Freedom of Speech and Association: The Key to Measuring Progress

Written by Juan Fernando Gomez, Program Associate for International Replicas

On July 17, 2018, Juan de Jesus Moreno went to work without knowing it would be his last day. The elementary school teacher knew that by doing his job he might make people uncomfortable at times; however, he didn’t think his life was coming to an end, not that morning, not in front of his students. According to local authorities, two years ago Moreno received threats for his social activism, which is why he moved from Cartagena del Chaira to Curillo, two municipalities in the Colombian department of Caqueta. The day after the crime, Abrahan Medina, vice president of the Union of Education Workers of Caqueta, publicly stated his indignation and urged the national and local governments to protect union teachers. Even though the motives for the murder are still unclear, the fact is that Moreno is one of the nine union teachers murdered in 2018, a clear example of the wave of violence social leaders have been facing in the South American country.

Colombia’s economy, the fourth largest in Latin America, has been experiencing stable growth despite recent external shocks. Before last month’s presidential inauguration, the outgoing government celebrated their notably reduced unemployment rate, improved quality of education and increased access to healthcare. These figures are championed by world leaders, but are not indicative of true national progress. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), when it comes to the murder of social leaders, Colombia is one of the worst performers. Traditional approaches to development, which emphasize economic prosperity and basic education and healthcare access, fail to represent an accurate depiction of human living conditions.

That morning in July, Moreno’s murder destroyed a family and nurtured an underlying fear present throughout Colombia and countless other countries — that citizens cannot safely exercise freedom of speech and association without facing potentially violent consequences. Today, constant threats and feelings of insecurity prevent union teachers and other social leaders from having a life worth living, something that traditional forms of measuring progress miss. A country’s wealth is in its citizens; if they can’t live with dignity, regardless of national output, there is no prosperity.

Amartya Sen first introduced the Capabilities Approach after realizing how quality of life had been misunderstood by the international community for decades. For the Nobel Laureate in Economics, understanding progress from the perspective of “individual capabilities” is more precise, since they bring to light underlying factors affecting society at large. In Moreno’s case, neither money nor income were the issues preventing him from living a decent life. Rather it was the capability, or freedom, to voice his opinion and make a conscious decision to devote his life to teaching that he needed to be prosperous.

In her efforts to find a better approach to human development, American philosopher Martha Nussbaum went a step further and defined a set of ten universal capabilities designed to establish minimum threshold to live with dignity. For Juan de Jesus Moreno, four of them were taken away. The first capability on Nussbaum’s list is life, the most valuable asset that any being possesses, an asset that should last until the body is too old to continue, which was denied to the teacher. Bodily integrity, the possibility of moving freely and having complete control over one’s body without being the victim of violence, was another capability stripped from Moreno last July.

Although Nussbaum suggests that all components of her normative list are equally important, she thinks affiliation has a direct effect on the other central capabilities because it entails showing compassion for others and having a sense of justice. Moreno’s affiliation is also closely tied to control over one’s environment, a capability addressing the opportunity to participate in political life by association and freedom of speech. Juan de Jesus was a member of Fecode, a Colombian national teachers’ union that has democracy and human rights as one of their main pillars. Unfortunately, in his efforts to strengthen his community, his association with the union made him a target for criminals.

Progress can’t take place in a society where fundamental human freedoms are not present. Sen and Nussbaum have advocated for shifting the global approach to measuring development from traditional economic indexes to the capabilities needed for citizens to live a decent life. Juan de Jesus Moreno had a job, an income and access to healthcare; however, he didn’t have the freedom to influence his own future. Whether it is Colombia or any other country, when thinking about progress, an individual’s capacity to make choices and live with dignity should always be taken into account.

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Works Cited:

Amartya Sen. 1999. Development as Freedom. Oxford University Press.

Nussbaum, Martha (2011). Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.