The Relation Between Democracy and Human Rights

                  This post is a summary of the article with the title above publishe at  https://www.sociostudies.org/almanac/articles/the_relation_between_democracy_and_human_rights/

                Human rights protect the essencial areas of a human existence, which are necessary for survival and for life as a human being. Human rights are those rights that belong to everyone as a member of the human race. In their legal dimension, human rights are part of a legal system and individuals living in this legal system are entitled to these rights. The legal dimension of human rights is a positive achievement of human history. The process of strengthening international law and of a global institutionalization of the implementation and protection of human rights is necessary. From a procedural point of view, the human rights serve as a basis for a political opinion-building and decision-making process allowing every human being political participation. Human rights protect democratic processes.  If one looks closer at this aspect of the historical dimension of human rights, one can see that usually experiences of injustices trigger a common feeling that humanity should stop these injustices, get rid of them and avoid them in the future. The moral dimension of human rights creates an awareness of the constant challenge of a legal and political reality which neither realizes nor respects human rights completely. This awareness includes the corresponding moral obligation and responsibility of everyone to enhance the implementation of the human rights of every individual in his or her sphere of influence. The universality of human rights shows the significance of the moral dimension of human rights. By definition, human rights are rights that apply to all human beings and are therefore universal. The universality of human rights is constantly challenged by particular interests, for example, by states which claim the priority of their sovereignty or by the private sector which claims self-regulating approaches. These challenges are part of the political and legal dimension of human rights and as a consequence of the moral dimension of human rights as well. Discussing the relation between democracy and human rights it is of significance to emphasize firstly that democracy is based on the human right to participate in the political decision process (Article 21 of the UDHR). Human rights and democracy go hand in hand as democracy is the political system which embodies the autonomy of the individual. The perception of violations of human rights in one's own living context leads to recognition of one's own responsibility for the cause of human rights and one's own self-understanding as a global citizen with his responsibility for the realization of human rights. Human rights are the frame of reference for a democracy. Different forms to guarantee the respect within a democratic system are known, for example, the constitution, the supreme court, etc. Human rights education address the naive assumption that every human being is born democratic and with competencies to participate in a democratic decision-making process. Educating citizens in their human rights creates an informed society which in turn strengthens democracy. Human rights education is essential for the prevention of human rights abuses, the promotion of non-discrimination, equality and sustainable development, and the enhancement of people's participation in democratic processes. Human rights education contributes to the functioning of democracy. The fundamental role of human rights education is to empower citizens to defend their own rights and those of others. This empowerment constitutes an important investment for the future, aimed at achieving a just society in which all human rights of all persons are valued and respected. The idea of 'empowerment' means the capability to determine one's own present and future with awareness of one's own rights and to participate actively in the political process. To conclude emphasizing that democracy and human rights go hand in hand. This means that every human being has a right to democracy. Can human rights also be realized in a political and legal system which is not democratic? No, human rights can not be fully implemented if the political and legal system is not democratic as every human being's participation in decision-making processes is protected by human rights. The complex relationship between democracy and human rights shows the need for education in democracy which overcomes the reductionist understanding of democracy to recognize only the will of the majority. Human rights education is a 'must have' and not a 'nice to have' in today's pluralistic society where human rights enable us to live in peaceful coexistence with respect for the human dignity of each other and with tolerance across the boundaries of traditions, religions, world views and opinions, where human rights empower the individual to participate in a democratic decision-making process.

GDP Growth 2019

                This post is a summary of the chapter one with the title of, "The Great Lockdown"of the book with the title of, "World Economic Outlook," published in April 2020 at   https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2020/04/14/weo-april-2020

