Last week, on Thursday, the world celebrated the International Human Rights Day. Celebrate is perhaps a strange word to use. Many people across the world, including Europe, do not have access to their rights and the rights they do have are abused and disregarded. It that something to celebrate?
In Europe, supposedly a continent where rights are enshrined in laws and treaties, we find that the understanding and definitions of rights will vary. Last Thursday, I was in a meeting about developing the concept of social rights in Europe. Social rights in Europe should be obvious and available for all, yet access to adequate housing, minimum income and other social services is seriously challenged by the priority being given to economic growth and the lack of investment in social infrastructure and social protection. We also know that there are contradictions in social rights across Europe depending on origin, gender and age. The current migration challenge in Europe shows us that we may believe in social rights, but they are not universally applied. The real problem is not the lack of social rights in Europe but the movement from rights to norms and policies that automatically translate rights into actions that are accessible and available to all.
At the European level, we see that there is a lack of thinking about rights and norms when we look at the European Semester. It is almost entirely focused on economic growth rather than social well-being. But as diaconal organisations, we cannot just sit back and complain about this. We need to get involved to elicit change. On 3-4 December, our members in the Czech Republic started that engagement, holding a two-day seminar on how to get more involved in EU actions to ensure people-focused policies.
So we might be celebrating the fact we have human rights, and we should, but we must not forget that there is still a long way to go before we can claim that rights are accessible and acted on. Let’s continue to work on that together!
Have a good week,
Heather