Human rights have not benefited everyone in the same way; on the contrary, they have benefited some, the few, at the expense of others, the many. They have not given us a world that even the majority of human beings, can recognize as better.

When ‘governments and great experts and smiling politicians and millionaire foundations’ discuss hunger and its causes, they always concentrate on objective factors, beyond the reach of any structural political intervention. Few mention financial speculation which raises the prices of food and medicines, causing famines and epidemics; neo-colonial policies for the control of sources of energy; the unlimited exploitation of natural resources; the colossal mass of investments that are diverted from purposes of general interest to research into and production of arms. The extent of this failure of humanity is documented by facts, records, numbers. We inhabitants of the privileged part of the world live fairly contentedly, every day, with the occasional journalistic report and the occasional documentary: media which tend to enhance indifference, by isolating the dramas in the vast and harmless field of literature and film, rather than shaking the conscience of the world, which contents itself with contemplating its rights, indeed its ‘culture of rights’. Literature nourishes intellects, but practice, and, above all, rulers who exercise power, have little time for literature.