               The world has changed dramatically, a pandemic scenario had been raised as a possibility in previous discussions, but none of us had a meaningful sense of what it would look like. We now encounter a grim reality, where exponential growth of contagion means 100 infected become 10,000 in a matter of a few days. This crisis is like no other. It is very likely that this year the global economy will experience its worst recession since the Great Depression. The Great Lockdown, as one might call it, is projected to shrink global growth dramatically. A recovery is projected for 2021. This crisis will need to be dealt with two phases: a phase of containment and stabilization followed by the recovery phase. In both phases public health and economic policies have crucial roles to play. Quarantines and lockdowns are critical for slowing transmission, giving the health care system time to handle the surge in demand and buying time for researchers to try to develop therapies. While the economy is shut down, policymakers will need to ensure that people are able to meet their needs and that business can pick up once the acute phases of the pandemic pass. Advanced economieswith well-equipped health care systems, and the privilege of issuing reserve currencies are relatively better placed to weather this crisis. Several emerging market without similar assets will need help from bilateral creditors and international financial institutions. Multilateral cooperation will be key. In addition to sharing equipment and expertise to reinforce health care systems, a global effort must ensure that when therapies and vaccines are developed both rich and poor nations have immediate access. Finally, it is worth thinking about measures that could be adopted to prevent something like the pandemic from happening again. Greater and more automatic information exchange on unusual infection, earlier and more widespread deployment of testing, building global stockpiles of personal protective equipment, could enhance the security of both public health and the global economy. Global growth is projected at -3.0% in 2020, an outcome far worse than during the 2009 global financial crisis. As of early April 2020 the path of the COVID-19 pandemic remains uncertain. Strong containment efforts in place to slow the spread of the virus may need to remain in force for longer than the first half of the year if the pandemic proves to be more persistent than assumed. Effective policies are essential to forestall worse outcomes. As a first priority, resources should be made available for health care systems to cope with the surging need for their services. This means expanding public spending on additional testing, hiring medical professionals, purchasing protective equipment and ventilators, and expanding isolation wards in hospitals. Beyond strengthening health care systems, policies will need to limit the propagation of the health crisis to economic activity by shielding people and firms affected by necessary containment measures, minimizing persistent scarring effects from the unavoidable severe slowdown, and ensuring that the economic recovery can begin quickly once the pandemic fades. Commodity prices have decreased sharply since October 2019, hit hard by the COVID-19 outbreak in late January. Oil prices colapsed further in March as the OPEC coalition broke down, unable to reach agreement on how to react to the weak oil demand outlook. The IMF's food and beverage price index increased by 0.1% since October 2019 driven by cereals, orange, seafood and coffee, which recorded substantial price increases, while the prices of meat, tea, wool and cotton declined. Food prices are projected to decrease by 2.6% in 2020.  Below the GDP growth in 2019 from the greatest growth to the lowest of each list. The first list is for countries in the Americas and the other is for the rest of the world.

GDP 2019 in PanAmerican countries                                 Rest of the World

Guyana   4.7%                                                                       Ethiopia   9.0%          

Guatemala  3.6%                                                                    Vietnam   7.0%

Colombia   3.3%                                                                      China    6.1%

Panama   3.0%                                                                       Philippines  5.9%

Bolivia   2.8%                                                                           Egypt  5.6%

Honduras   2.7%                                                                     Ireland    5.5%

U.S.A   2.3%                                                                            India  4.2%

Peru    2.2%                                                                             Portugal    2.2%

Costa Rica   2.1%                                                                  South Korea   2.0%

Canada  1.6%                                                                          Spain   2.0%

Brazil   1.1%                                                                            Australia   1.8%

Chile    1.1%                                                                            U.K.   1.4%

Uruguay    0.2%                                                                       France 1.3%

Paraguay     0.2%                                                                     Sweden   1.2% 

Ecuador   0.1%                                                                         Japan  0.7%

Mexico   -0.1%                                                                         Germany   0.6%

Argentina    -2.2%                                                                     Italy   0.3%

Nicaragua    -3.9%                                                                    South Africa    0.2%

Venezuela    -35.0%

Data Witnessing: Attending to Injustice With Data in Amnesty International's Decoders Project

               This post is a summary of an article with the title above published in 2019 at   file:///C:/Users/Luciano/Downloads/Data_witnessing_attending_to_injustice_with_data_i.pdf

        

               Bearing witness is said to be at the heart of Amnesty International's culture, evident in its combination of volunteer's networks and documenting abuses. Amnesty's earliest activities in the 1960s involved compiling information about political prisoners and mobilising volunteers to advocate for their release, including through letters, petitions, candle-lit vigils, supporting their families and the "adoption" of prisoners. In 1973, Amnesty introduced "Urgent Actions" to their repertoire of activities. These were transnational campaigns against abuses often involving mass letters, fax and email writing to parties considered responsible. This article examines how Amnesty's practices of documenting and responding to abuses have been extended, modified and redistributed by means of data and digital technologies, focusing on its Decoders initiative ( https://decoders.amnesty.org ). Founded in 2016, Amnesty Decoders describes itself as an innovative platform for volunteers around the world to use their computers or phones to help our researchers sift through pictures, information and documents. The concept of 'data witnessing' characterise how data is involved in attending to situations of injustice in Decoders projects, as a conspicuously collective. Unlike accounts which emphasize a singular witness present at the scene, the work of Amnesty Decoders involves human and non-human actors to attend to the systemic scale of injustice at a distance, across space and time. Emphasize the role of digital technologies in facilitating witnessing through the production and sharing of media content. The professor Chouliaraki defines 'digital witnessing' as 'the moral engagement with distant suffering through mobile media, by means of recording, uploading and sharing,' The proliferation of devices capable of producing and distributing online content is said to enable "distant witnessing, citizen witnessing." This represent a shift from the singular experiences of individuals which are surfaced through textual practices. An Amnesty proposal called 'Alt Click' sought to explore how to utilise large volumes of digital data to advance advocacy against abuses, as well as how digital technologies might enable 'deeper and 'more meaningful' forms of volunteer engagement beyond social media sharing and signing online petitions. By conbining these aspirations, the project would enable volunteers to become 'human rights monitors' contributing to information and research challenges through a global digital action platform. The project sought to render historical human rights situations legible through data at scale and across space and time, by translating archival documents into structured data. The data witnessing apparatus in this project was intended to render past injustices and Amnesty's work intelligible at a distance through the addition of structured data fields, connecting historical events and contemporary volunteers through engagement with organisational memory. In the project above, data witnessing involves the 'parameterisation' of situation of injustice, articulating actors, relations, events, spatiality, temporality and activity as data. This schematisation of that which is witnessed is co-produced through a combination of existing materials of varying levels of proximity to situations of injustice (eg. archives, images, reports, tweets, emails). In shifting from individual testimony to the commensuration, quantification and analysis of injustice 'at a distance' through data, might this displace or distract from compassion for the individual that is elicited by testimony from those present in space and time? The above projects suggest that Amnesty campaigners assume that these data witnessing experiments will not function in isolation, but in tandem with other research and activities (online and offline).

