“Rights Are Entitlements That People Demand” - Dr. Annan

Rights are entitlements that people demand:” a conversation with Dr. Isaac Annan, Deputy Director, Human Rights Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice

Ghana’s human rights record comes up for review at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, in November 2017.

The review is conducted under the UN Universal Period Review (UPR) with submissions from civil society groups and government. Prior to the review, about 70 civil society groups under the Ghana Human Rights NGOs Forum held a pre-UPR submission workshop in Accra, Ghana, in March. Dr. Isaac Annan, Deputy Director in charge of Human Rights at CHRAJ addressed participants at the workshop.

A few days later, I sat down with Dr. Annan in his office to probe his perspective on human rights in Ghana. Introducing myself as an ACILA/Fulbright researcher, I told Annan that I was interested in learning more about the challenges that Ghanaians face in securing and defending human rights in the country. He immediately responded by challenging my own definition of human rights, asserting a much more profound and complex understanding than common American and European notions of human rights. Our provocative conversation ranged across issues of international cooperation, democracy, education, class dynamics, political promises, and people’s power. The text is lightly edited for length.

JH: So tell me a bit about yourself and how you came to a certain perspective on human rights?

IA: I started here, from 1993 when the commission was set up. I studied law in Ghana, then did my masters in human rights at Essex University, then my PhD at Leeds, emphasizing economic, cultural, and social rights, specifying the right to development as a human right. I was taking a cue from, motivated by, provisions that the most secure democracies are those that provide the basic necessities, including education, housing. That was where my research focused. So I’m de-emphasizing human rights within the context of civil liberties. And deconstructing human rights as seen by intellectuals and lawyers, human rights from purely American perspectives. So my thesis is about securing human rights and whether after two decades, human rights in Ghana are secure. I did it in the context of international cooperation, the role of international development partners, whether they have an obligation to our states given the non-availability of resources to implement economic, social, and cultural rights.

JH: So do you find that frustrating, when you’re working with the US and the US sees human rights in the narrow way?

IA: Yes, I find that frustrating. Because when the US talks about human rights, it’s about liberty. And the average Ghanaian intellectual, a lawyer, or the elite understands human rights this same way, from the perspective of, you know, right to vote, freedom of the press, and those sorts of civil liberties. Academia has not been able to rise above that. So if you review law programs, then they’re talking about legal rights and you don’t have talk of human rights apart from legal education, which is so narrow. Human rights is not taught as a core subject in most faculties of law. They are electives. And where it is taught, I wonder about the background of those who are teaching it. Because of our background, we came from a revolutionary background, a dictatorship, so people have understood rights to be freedom of the press, freedom to participate in the electoral process, etc. Freedoms.

Freedom means that people are free to form political parties, you have a voice. And that ended the debate. And then there are politicians telling you that we have promised to give you rights. You don’t promise to give people rights. So that is where I see a real poverty of ideas, a real deficit. That’s my position. And that is one of the major findings of my thesis. Because rights are entitlements. There’s a great deception among politicians that they’re giving people rights. You don’t give rights. Rights are entitlements that people demand.

JH: A part of CHRAJ’s work is collecting reports of human rights abuses…what are the challenges you face in getting people to come forward?

AI: Our services are free. And we’ve done a lot of public education so they easily can walk into our offices and just lodge their complaint. I think you are going back to the American way of thinking, that people are tortured or intimidated. There’s no inhibition. In Ghana the challenge we have, and I’m going to say it forcefully, people don’t understand the whole gamut of rights that they have, that they have to demand. So if the average elite says they are championing human rights in Ghana, ask them what are human rights. Because human rights are about making sure that the most vulnerable and marginalized can gain access to basic necessities. So this whole thing about the negative rights, preventing the state from interfering in civil society, from torturing, it’s not very relevant. You can’t talk about torture in Ghana.

It is nonexistent. So what are the rights that Ghanaians should be focusing on, and that is the question. So the ordinary man, he might not understand why this institution even exists. Because he’s been made to understand that human rights is about voting every four years, to change government, because there was a dictator. So when you come to pick one at the ballot box, you have the right to participate, the right to vote, even criticize the president.

But voting is not the real issue with regard to human rights. Not the real thing, which is holding public servants accountable.

JH: So I see your point, you are saying that the biggest challenge is to change that point of view so people should know that’s their right an they should always be demanding it.

IA: They should be holding public servants accountable. If the school is not fixed, if they went to the hospital and they can’t get the doctor to look after them, this has not been perceived as a human rights issue. So there must be a whole movement to deconstruct this understanding of human rights. Otherwise, I can tell you, people will be angry that they’ve been deceived. They were told that when they got rid of the dictator, they would get the basic necessities. I will also tell you that most complaints do not even get to human rights institutions. What I know through observation is that when people undergo classical rights violations, where the policeman has arrested me unlawfully or harassed me, then they go to the radio station.

