This post is a summary of a report with the title above, published in 2008 at http://blogs.shu.edu/diplomacy/files/archives/07%20Brysk.pdf
Latin America is a paradoxical world leader. In the twentieth century, Latin America leads in unjust societies that can not fulfill the promise of universal human rights despite elections and theoretical rule of law. The "citizenship gap" between developed formal entitlements and distorted life conditions, including massive personal insecurity. L.A.'s experience demonstrates how the rule of law can be systematically undermined by displacement of power, as well as incomplete democratization of state institutions. The persistence of injustice demonstrates the interdependence of democratic processes in the public sphere. This essay will argue that injustice in L.A. is a problem of democratic deficits in function - despite the democratic structure of elections and institutions. The citizenship gap is not an inherent insufficiency of democracy for addressing social problems, as some populists claim, but rather an insufficient application of democracy to functional arenas. The democratic deficit in L.A. can be understood as a failure in the indivisibility, universality and accountability of human rights. Indivisibility indicates the relationship between civil and social rights, while universality demands the extension of these interconnected rights to all citizens regardless of class or status. Accountability is the duty of the state to provide rights, which correspond to citizens's entitlement to claim rights. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights lays the foundation for the interdependence of civil and political rights with social and economic rights, by including civil and political freedoms alongside fundamental requisites of human dignity. Poverty is interwined with lack of access to social rights such as health care and education. Education, in turn, empowers political participation and is highly correlated with access to justice. The remainder of this essay will discuss the dimensions of the contemporary human rights gap in L.A., and assess some measures taken to address it. The discussion will concentrate on the civil and political rights abuses and show how they are influenced by the lack of state accountability and the denial of social and economic rights. Every year, tens of thousands of Latins Americans are denial fundamental rights to life, liberty, and personal integrity by direct government action, indirect state sponsorship, or systematic negligence. The persistence of political murders and disappearances, torture, abusive detention and widespread social violence are symptoms of an epidemic inconsistent with democracy. Murder and disappearances are committed by paramilitaries and are often targeted at political activists, human rights advocates, and civil society leaders. Persisting human rights violations under democratic governments have been specifically addressed by the establishment of national human rights institutions, The national human rights institutions of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, Mexico, and Peru participate in an international network of such bodies linked to the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights, which encourages capacity-building and directs attention to regional themes such as migration, indigenous people, and disability rights. Another way to gauge policy response is to examine the set of measures taken on a high-risk country or issue basis. Brazil is clearly a hot-spot for numerous types of human rights violations, from indentured servitude to abuse of power, thus in 1996, Brazil launched a National Human Rights Plan. With ongoing persecution of human rights advocates, Brazil then introduced a special Program for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders in 2004, but it has lacked sufficient funding and personnel. What can be done to close the citizenship gap in Latin America and to allow democracy to foster freedom from fear? First of all, we must remind ourselves of the ways in which electoral democracy and rule of law do offer new resources for the defense of human rights. Transition to democracy implies the state's hegemony no longer intrinsically requires physical repression and armed conflict ceases. Even partial rule of law provides channels for institutional redorm and opportunities for social mobilization, hence, the distorted version of citizenship in L.A. has historically offered an avenue for the struggles of dispossessed populations. What institutional democracy without full-spectrum rights can not provide is accountability for the relevant forms of power, such as private and unelected coercive state agents. In an era of globalization, L.A. democracy looks like partially liberalized weak states struggling to cope with rising threats to social control. The mandated democratic institutions of legislatures and judiciaries lack traction over actors outside the state. They also can not control unaccountable praetorians insulated by the Executive due to its dependency on their repressive services. Contemporary social conditions short-circuit the historic cycle of expansion of citizenship rights that accompained the rise of modern capitalist democracy chronicled by T.H.Marshall, and the extension of liberal human rights to new groups and expansion to new domains. The prospects for effective state-sponsored human rights reform along current lines are tenous at best. Like the coalition that transformed Latin America's dictatorship to democracies, it will take a renewed effort from international and civil society to secure the new human rights agenda of social rights, accountability, and the deepening of democracy. State-sponsored reforms will be most effective to the extent they incorporate citizens, other democracies, and regional networkd, and when they tackle the complex marginality of second-class citizenship. Injustice is a problem of power, and speaking law to power is the unfinished business of real democracy in Latin America.
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