International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims - 2020

                  Almost two weeks ago, precisely on 24th March, the world celebrated the day to remember the victims of human rights violations and their fight for truth, justice and dignity. So, this post is a tribute to all victims that suffered injustice and died without have it, to all human rights defenders who helps to bring justice and truth for anyone looking for them, and to all victims that are fighting now for truth, justice and dignity. We all should participate in this fight because as I said before, it is very important to fight against injustice. Without justice the violations could spread and reach you and we all would become slaves in the nightmare called dystopia that would become a new system increasingly difficult to combat. Therefore, help fight human rights violations and injustice, when many abuses have systematically been done for so long time is very important.  Do not think you are unreachabel and the evil will never reach you and your family. Even if the suffering of other do not annoy you, think in yourself and protect you helping to do justice with the violations happening now. The systematic violations, the impunity, the daily bullying in the mainstream media, the threats online and offline exist to do the victims give up to fight for justice and reparations. Besides, the violations, the systematic abuses, the daily humiliation and the impunity can have a dehumanizing effect in the population, trying us accept what can not be accepted, do not let this happen to you, the solidarity and the emphaty are the essence of the human being. This post is a summary of two articles. The first was published at https://mw.one.un.org/the-secretary-general-message-on-the-international-day-for-the-right-to-the-truth-concerning-gross-human-rights-violations-and-for-the-dignity-of-victims/. The second was published at   https://klubzaun.com/en/2018/03/international-day-for-the-right-to-the-truth-concerning-gross-human-rights-violations-and-for-the-dignity-of-victims/

               The International Day for the Right to the Truth Concerning Human Rights Violations honours the memory of victims of heinous and systematic abuses. The day coincides with the anniversary of the murder of Monsignor Oscar Romero, who was killed four decades ago for speaking out against injustice and impunity in El Salvador. On this day, we honour the bravery and determination of victims, civil society representatives and community leaders around the world who relentlessly strive for a better future, guided by the compass of human dignity. Their efforts to uncover the truth about human rights violations and the circumstances in which they were committed is an inspiration and a service to us all.  Truth opens the path to justice, reparation and healing. It helps us overcome prejudice and polarization. It also helps address the root causes of conflict and prevent its recurrence. As we recognize the courage of human rights defenders everywhere, let us commit to protect those who seek truth and justice, and provide victims with effective remedies and restore their dignity.
                The truth as a phenomenon has always been an inherent element of human existence. Every human being aspires to comprehend the truth, because its absence often leads to the feeling of uncertainty, injustice and despair. These feelings are strong especially in the event of death of the closest relatives, when their torments and deaths remain mysterious and elusive. In that case, an individual loses the faith in other people, and the very human existence is just a platitude. The horrible killings of tens of millions of people during the twentieh century, orchestrated by some countries, do not cease to appall to this day that part of humanity that is dedicated to the democratic values and the humanization of every aspect of private and public life. The High Commissioner for Human Rights conducted several studies that pointed out that the right to the truth concerning human rights violations is an inalienable right, which corresponds to the obligation of every state not only to protect this right, but also to promptly conduct an investigation and enable adequate legal mechanisms for satisfaction. Recognizing the importance of promoting the memory of victims of systematic human rights violations and the importance of the right to truth and justice. Acknowledging, at the same time, the significance of paying tribute to those who have devoted their lives to, and lost their lives in, the struggle to promote and protect human rights for all. Justice and truth belong to every individual and every victim. It is our universal duty to fight for them and to remember all the victims, because this is the only way to "save succeeding generations from the scourge of violations".