Human rights and public policy in Mozambique

 Josué Bila (uhurubila@gmail.com)

Text published on 18 April 2009. But, because of the post-election violence in Mozambique (since October 2024), the text remains current.

The opened institutionalization of human rights in Mozambique in 1990 transformed the African country into a stage for debate on individual rights and freedoms, even though this discussion was fragmented and fragmented, due to the new experience and limited knowledge of most authorities and agents of the state and civil society.

In this way, this fragmented discussion meant that the human rights catalogue was largely linked to the police, victims of police abuse, prisons and courts, and not seen as a public policy issue. To begin exercising my right to opinion, I pose the following questions:

1 - Who has the courage to point out that the recent defenseless deaths of 12 inmates by asphyxiation in Mozambican police cells in Nampula is the result of a lack of public policies (in the Administration of Justice institutions)?

2 - Why are the victims of police bullets made more visible in the media, linking them to human rights, while the others, due to lack of hospital care or basic sanitation, are often made invisible in terms of human rights and public policies?

3 - Why have police officers already been tried in court for torturing citizens, while education officers and authorities have never been tried in court for failing to provide a school place for a child?

4 - What is the importance of human rights and public policies?

Police and judicial discourse

In Mozambique, the protection, defense and implementation of human rights has traditionally and publicly fallen victim to the police and judicial discourse, which defends individual freedoms when they are violated by the state. In the recent past, human rights were hardly debated in terms of public policies for the right to life, education, health, sanitation, food, housing, employment and others. As a result, the discourse of policing and judicialization is the most abundant in the imagination of Mozambicans, to the point where any research into human rights points, on a large percentage scale, to responses that link them to criminals, torture and the institutions of the Administration of Justice.

I can say that double standards in the evaluation of human rights have crippled the public policy perspective. Firstly, the emergence of non-governmental human rights organizations and their consequent dependence on and umbilical connection to NGO funders and Western countries has forced them to adopt, to a large extent, the policing and judicializing discourse historically used by Amnesty International, for example. This happened, among other things, as a mechanism for perpetuating partnerships and financial support. Secondly, Mozambique had just repealed the laws on torture, the death penalty and the like with the 1990 Constitution, which respected citizens' rights and freedoms. Mozambican NGOs took advantage of this historic moment to denounce human rights violations linked to the protection of life and liberty, exposing and fuelling public debate through the media. Without a shadow of a doubt, all this contributed on a large scale to human rights not being seen or discussed as a public policy issue, but rather as a matter for the police, people victimized by police officers, the courts, criminals and NGOs, with a few exceptions.

Why human rights and public policies?

The subject of human rights provides ethical arguments and foundations for the dignified life that every person should have in society, regardless of their nation, social position, creed, skin colour, gender or other attributes. Thus, for the ethical arguments of human rights to materialise, public policies are needed, in any and all areas, which will guide government/state policy in order to achieve satisfactory results for social justice and wealth creation. There is no reason not to believe that human rights and public policies, when implemented within the ethical principles of the state's operation, will gradually reduce the social ills that Mozambicans find themselves in.

It is therefore urgent that Mozambique defends, promotes and implements human rights within a vision of public policies, discussed and designed by state and government actors and various segments of civil society. The discussion and planning of Mozambicans to solve their common problems will reduce the idea that human rights are a matter for NGOs, police and criminals, and public policies for the state-government. In the discussion, neither one nor the other should take ownership of anything, although ultimately the government authorities have increased obligations and responsibilities over civil society when it comes to the material fulfilment of human rights and public policies.

To our misfortune, the Mozambican state is a landscape of setbacks. How will it design and implement public policies with a wavering commitment to the spiritual and material poverty of Mozambicans? The Action Plans for the Reduction of Absolute Poverty (PARPAs) do not have the quality of a public policy document, nor are they designed for this purpose, except to reduce poverty in statistical terms. The example of education is instructive: there are undoubtedly more children with access to primary education, but most of them finish primary school without knowing how to read and write. If they at least knew how to write a simple mathapa recipe, even if it's not detailed, they'd be grateful for the ‘stomach writing’. Another folly of the Mozambican state is its lack of coherence with Agenda 2025. This document mobilised Mozambique's human, material and financial resources to draw it up, and today no one from the government authorities elected in 2004 dares to refer to it. It has been shelved and will be used by historians and researchers. No one will justify or be held responsible for not using it when it encompassed and represented Mozambican sensitivities. Without a doubt, Agenda 2025 would be a document that would inspire feasible public policies for Mozambican progress.

Another political-parliamentary-diplomatic trick lies in the fact that the Mozambican state has not yet ratified, for example, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, nor has it managed to organise and programme public policies to eradicate social exclusion, which was recently denounced by the African Union's African Peer Review Mechanism and other institutes.

For all these reasons, Mozambique must breathe a new atmosphere of progress. For this reason, the proposal to focus on public policies and human rights is, in civic activism, legitimate and coherent. It is public policies that fulfil the ethical dreams of human rights. The state is obliged to guarantee and positively materialise the rights of its citizens. It will be the materialisation of public policies, within the principles of human rights, that will make it clear that people, as well as living in decent housing, quality education, adequate food, health, basic sanitation and other social rights, have the right to public safety and tranquillity, freedom, life, protection against torture, freedom of expression and religion, prison rights, electing and being elected, respect for state agents and authorities and other rights catalogued in international human rights law.

What's next?

The challenge for the discussion and broadening of the human rights perspective in public policies in Mozambique is twofold. Firstly, the state authorities need to remove their arrogance and negligence towards national causes, building a new model of social justice, based on human rights and public policies. Secondly, the state needs to adapt to a model of human rights and public policies in all its areas, avoiding accommodating itself, in every era, to any model of development, blackmail and donor sameness. What is needed is a common paradigm - human rights and public policies - accepted by all. And the role and involvement of all Mozambicans is fundamental, no matter how much sweat they have to pour in order to defeat those who act against the paradigm of human rights and public policies. And who is willing to shed sweat for human rights and public policies, today and now? It will certainly be Mozambicans who don't think with their stomachs...

Originally written in Portuguese Bantulândia: Direitos Humanos e Políticas Públicas and translated into English with the help of www.deepl.com.