• by IPS Correspondents (kuala lumpur)
• Friday, December 09, 1994
• Inter Press Service

KUALA LUMPUR, Dic 09 (IPS) - Western ideas from free-market economics to media are rushing through the world's open borders, and swamped developing countries say they are finding less and less room with which to shape their own destinies.

They say this difficulty, exacerbated in the post-Cold War era's atmosphere of openness, today reflects one of the developing world's biggest problems: the 'violation' of the economic and social rights of peoples and nations in weaker countries.

This is how a group of international activists, meeting in Malaysia earlier this week, sought to 'redefine' what they said was a Northern notion of of human rights that overly focuses the individual, hides its own attempts at imposing its world view around the globe and glosses over nations' right to development.

Instead, they drew from the South's cultures and religions as basis to assert that economic and social rights are as important as civil and political rights and that concept of human rights is as innate to Southerners as it is to Northerners.

"The advocacy if human rights cannot reduced be reduced to a mere slogan such as 'Give me liberty or give me death'," Malaysian Deputy Premier Anwar Ibrahim argued when he addressed the conference during its opening Tuesday.

"While we agree that developing countries must not compromise political and other liberties related to the growth of civil society, we nevertheless regard as paramount the safeguarding of economic and social rights -- rights that ensure decent and humane living conditions for the people," he added.

Some developing nations, Anwar says, have at times done a better job than the North of ensuring citizens' quality of life.

Indeed, delegates agreed that not only has the North failed to match its record at home with what it preaches abroad, its actions are often a key cause as well of weaker nations' poverty, social problems and abuse of rights.

"Since its self-proclaimed 'victory' in the Cold War, the North has found a new confidence in its values and is rehabilitating its right to impose them on other countries," British House of Commons member Jeremy Corbyn said in a paper read at the conference.

Among these imposed values are requirements for poorer nations to follow the free-market economic model of richer countries, even when these drive countries in Asia and Africa into deep debt or force governments to cut social spending.

© Inter Press Service (2014) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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