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Alongside austerity measures we have been bombarded with economic questions and arguments: “what is the economic added value of your request, what is the return on investment, it’s impossible to respond positively to your demands considering the requirement to balance spending with expenditures (on our demands to reduce poverty, to ensure an adequate minimum income, etc)”.

Therefore, more and more civil society organsiations are feeling pressure from decision makers to use economic arguments to defend their proposals. I cannot count the number of occasions that we have heard “it is austerity for everybody and everyone has to accept a cut”. Last Thursday we had the chance to meet with Jan Jarab, Regional Representative of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and had a very interesting discussion on the risks of using economic arguments. Mainly they run the risk of overshadowing human rights arguments.

Jan took the example of deinstitutionalisation in the USA (i.e ensuring that children, or persons with disabilities, are placed in communities with individual support instead of institutions). Some research demonstrates that it is less costly to have independent living structures rather than institutions; other research demonstrates exactly the opposite. The issue with an economic argument is that once you enter into it, you are trapped in a vicious circle where your opponent can use different statistics or economic arguments to defeat yours. As human rights defenders, we know that placing people in big institutions is not the most appropriate action: depending on their needs and situation, children and adults are better off with their families and communities, in locations that offer community based services, or in foster care.

I keep in mind from the meeting with Jan that we need to be careful of economic arguments and that we should keep a close eye on those making them for we have a fundamentally different approach. For civil society organisations in the wealthiest economic region of the world, human rights come first and the economy second. However we are not turning a deaf ear to the economy and we don’t want to be alienated from it but for us the economy must be at the service of people’s well being.

So thank you Jan for that great intervention before our members,

Let’s engage!

Pierre Baussand – Director