Page 82 - Rights beautiful : collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

Rights Beautiful Collection of Professor Saneh Chamarik

globally imposed economic development, as we all know. One can of course
keep arguing without end as to the merits and demerits of development
and globalization. The real and ultimate question, nevertheless, is how
the real peoples fare in their varying social and cultural contexts. That is
to say, in terms of human life and blood, not GDP as an end in itself. And
that gives rise to an entirely new dimension of human rights problems.
At this point of human history, then, it is indeed high time to
seriously raise the question of the impact of development and
globalization. Indeed, as Helle Degn succinctly remarks in this very forum,
it is not just the question of economic crime and corruption that is being
involved. Of even more significantly, the whole thing brings in its wake
adverse repercussions on the natural resources and environment and
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thus the integrity of human rights. The whole world now comes to keep
talking about it more often - somewhat on high moral grounds, however.
Few, including even among “human rights defenders” themselves, actually
realize how intimately the life and blood of common people is involved
in the issues of natural resources and environment. This is most obviously
the case with those rural peoples and communities in tropical resource-
based regions. Southeast Asia is one such prime example. Unfortunately,
it is something overlooked within the ranks of ASEAN leaders. Or if ever
appreciated, it is merely in terms of immediate trade and commercial gains,
in the fashion of top-down globalization, and as always at great human
and social costs. Such a state of affairs is obviously and directly concerned
with the question of the right to livelihood and self-reliant development.
One wonders if and to what extent that could be worked out to serve as
the common basis for cooperation and coordination under whatever regional
mechanism we have been talking about.

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Helle Degn, Commissioner of the Council of the Baltic Sea States on Democratic Development,
in presentation on National Human Rights Institutions: Europe, Strasbourg Conference
8 October, 2002.

76 OFFICE OF THE NATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THAILAND