

Peacenet: Not a human rights group itself, but rather the first and largest computer network for activists in peace, human rights, and related issues. Peacenet is run by the Institute for Global Communications (IGC), an activity of the Tides Foundation, a San Francisco-based non-profit trust. It is a member of the Association for Progressive Communications, an international coalition of networks for peace and human rights activists. This is a good group for the hard core, on-line activists.^[9]

[edit] Women’s Rights in America

Many rights that may seem inherent to our generations have not necessarily been that way forever. One great example is the woman’s suffrage movement. The end of the Civil War, when African Americans were given the right to vote, marked a date when women found themselves the last social group in America to be able to vote. Organized women’s movements originally stood for many causes. But around the year 1914, it seemed, most women activists were fighting for the right to vote. In New York City, woman’s movements “revived flagging local organizations, introduced new lobbying techniques, standardized membership lists, and established a state headquarters”. ^[10] People were rallying and protesting for the right to vote. All the hard work by women and fellow radicals eventually paid off. On August 18, 1920 women were given the right to vote with the addition of the 19th amendment to the Constitution.

[edit] Genital Cutting: two sides

There are approximately 85-114 million women with mutilated genitalia, and millions more face the practice each year. Mostly practiced in Africa, FGM (female genital mutilation) has many different levels of severity, with three main varieties of the procedure. The first is Sunna (meaning “tradition" in Arabic) Circumcision which involves the removal of the prepuce, or retractable fold of skin, or hood, and/or the tip of the clitoris. The second type is a clitoridectomy, which consists of the removal of the entire clitoris (prepuce and glands) and the removal of the adjacent labia. Lastly is infibulation, or pharonic circumcision. Infibulation involves a clitoridectomy followed by the remaining tissue being stitched closed, leaving a small hole to allow for urine and menstrual blood to flow through. Most cases of female genital cutting occurs between the ages of four and eight and the use of anesthesia is rare. FGM is practiced in order for the women of their culture to be accepted; it is the beginning of being a women. Although there are different religions that practice FGM not one of these groups require it. The reactions to FGM involve national action and law.

FGM is a controversial issue that does not have a clear and concise answer. An international campaign to eliminate female genital cutting has been active since the early 90's, actively attempting to divorce itself from a health framework, adopting instead a human rights framework to justify the intervention.^[11] In western culture genital cutting is not part of the culture and therefore not accepted. But with the numbers of mutilated women in the millions there is a strong conviction for many cultures to maintain the act. Different cultural factors affect the beliefs all over the world about whether the act of genital cutting is an appropriate action. There are many negative factors regarding genital cutting; effects include extreme pain, susceptibility to infection, sometimes death, HIV susceptibility, abscesses and small benign tumors, hemorrhages, shock, and clitoral cysts, and decreased, if not elimination, of sexual pleasure. Long term effects may include kidney stones, sterility, sexual dysfunction, depression, various urinary tract infections, various gynecological and problems with child birth.. The upside of the cultural cutting is that the girls can now be respected adults among the community and start a family,and the fact that this custom has been practiced throughout their culture for many generations. These unbalanced side affects cause uproar among human rights activists.

For more information on genital cutting see Female Genital Cutting.

[edit] Female Genital Cutting in Britain

One of the more interesting examples of female genital cutting is placed in Britain. Most FGC (female genital cutting) occurs in Africa and is under hot debate with human rights activists because of all of the negative affects associated with FGC. Britain is a westernized type culture and so genital cutting is strictly forbidden. It was officially outlawed in 1985 and considered child abuse nationally. Still, even with government stepping in to stop this cultural sin an underground culture grew to where parents were leaving the country in order to see their children to adult hood. Even in cases where widespread education campaigns reach the people and inform of the technological advances and horrific consequences of genital mutilation it still happens. I believe that in a world with so many different views that it would be strange if everyone thought the same way. This practice of FGC may not be pretty and may have terrible outcomes but it is part of some cultures and to them nothing matters more than preserving their beliefs and rituals.^[12]

[edit] Entitlements

Entitlements are the socially defined rights to life sustaining resources, meaning access to things that are seen as basic human rights. In cultures like the United States, government entitlement programs are expected to maintain equality in employment opportunities, access to healthcare, and correct any other biases in the political system. Many American entitlements are depicted in the “United States Bill of Rights.” However, in many developing countries where entitlements are not as explicitly defined and enforced, it is a struggle for citizens to hold entitlements.

