Wheels World

Hello world!

Well I’ve decided to start posting again. But first off, may I point you to an organisation that I think is worth supporting. Engineers Without Borders. It is yet another ‘aid’ NGO. But I like that is very focussed on fixing problems, ‘on-the-ground’. As an engineer myself, I also perhaps have more appreciation for what they do, in trying to provide basic power, clean water, sewage and communications, sustainably, to isolated communities. And in some ways it is easier to evaluate the organisation’s effectiveness, in comparison to some other NGOs. It also seeks the co-operation of governments where it does work. An advantage of being non-political.

I have been a member of Amnesty International for a long time, but am considering moving my money to Engineers Without Borders, instead of splitting money between them. I very much do believe in many of the general goals of Amnesty, but I’m not certain that I like their broadening of their mandate a few years ago. Amnesty has decided to work on economic and cultural rights, in addition to the goals they are better known for (and which I am happy with), like –

• to free all prisoners of conscience
• to ensure a prompt and fair trial for all political prisoners
• to abolish the death penalty, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
• to end extrajudicial executions and “disappearances”
• to fight impunity by working to ensure perpetrators of such abuses are brought to justice in accordance with international standards

I think concentrating on a narrow set of well defined goals is good. And trying to meet basic physical needs (as EWB does, in a culturally sensitive way) seems to appeal to me more then more philosophical goals – goals which may sometimes (to my thinking at the moment) conflict with each other. In human rights, it seems to me that there is a clear cultural bias, that says that some actions are wrong, and some are right. I don’t see a problem with this. So what does it mean to incorporate “cultural rights”, when the traditions of a culture may conflict with human rights)? There seems to be a conflict of interest there, and the only solution would seem to be that AI will have to be judgemental and say ‘to hell with your cultural rights’.

And is there no potential for conflicts between economic rights and civil/political rights?  If this situation comes up I expect that AI will throw out being holistic, and weigh one over the other, which is probably exactly what the government being criticised will be doing, and that government may say that they are implementing what they believe is the best compromise solution.  So why should Amnesty’s weighting be right?

Maybe I am misunderstanding something, or ‘human rights’ is too complicated for me. Not that I disagree with the actions of any of the campaigns that I’m aware of, but perhaps the higher level goals are more nebulous then I am entirely comfortable with. (Though some goals are very sharp, like campaigning for the abolition of the death penalty, in countries that have it. Always. Which I totally support. I also entirely agree with their stance on asylum seekers, in Australia. And their views on “rendition“.)

Amnesty also has a relatively huge funding base already – so perhaps I want to support a more grassroots type of organisation.