World Day of Social Justice was observed on Monday, February 20, the 15th such annual observance since the International Labour Organisation (ILO) unanimously adopted its Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalisation and the UN General Assembly issued a declaration making the commemoration official. In many countries, the day passed without so much as a murmur, despite social justice being an intangible quality governments claim to be striving for, even if they do use different language.
Though it is grounded in the concept of justice, social justice is defined, by the website Encyclopaedia Britannica, as the fair treatment and equitable status afforded to all individuals and groups in a state or society. Britannica further says, “the term also is used to refer to social, political, and economic institutions, laws, or policies that collectively afford such fairness and equity…” It is also “commonly applied to movements that seek fairness, equity, inclusion, self-determination, or other goals for currently or historically oppressed, exploited, or marginalised populations,” according to the website. Basically then, it can be described as the hallmark of the level playing field.
While social justice is certainly attainable, stacked against it are numerous hurdles, including privilege, conscious and unconscious bias along with all of the subgroups therein, and ignorance among other issues. It certainly does not help that the factors which define the gulf between the haves and the have nots – finances, education and healthcare, to mention a few – have been exacerbated by economic crises, conflict, climate change and a global pandemic. As we tend to say in local parlance, “the struggle is real”, particularly when one considers the fact that deprivation, whether intentional or accidental, lends to instability and unrest. There are numerous examples of this scattered throughout history.
That being said, the truth is that none of the obstacles to social justice are insurmountable, though one would not go as far as to suggest that it is easily achievable. Paths to attaining this thus far impossible dream were set out by some of the world’s best minds long before the term social justice was even coined. Jesus Christ, Siddhartha Gautama, Confucius, and Gandhi, are names that immediately spring to mind.
More modern references can be found in the speeches of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. His famous 1963 letter written while he was in jail in Birmingham Alabama, part of which says, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly”, is a clear example. This is the same basic principle Martin Carter elucidated in his poem “You Are Involved”. Unfortunately, many humans, particularly politicians, only utter quotations from men of that calibre to sound erudite; never absorbing the deeper meaning, never applying it to their work and lives, never considering how different things could be if their actions matched their words.
Even if one were not inclined to take the philosophical route, there are reams of practical blueprints all around, most of which those who have the greatest influence to effect change choose to ignore. The more invested they are in upholding patriarchy, misogyny and plain old prejudice the farther they have consigned gender equality, workers’ rights, even basic human rights in some cases to the back burner. The United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals, which have now given rise to the Sustainable Development Goals were and are grounded in social justice. The first floundered while its deadline came and went, the second looks set to follow.
As much as these are global issues, which require international solutions, it would be a mistake to not internalise them. Therefore, governments must act on addressing the problems facing their citizens rather than falling back on the sorry excuse of turmoil in the world. The parents who cannot afford to feed their children or send them to school are hardly following world news, let alone making a nexus between wars in far off places and their current dilemmas. What they will quite naturally observe, however, is government officials hosting lavish banquets and dinners while they go without.
Here in Guyana, for example, the poor are unable to conflate the ‘oil money’ the country is earning and the continued downward trend in their statuses. While it is obvious that some people are benefiting from the largesse, the divide between the rich and the impoverished is ever widening. It will not be fixed by building new roads and bridges. One-off handouts are also not the answer, neither is a Mashramani slogan touting unity that is not being realised across the board.
Social justice calls for real programmes that the man/woman in the street operating at a weekly or monthly pay-cheque deficit, or unable to find work can use to uplift his/her situation. ‘One Guyana’ is in fact a social justice slogan, but it will remain meaningless until the actual work is done.
