In May 2003, CESR hosted Arundhati Roy, recipient of the Lannan Award for Cultural Freedom. These introductory remarks were offered by Roger Normand, CESR's Executive Director. For more information on the the event, please click here.
On behalf of the Center for Economic and Social Rights, let me start by thanking you for coming to share in this evening of solidarity and truth-telling. All of us at CESR are honored to be part of the beautiful spirit present here tonight.
I know that we are all eagerly anticipating Arundhati Roy's talk, but I hope you won't mind if I take some time to tell you a little about how CESR got started and what we do.
Three weeks after the first Gulf War in 1991, a group of graduate students traveled to Iraq for the purpose of collecting accurate information about the human face of "collateral damage." We were young, idealistic, and outraged by the uncritical media, and therefore public, acceptance of the Pentagon's carefully packaged drama of clean war and smart weapons. Above all, we didn't like being lied to by our own government. And we still don't like being lied to, especially not in the name of freedom and democracy.
We traveled throughout Iraq and came to learn the real lesson of modern war: bomb now, die later. We found that the entire civilian infrastructure had been destroyed: electric power stations, water and sewage plants, food warehouses, factories, phone lines, roads, and bridges. Hospitals could no longer refrigerate medicines. People couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap for a glass of clean water. We documented a three-fold increase in child mortality due largely to simple diarrhea.
Our research made front-page news around the world. Officials in both Washington and Baghdad deplored the tragic loss of life but simply blamed it on each other. The UN Security Council discussed the need for humanitarian relief while continuing to impose economic sanctions. No one accepted responsibility for the undeniable fact that Iraqis were dying every day-especially children of the poor and powerless.
Two years after the Iraq mission, we established the Center for Economic and Social Rights to challenge this kind of injustice as a violation of international human rights. We seek legal accountability for those who create and perpetuate the crime of poverty. Our mandate is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which recognizes that rights to health, education, housing, food, work, and social security are as fundamental to human dignity as the right of free expression.
When we started as a three-person outfit here in New York, economic and social rights had been ignored globally for decades, another victim of Cold War politics. In the past ten years, we've been very fortunate to participate in a movement to reclaim the meaning of human rights through engagement with community struggles for social justice. Let me briefly describe what this means in practice:
- In Ecuador, we worked with a coalition of indigenous peoples, environmental groups, and scientists to document massive toxic dumping by oil companies in the Amazon rainforest, establish a community monitoring system, and launch a national human rights campaign that forced the government and companies to reform their unlawful practices.
- In the Occupied Territories, we worked with a network of over 70 Palestinian groups to prepare the first reports documenting and challenging Israeli violations of economic and social rights. We also serve on the steering committee of the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, a national effort to change unjust American policy.
- In Nigeria, jointly with a local human rights group, we submitted the first economic and social rights petition to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights, resulting in a landmark ruling that condemned the government for violating the Ogoni people's rights to adequate food, health, and housing.
- We helped establish the International Network on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, a global alliance of organizations and individuals committed to eliminating poverty through human rights. As secretariat of the Network, CESR is bringing several hundred activists to Thailand next month to share strategies and build solidarity.
- And right here in the United States, where unprecedented material wealth coexists far too comfortably with the highest levels of child poverty and economic inequality in the industrialized world, CESR works on a wide range of domestic human rights projects. We are an active member of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a national initiative led by grassroots organizations and inspired by the Reverend Martin Luther King's appeal, just before his murder, for a new mass movement to achieve economic rights for all Americans.
In all this work, our guiding purpose is not only to enforce human rights law and change destructive policies, but equally to help marginalized communities, and the broader public, reconceptualize the struggle against poverty as a matter of justice rather than charity.
Justice is in short supply these days, especially where the US government is concerned. Now that American Cruise missiles have "liberated" Iraq, our government will try to convince the public to forget all those promises about democracy and instead start getting very scared and very angry about the imminent threat posed by Iran or Syria-or perhaps France. CESR will do its utmost to keep faith with the people of Iraq by holding the Anglo-American military occupation accountable under international law-first, for ending the occupation as soon as possible, and, in the meantime, for guaranteeing human rights to education and health rather than corporate rights to profit and plunder. We will be working closely with one of the most respected authorities on Iraq-former UN Humanitarian Coordinator Hans von Sponeck-to establish an office in Iraq and continue to advocate for human rights.
We know that you share our concerns and hope that you will support our commitment to this work.
Margaret Mead has famously said that we should never underestimate the ability of a small group of committed people to change the world. Today in Washington, there is a small group of fanatics and fundamentalists putting her idea into practice, with terrifying results. But they have set into motion not just the destruction that we all can witness, but also a popular liberation that is not yet fully visible. This liberation depends on each and every one of us. We cannot afford the luxury of despair. We are responsible to our children, to each other, and most of all to the world itself, which did not allow us to be born so that we might allow it to be destroyed.
And, finally, we must never underestimate the ability of a large group of committed people to change our world. Tonight represents an important collective step in our march toward justice.
Speaking of a better world, I'd like to take a moment to recognize some of the folks who have contributed so much to this event, with apologies to the many more who are appreciated but must go unnamed.
In choosing a venue, we first turned to Carol Nixon, director of the Mission and Social Justice Commission of The Riverside Church. We thank Carol and the Social Justice staff-especially Quelyn Purdie and Marie Burgos-as well as the Commission's Global Peace and Justice Ministry, for making this event possible with grace and good humor. We also thank Reverend Forbes, Michèle Ivey, Tinoa Rodgers, Rob Vivona, and the entire staff of The Riverside Church for their tremendous hospitality in allowing over three thousand of us to celebrate in their house tonight.
For twenty-five years, South End Press has brought us the words of Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, and so many other sane voices in insane times. After the program ends at 8:30pm, South End books, including War Talk and Power Politics, will be available right here in the Cloister Lounge, courtesy of the Community Bookstore of Park Slope. You will also find informational materials there from CESR and several other organizations.
Our thanks to the Pacifica Foundation, WBAI, and Democracy Now! for broadcasting tonight's program, and more importantly, for breaking the corporate media monopoly through the people's radio.
Iara Lee and Caipirinha Productions came to our rescue in a crunch, and we're grateful for their generous support of CESR.
Last and most, thanks and praises to Anthony Arnove, who knows the true meaning of progressive solidarity because he lives it every day, and to Jacob Park for all his hard work, and above all to Brenda Coughlin, who really pulled this event together with remarkable talent, enthusiasm, and a great big heart.
Before turning the podium over to Patrick Lannan, let us all salute the generosity of the Lannan Foundation for supporting this event. We also thank Lannan's Board and staff-especially Laurie Betlach, Jaune Evans, and Frank Lawler-for the courage to recognize visionary and humane writers and to promote cultural freedom, creative expression, and the rights of indigenous communities.
Let me close by expressing deep appreciation to Arundhati Roy for inspiring us all to work toward a better world with her insight, passion, and compassion.