[edit] Entitlements in the United States

One view concerning entitlements in the United States is that the country is cover-obligated when it comes to entitlements that may bankrupt the nation. The U.S. is currently obligated to pay over $50 trillion. Without reform, the US could follow suit of Argentina who defaulted on their debt, which had an overwhelming effect on their economy and standard of living. ^[13]

Health care can be used as an example, because it is considered an unalienable right in the U.S. Currently American tax payers and the government is footing the bill for medical coverage for those who cannot afford it because they are "entitled" to it. Lower classed citizens have developed a dependence on the government to take care of them and focus tax dollars on their entitlements like Medicaid welfare. This entitlement mentality has pushed the US deeper into debt, because of the social transition from independence to reliance.

Not only is this idea of entitlement hurting the U.S on a national level, it is also damaging the citizens at a more personal level and many people do not recognize this. People do not really contribute to their workplace. They simply show up and have 'face time' and expect that simply because they are there they are entitled to get their raise or promotion. As Phillipe Bourgois’ article “Workaday World, Crack Economy”, describes, although this sense of entitlement is felt many people from areas such as East Harlem, simply quit working legally all togeter. ^[14] This mind set causes the work ethic and motivation of employees to drop, which decreases their productivity. This epidemic that has begun to sweep the nation is a grass roots reason for the economic position the country is in.^[15]

This concept of individualism and independence characterisic of Americans who advocate the idea that the U.S. spends too much on entitlements is not characteristic of all of Americans, and indeed is not characteristic of many other societies throughout the rest of the world who believe that all their citizens have a right to healthcare, food water, etc. Many believe that the U.S. does not provide enough entitlements for its citizens, especially when compared to the majority of the other developed countries in the world. In fact, the Human Development Index--which ranks countries according to factors such as health, knowledge and education, and standard of living--ranks the U.S. at #15, whereas many countries who provide their citizens with much more entitlements are ranked much higher. ^[16] Furthermore, many people make the argument that U.S. debt is a result of immense military spending, not entitlement payments. For example, Wallsten and Kosec ^[17] estimate that the U.S. is spending approximately $200 billion per year on military expenditures. Contrastingly, the estimated annual cost of several entitlement programs are much smaller; for example, universal health care would cost only half the current U.S. military expenditures.

[edit] Cultural Imperialism

Cultural Imperialism was first conceptualized during the Cold War. There are two ideas cultural imperialism is based on. The first is that some cultures will dominate other cultures; while the second is cultural domination by one culture will eventually destruct the lesser culture(s) and the dominating one will take its place. A common wrong example of cultural imperialism is the Western culture imperialism across the world, which is erasing local traditions and replacing them with cell phones, McDonalds, and radios. However, anthropologists dismissed this because of three things: cultural imperialism assumes the citizens do not have the means of resisting anything of Western origin; non-Western music, food, and material have been able to integrate into Western Europe and the United States, and ignores the fact that cultural forms and practices sometimes move around the world, without ever reaching the West.

[edit] Cultural Hybridity

Anthropologists were not satisfied with the discourse of cultural imperialism, so they began to search for alternative ways of understanding global cultural flows. That is when the phrase borrowing-with-modification came to be. Borrowing cultural forms or practices from elsewhere always involves borrowing-with-modification. This phrase refers to the idea that people never adopt blindly, but always adopt what they borrow for local purposes. In other words people rarely accepted ideas, practices or objects from elsewhere without finding a way of adapting them to local practices in order to serve local purposes. This form of cultural change is very different from having something from elsewhere forced upon you, like cultural imperialism suggests. ^[18]

[edit] References

"Female Genital Mutilation: A Call to Action",Troubia N: New York, New York, Women, Ink, 1993. 48 p.

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