So the media is very effective in addressing those, what some people would call “first generation rights.” Such as “I was not allowed to vote,” or “I didn’t get my voter’s registration.” So those are the things they see as rights, voting and media freedom, the removal of criminal libel. But if you are only shouting and you cannot get the basic necessities, and those who even shout are not the ordinary people because they have no voice. It’s the elites who access the media.

Though now we have radio stations which do programs in local languages. But we need to understand that human rights goes beyond just voting or just media freedom.

JH: So how do you do that then?
IA: So now, an institution like this needs to set the agenda to educate the people to know that human rights goes beyond what we’ve been doing over the past twenty years. We have a constitutional body, maybe you’ll have to go and interview them, the National Centre for Civic Education, the NCCE, their constitutional mandate is to create awareness and one of their challenges is to get people to know what their rights are.

And I can bet you, I’m sure, when you get the educators on rights, the average view is about what Americans see as human rights.

JH: Do you think there’s a difference between how the Mahama government saw human rights and the current government?

IA: That is still the problem that I’m having because what are human rights that you are saying that somebody….I can say with authority that all the governments since we became a constitutional republic have respected human rights. So unless you can pinpoint something.

JH: Yes, so I completely agree that human rights also means your right to an education, your right to lead a healthy life, to feel secure in your house…

IA: Along those lines, you know, you are looking at political manifestos, in terms of civil liberties, all the political parties have passed that test, what is contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

What rather is coming now is all this thing about vigilante groups, the parties having their own police or security guards as a danger to rights. What is human rights when impugnity reigns? So when you trace rights from regimes, look at the institutions. Look at the Electoral Commission, that’s the body that respects the right to vote, and government does not interfere. And I can tell you in this commission, since 1993, nobody has come to intimidate me. So you can say that for this commission. I don’t know for the judges, at the end of the day, the judiciary is the last stop in a democracy.

So I can say that the political parties over the years have respected rights within the confines of civil and political rights and you have active civil society which keeps the political parties on their toes.

JH: So if human rights also mean all of the social and development side then some people might see the NDC as promoting more that side. Do you see it that way?

IA: That was what NCD was doing, social democracy, the vulnerable people, infrastructure. But NPP also introduced those things earlier when they started national health insurance, the school feeding program. And the NDC also continued with them. But they are doing these things not because they see them as rights. They see them as gifts that they are giving to the people. When it comes to voting, people don’t see these things as gifts. (Through voting), the people call for reforms.

So the basic question of my thesis is, over twenty years, what do you understand as your rights? Are your rights secure? Because if you don’t take care, people will just say, “Ah! This whole thing about democracy and human rights or whatever is not serving my purpose.”

JH: Yes, I agree that the idea of human rights should be much broader, it should include ideas about equality, employment, fairness in the economy, as well.

IA: So one of my conclusions is basically that human rights is equity, equality, nondiscrimination. So if you are giving me voting rights every time and you talk about human rights in terms of human dignity, to enhance the dignity of man,, then what if I can’t get food to eat, I can’t access basic services? Then my dignity is gone.

JH: I completely agree.
IA: Then human rights become discriminatory. There’s a whole thing on human rights and poverty. At the minimum, people should get access to education, health, basic necessities. If you don’t take care, people will tell you that that dictators are better because they provide you with basic needs for the people. What has happened in Ghana is capture of political power by elites. And so, ok, democracy is about elections. You wait, and you also become part of the elite who can capture power.

The elite in this context is not about the educated but people who get access to power and resources and that is what that the ordinary people know about democracy, you wait and your time will come, democracy is about patience. It’s about due process. Wait and your due process will come to you. If you get real understanding of human rights, then the politicians become just strategists who will just be overseeing. And that’s real people’s power. But I see it as a very long journey, a generational thing. And it must start from the universities. If you go to any ordinary university, I was just at a debate about a week ago, they were debating human rights, that was the topic. It was done in the department of philosophy. So what is this right, is it for the individual? And that is where the problem comes.

That is the American model, that the individual should not be violated. But human rights are connected to the community. So when you focus only on the individual, you don’t provide that community, that group, with the rights that we are talking about here. That’s why there is a peculiarity when it comes to the African Charter on on Human and People’s Rights. And that is the only charter in the world that talks about the right to development as a human right.

So there should be a strong movement to reshape the thinking of the average educated Ghanaian. Human rights is not just a legal issue. It’s a basic subject that everybody must learn.