Human Rights Make Way for Legal Empowerment, Osiatynski Says

Wiktor Osiatynski has witnessed the human rights struggle firsthand, and experienced the changing nature of that power, from the Solidarity movement in his native Poland to his role in writing constitutions for countries in democratic transition, as well as his work with the Open Society Foundations (OSF). In a lecture Nov. 15 at Central European University, Osiatynski outlined the changes in and challenges to human rights in today’s world.

“Human rights are extremely successful as an idea. But the world is a cemetery of ideas. Is there something in human rights that will be useful and durable in changing circumstances?” Osiatynski asked at the beginning of the event, hosted by CEU’s School of Public Policy. Osiatynski is a professor at CEU as well as a member of the OSF Board, together with CEU Founder and Honorary Chairman George Soros, who also attended the event.

Osiatynski highlighted key points in the history of human rights, which began as an “elitist” concept after the end of WWII, resulting in the seminal Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. In the 1970s, in part powered by the struggle against colonialism, human rights lost their elitist character and “became a vehicle for broader social mobilization,” to defend potential victims after the coup in Chile, for example, or to motivate people to advocate change across Eastern Europe, he said.

“I’m afraid human rights have lost this mobilizing power today,” Osiatynski said. Although it may seem that the events of the Arab Spring were motivated by a demand for human rights, outrage over the extent of corruption was the primary factor instigating the uprising in Tunisia, for example, he said. In addition, the commitment of the West to protect human rights has come into question, particularly in the U.S. under the Bush administration.

In many democracies and developing countries, the more pressing issue is exclusion, a lack of access to the rights that are now encoded in constitutions around the world, Osiatynski said. Hence the importance of legal empowerment, i.e., access to justice by vulnerable populations.

“There is a right to water, but the issue is access to water,” Osiatynski explained. “States have become deaf to this issue. Legal empowerment wants to solve problems rather than get laws changed.”

Osiatynski said that this is currently one of the focal points of the OSF’s Human Rights and Governance Grants Program, as well as the key task of the Global Legal Empowerment Initiative of the Open Society Justice Initiative. In Sierra Leone, for example, the latter is developing a recognized, nationwide system of basic justice services provided by paralegals who can provide information and resources to citizens.

Soros, who recently wrote about the issue in the Financial Times, reiterated the significance of legal empowerment during a discussion following the lecture. “It’s not a substitute for human rights, it’s a development of the human rights movement which combines the insistence on rights with issues of development and capacity,” Soros said.

For more information about CEU's School of Public Policy, which is currently recruiting faculty as well as accepting applications for its inaugural class of students to enroll in fall 2013, see http://spp.ceu.hu/.