Human rights not only have interdependence but also clashes within. It is the notion of human rights that they belong together which means one should not compromise one human right over the other (Ife, 2012)but in reality some rights do conflict. As a human being, you are supposed to live your life the way you choose but again as a social being, you have certain obligations, social rights, and rules. Human rights are the notion of individual liberty and in order to protect it, there is a need for the protection of freedoms. That is why individual liberty should not conflict with pluralism (Falch-Eriksen, 2018).
As humans, we know what’s best for us and we can choose the life we want but the irony is there is always someone being an expert on everything like studying, raising a family, being healthy, and alike. This leads to giving less power to people in their own lives and devaluates people’s efforts to live their way (Ife, 2012), and this someone most of the time is a social worker.
It is very common to encounter criticisms like being “do-gooders” and interfering in people’s life telling them what’s right and wrong. I can completely understand when Ife says as a human, one has a right to define their own need, and a social worker making it a profession is a human right abuse in a way. Social workers are supposed to be the voice of those who won’t or can’t speak. There is a criticism of making these people, even more, disabled instead of empowering them. Social work obviously wants betterment for society but while doing so, the respect for diversity may clash with other values or even other rights (Ife, 2012).
When we talk about the right to education, our first instinct is to think about children as we are supposed to be starting our education from quite a young age. Even though the right to education is widely recognized and practiced all over the world, people might still choose or are compelled to not take advantage of it. So, social work is also to make rights and duties participatory and encourage people to take their rights seriously (Ife, 2012). The right to education is not only a right it’s a compulsory duty to complete at least primary education. This usually focuses on formal education (Ife, 2012) but what if I want a self or home education, or do I want that for my children? Parents can obviously choose the educational institute for their children but the curriculum is set within the competence of the state. This leaves no space for parents to integrate any information on religious or philosophical teaching that they don’t want for their children. Here the right as a parent corresponds to exercising the right to education. In such cases, if there has to be a decision to be made, the social worker or legal people use discretion by analyzing the curriculum in an objective, critical and pluralistic manner and trying to avoid the conflicts on religious education given by school and parents (Valutytė & Gailiūtė, 2012). This cannot be considered an easy task even for adults when academic freedom is often only supported by freedom of thought, speech, opinion, expression, and information but is not widely protected by international law (Eide et al., 2001). The right of researchers to freely choose a subject, and the right of students to choose the field of study are limited as well(Eide et al., 2001).
Article 8 of the Human Right Act of 1998 states the right to respect your family and private life. This not only refers to lifestyle or sexual orientation, but it also covers the right to participate in economic, social, cultural, and leisure activities (Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2018). Education is an important part of this. As a family or even as an individual, one has the right to decide if they want to remain uneducated or choose an informal education for their children. But as a social worker, I can see the disadvantages of it and its impact on the whole family and society. So, if I try to intervene in their way of living, won’t I be violating their rights? But at the same time, I need to change the scenario for their betterment. What’s the best solution then? How does a social worker use discretion here? As a nature of duty, parents are responsible for their child’s education. That’s why their religious and philosophical convictions should be respected (Valutytė & Gailiūtė, 2012). It can be quite a conflicting situation when one tries to question their way of life or their way of bringing up their child. Social work is way more than going through the legal system. The key here is to be sensitive to both the rights to privacy and freedom and try looking into the situation critically, know why would the parents not want the formal education, take their views into consideration, and try to aware them of its importance and if the case is quite common in the community, the social worker can identify the need to legalize informal education, they can advocate for it and come up with practices like at least giving a formal examination at a certain age. So, this way the right of the child to education is protected but a certain freedom is provided to the parents. This might be the ideal case for making judgments as the social work profession is also not always about taking sides.
The other weakness that Eide et. Al mentions in human right protection is one is how the rights are formulated in a broad, open-ended way and this leaves a large room for interpretation from legal people (2001). So legally human rights give a lot of space to put into professional judgment. This can be a boon for professional social workers to act contextually but can also pose a threat to question discretion. If a child’s education is threatened, should a social worker support that or his parent’s right to decide for him? As simple as it might seem to choose the right to education, a social worker should weigh the context and perspectives of the parents. What if the child was not sent to school because of other immediate needs like food? In such cases, handing the child to foster care would not be fair enough. Child right says, “in the best interest of the child” but are we the experts on finding out the best interest? What we might think is best might turn out to have a negative impact like if they are taken away from their family, what about their mental health?
