<html><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div>George, Ben, Fred's recent clarifications have helped me understand this in a way that is helpful to the 'community-organizing' and mobilization tasks we face:</div><div> </div><div>Rather than abstract, culture and value laden "human-rights", we can productively focus on hard-fought (and )won "legal rights". Ultimately, the example of the Field Act in California which provides building regulatory mechanisms for school construction is about citizens winning the right to safer schools through specific legal obligations of government and school districts to establish and follow processes that ensure safe construction... </div><div><br></div><div>We can bring together our own strengths in communicate with professionals with the urgent need to engage the much wider grass roots interest in safe schools in the struggle for the legal regulatory frameworks that begin to ensure safe schools. </div><div><br></div><div>We can move our own colleagues to get past the usual panacea of "building codes" (which most countries have but does NOT confer any legal right to safe buildings).... to focus on fighting for the "legal right to safe schools through appropriate building regulatory mechanisms". This distinction may seem small, but I think ultimately could prove very helpful to getting us over the next hill.</div><div><br></div><div>Cheers,</div><div>Marla</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div>On Jan 31, 2009, at 4:12 AM, George Kent wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>Ben, with your (and everyone's) indulgence, I would like to expand on the two paragraphs of yours that are copied at the bottom of this email.<br><br>Those comments of yours responded to my saying:<br><br><br>". . . it is possible to imagine laws that say people are legally entitled to safe schools for their children. Ordinary [people] could be given assistance in making their own assessments of the quality of schools, and they could be given means through which to submit complaints when they believe the standards are not met.<br><br>This rights-based approach should be linked to efforts to increase transparency. There should be clear standards for construction, and the general public should be informed about these standards, in ways that are appropriate for non-experts."<br><br><br>I was not clear enough when I said that. In my work on rights, I am now making a sharp distinction between rights-based social systems in general, as a generic concept, and the particular concrete manifestation of that form in the current international human rights system. Generically, rights-based social systems are any systems that involve some people having rights, other people having corresponding obligations to ensure that those rights are realized, and institutional arrangements for accountability to make sure those who have the obligations do what they are supposed to do. One can have such systems in schools, prisons, hospital, villages, etc. The rights can be drawn from any source.<br><br>Having made this distinction, we should not assume that all conversations about rights are about the the HUMAN rights system that is managed through the United Nations.<br><br>On this basis, I am exploring the idea that national (and other) governments might see that they could use home-grown rights-based systems to help meet their own goals. In our China example, this could be a way of drawing the general public into a system for holding builders and others accountable. Civil society could be part of the process by which government fights corruption. That system and the standards used need not have any relationship to those set up at the global level. With this approach, the rights system becomes an asset for the government, and would not be viewed as a burden imposed on it.<br><br>The idea here is to shift from viewing rights mainly in terms of a national government’s obligations to submit to outsiders’ standards to instead seeing a system of rights as a tool through which national governments can pursue their own goals more effectively. The point is not to submit to outsiders’ standards for school architecture, but to set your own, and to get ordinary people to understand that they have the right and the means to insist that those standards are met.<br>I was glad to hear that there are some pilot projects that are exploring increased community involvement in school safety issues. I wonder if this home-grown approach to rights would be useful in them.<br><br>Aloha, George<br><br><br><br>On Jan 30, 2009, at 12:02 PM, <a href="mailto:bwisner@igc.org">bwisner@igc.org</a> wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I have mixed feeling about the use of rights language. There are so many compelling reasons why children should be safeguarded without reference to an abstraction like "rights of the child" or "human rights." While I don't personally deny the existence of universal human rights, in some cultural context at particular historical moments it may be easier to get the work of school protection done by reference to cultural injunctions in the Koran, to the economic value of children, etc., etc.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">In this discussion that began about China but is now broader, some of use have tended toward taking a more pragmatic approach whilst others have tended to insist on upholding principles. I suspect despite these tendencies, our views overlap. As you yourself noted in your experience in working with the Chinese on food quality issues, sometimes it is necessary work horizontally, expert to expert and bracket political philosophical issues.<br></blockquote><br><br></div></blockquote></div><br><div apple-content-edited="true"> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Arial; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0; "><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); 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