As emphasized in the earlier blog post, human rights are universal, inviolable, inalienable, and fundamental rights, which are inherent in all human beings, irrespective of race, color, religion, sex, and nationality. Psychology is central in addressing the global challenges, including the abuse of human rights. On this note, Patel (2019), emphasized that psychology and human rights share many focal points, including health and well being. Therefore, psychological proactive and preventive activities should promote and defend human rights. In other words, the notion of fundamental human rights is central to psychological practice. In this post, I will highlight the role of psychology with regard to human rights in greater society and in Biafra (South-eastern Nigeria).
The Role of Psychology in Advocating for Human Rights in Society
According to Fox (1993), an attempt to be neutral is a form of collaboration with established powers. Given their central role toward human well-being, psychologists cannot be indifferent in the face of human rights violations. A major way for psychologists to carry out their role in advocating for human rights is to work both as individuals and an organization. To address the problems of human rights in global community, Patel (2019) suggested that psychologists both as individuals and as organization should adopt a human rights-based approach (HRBA). The human rights-based approach seeks to analyze inequalities, discriminatory practices, and unjust distribution of power in a country. It further seeks to integrate human rights principles (e.g., dignity, autonomy, nondiscrimination, fairness, equality, safety, accountability, gender and cultural appropriateness, participation and inclusion, legality, and empowerment) into policymaking and day to day activities of organizations in a country. Therefore, by committing to an HRBA, psychologists proactively address the problem of discriminatory practices, inequalities, and unjust power distribution through psychological practices, which include health delivery, research, and advocacy on both individual and policy levels (Patel, 2019). For instance, psychologists committed to an HRBA proactively engage in research and policy recommendation on maximizing values that promote human well-being, including dignity, autonomy, privacy, psychological sense of community, equality, and justice (Fox, 1993).
Another concrete instance of psychologists advocating for human rights through a critical HRBA position is salvaging a legal system that is destructive to people’s well-being. Organized psychology can directly arouse public dissatisfaction with the legal system that maintains a social order that has alienating and oppressive effects on individuals (Fox, 1993). Psychologists should assess substantive results of procedural justice, exposing where injustice is masked by a deceptively fair procedure to arouse public dissatisfaction. Also, psychologists have a role to play in assisting social movements, as well as individuals in their moral confrontations over societal value priorities (Fox, 1993). They can achieve this aim by producing empirically supported studies on empowerment, nonconformity, resistance to authority, civil disobedience, and social movement participation and mobilization (Fox, 1993). For instance, Kelman and Hamilton (1989, as cited in Fox, 1993) research how to decrease obedience to illegal or immoral orders by military, government, and corporate authorities. Additionally, psychologists could speculate about utopian societies in which the well-being of the society is fostered (Fox, 1993). Such speculations will serve as a standard to measure the degree to which our society has fallen short of both historical and theoretical alternatives.
Psychologists who adopt a critical HRBA position perform the role of practitioner-activists in relation to addressing human rights violations (Patel, 2019). Because practitioner-activists seek to defend and promote people’s dignity and their fundamental human rights, they are in sharp disagreement with human rights violations. Consequently, psychologists cannot carry out the task of practitioner-activists in addressing human rights violations as bystanders. Hence, by adopting a critical practitioner-activist position, psychologists will actively defend and promote justice and human rights through psychological practices, as well as through theories and research on the relationship between social context and social injustices, human rights violations, and health.
The Role of Psychology Regarding Human Rights in South-East Nigeria
In his keynote address to psychologists at the APA Annual Convention, Martin Luther King Jr. stressed the impact that psychologists had on the Civil Rights movement. He emphasized, among other things, their central role in defending and promoting social equalities and justice, primarily through contributing to public policy development and psychological research on discrimination and other prejudices against African Americans (Hargrove & Williams, 2014). Psychologists will accomplish their indispensable role of defending the fundamental rights of Biafrans in Nigeria by, first and foremost, acknowledging all human rights violations in the region by Nigerian authorities. These gross human rights violations include: denial of federal political offices; extrajudicial killings; poverty; bad roads; closure of all seaports in Biafra land; not building embassy in Biafra land; pollution of the area with crude oil; religious persecution; burning houses; interference with privacy, family, home, and correspondence; sexual violence; torture and degrading treatments to pro-Biafrans; and lack of fair hearing in the law court. This is just to mention a few. These violations of human rights have caused unbearable physical and psychological pain to the people.
As already hinted above, psychologists have the task of salvaging the Nigerian legal and judicial system, which is corrupt and destructive to people’s well-being. They can do this by directly raising public dissatisfaction with the corrupt Nigerian legal system that is alienating and oppressing its citizens. Psychologists should also constantly evaluate substantive results of Nigerian procedural justice and always expose where injustice is masked by a deceptively fair procedure to arouse public dissatisfaction. Moreover, psychologists have the responsibility to assist social movements in Nigeria, such as IPOB, as well as individuals in their moral confrontations over societal value priorities by, for instance, producing empirically supported studies on empowerment, nonconformity, resistance to authority, civil disobedience, and social movement participation and mobilization (Fox, 1993).
Furthermore, the role of psychologists in defending and promoting the fundamental human rights of Biafrans in Nigeria also involves initiating and implementing activities and interdisciplinary intervention programs with practitioners from other professions who work toward defending and improving human rights. These intervention programs, among other things, should effect new public policies that promote both physical and psychological health, as well as protect fundamental human rights in Biafra land. Psychologists also have the responsibility to ensure that professional organizations, together with their ethics committee, incorporate an HRBA in their accountability and ethical codes (Patel, 2019). Finally, the function of psychologists in promoting human rights in Biafra is intrinsically connected to every psychological practice. In other words, psychologists work in virtually all spheres of life. Through their psychological practices, they must constantly increase awareness of how human rights principles may be at risk when serving different groups of people, including older adults, children, the less privileged, and refugees. In addition, any psychological practice that breaches human rights (e.g., imparting historical bias) must be acknowledged and addressed. Therefore, psychological practices are central in promoting human rights and justice in Biafra land.
Conclusion
It is clear that psychology has essential roles to play in promoting human rights and preventing human rights violations in the south-eastern part of Nigeria. This blog is a means of shedding light on the role of psychology and indeed every other profession in defending and promoting human rights in the south-eastern region of Nigeria. Hence, psychologists today in Nigeria should apply their knowledge to address human rights violations not just in the southeast but also in every part of Nigeria.
References
Fox, D. R. (1993). Psychological jurisprudence and radical social change. The American Psychologist, 48(3), 234–241. Retrieved from the Walden Library databases.
Hargrove, S., & Williams, D. (2014). Psychology’s contribution to the development of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/communique/2014/08-09/civil-rights-act.aspx
Kelman, H. C., & Hamilton, V. L. (1989). Crimes of obedience: Toward a social psychology of authority and obedience. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Patel, N. (2019). Human right-based approach to applied psychology. European Psychologist, 24(2), 113-124. doi: 10.1027/1016-9040/a000371
Social Change 