The cultural influences and expectations in the upbringing of a child differ from family to family and also with the social worker. So, understanding the context for non-discriminatory acts is not easy. Further, the social workers need to have a deep understanding of the situation to foster the “child’s best interest” which might not match the best interests of the adults involved in their care. If the child’s right to education is violated including their care and other rights, the child is rescued and may be adopted but aren’t we depriving the child’s other rights like family ties or the parent’s right to decide what’s best for their children (International Federation of Social Workers, 2002, p.26)?
I would like to focus on a specific situation and the life of street children. Whatever be the reason a lot of their rights are being violated when they are living the street life. Social workers, government officials, human and child right activists all are actively involved in protecting these children’s rights. And they are rescued into orphanages or rehabilitation centers. That should be a happy ending, right? But the surprising fact is, children are choosing their freedom on street over their rightful life. This is supported by the fact that out of 100 rescued children, 95 of them are rescued more than once (Shrestha, 2018). Even though it is for their betterment, can we really oppose their way of living time and again? When they had to be rescued time and again, it’s more like imprisoning them in what the social workers think is right. So, a little change was made. What social workers did or are still doing is making the children understand that they are affecting their future while choosing to live on the street. They also focus on individual cases and provide need-based help (Agbo, 2017). By doing so, I believe that they are respecting their way of life but also giving them a new insight to think in an alternative way. So the child would decide to rehabilitate. With this example of street children who are deprived of their right to education, advocating their needs, combating their problems, and helping the nation make necessary arrangements for their education is what social work is all about.
Adding to the same scenario of street children, most of them end up in street despite having a family. After the social workers rescue them at a rehabilitation center, the children who have their parents alive are often sent to them (Poudel, 2013). One way of thinking is family reunification, their right to be in the family, care and love, everything but again the children ran away from their family because something was wrong. Is it really fair to send these children back to the place where they escaped from? This is also a state where lies the biggest challenge of using discretion. The social worker must think about different kinds of rights like freedom, of family, of the child, see the context and make a non-discriminatory decision. It is in fact quite difficult to determine who actually is eligible for the right at street level.
Attached to a child’s right to education, comes child labor which is mostly the result of poverty. A lot of children are in labor to support their families and in the case of street children for a better life. These laborers are not always forced. When the child is working it’s obvious that a lot of their rights are violated including education, but there had been some cases where children would rather prefer to work and not study instead of being in an orphanage, rehabilitation center, or with their parents. Child labor in the transportation sector is also a social challenge in some countries like Nepal but as far as any social worker would see the issue violating the child’s right, the children believe that they have a better life in terms of food, shelter, and their freedom to travel. These children work as a conductor or helpers to the driver and are employed by them (Children working in the transport sector, 2009). The first instinct would be the driver taking advantage of the child and forcing them into labor but the child is choosing to do that and their condition has been actually better than being a homeless street child. It seems like the child has decided what was best for him to improve his living conditions.
These examples imply that taking an action to enforce any right in a non-discriminatory way requires a lot of critical thinking when the rights are interconnected and we live a life of thin ice to distinguish between who is actually a sufferer or who is the one violating the right.
The world has changed a lot and we know the importance of education to both genders and all ages. There still are adults who didn’t have the opportunity of education at a young age, most specifically women. But with time they might lose interest in learning or getting a formal education. People make peace with their situation and are ok not fighting for their rights. And rights are to be enjoyed not forced. Can we then oppose the person’s thought to decide not to be educated? Even though it is both right and a duty to receive an education, they simply do not want it. As an individual, I know what works for me and what education I would need, in which language, with which curriculum and all but my freedom of choice might not match the collective enjoyment of rights. Not only the state, but social workers also have the obligation to respect, protect and fulfill individual freedom, choice, and their effort (Olsen, J, 2020)
The challenge social workers face in using discretion in my opinion is because the work is a combination of respecting individuality but also fostering pluralism. Adding to this, the social workers do have the knowledge, research, and experience but also the empathy we have when we understand the context, which makes it difficult to decide who is eligible for the right or choose which right over which. The profession does have a technical aspect that says what’s wrong and what’s not but also leaves space to think and decide socially. Since our actions are guided by legal human rights, non-discriminatory actions are based on that.
REFERENCES
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