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Right to understand the mandates of the administration. Intervention of an unlisted right for a better democracy

Lawyer. Dr. In Legal Sciences ( UNlaM ). Former Teacher in Social Communication. Specialist in Right to Information and Institutional Communication

Pablo D. Talamoni
I Right of the citizen to understand the language of administration
Representative democracy goes through recurring crises that are evident all over the world. It has the disadvantage of strong citizen skepticism. Many sectors dangerously believe that the system is capable of correcting its course. As a contribution for an improvement, I concentrated on the inequality that results for citizens from the difficulties posed by administrative languages and the cumbersome procedures that can only be avoided by being an expert or with enough money to hire experts. The democratic system cannot accept that vast groups of people lose opportunities, see themselves as socially and economically disadvantaged, or harmed in their health due to the mere fact of not being able to understand the language of the bureaucracy that, in some cases, has appropriated the State . for the benefit of his own comfort, power or stability and against the Sovereign who delegated that power to carry out his task. "The right of the citizen and/or resident to understand the language of the administratively and judicially enforceable administration" is the title of the Thesis that I approved at the UNLM ends with a bill that grants citizens an administrative action with judicial review to raise the need to modify the language of that procedure that the citizen does not understand. The difficulty of the citizen to understand, in the bill, is presumed. The public or private body (regulated activities such as health, banking or telephone services) can be released from modifying the procedure by demonstrating that it worked on it under international standards suggested by experts in clear language and/or Easy Reading. The right to understand the language of the administration is the species of the genre "Right to understand" that I suggest in the Thesis could be a new Human Right. Regarding the right of the citizen or resident to understand the language of administration , Citizens and/or residents are considered to be the holder of the action, with particular incidence in highly vulnerable sectors, which places the State in a leading position if the benefits of the Rule of Law are to be guaranteed to the entire community ; particularly, the right to equal treatment and consideration established in article 16 of the Argentine Constitution and guaranteed by international conventions on Human Rights . I maintain that it is not enough to guarantee equal opportunities, nor the right to cognitive access and respect for the sovereignty of the people, that a Provincial or National State commits itself, even by law, to gradually modify its legal language to bring it closer to citizen language. . In order to achieve the effective exercise of people's rights, we propose a bill that recognizes administrative and judicial actions for the citizen to force the administration to modify procedures and/or communications that are not understood by the average citizen. The Thesis maintains that the right to understand in a hermeneutic reading of our current legislation and international agreements would be recognized without further ado. We see that it is directly related to the sovereignty of the people and the essence of the democratic system, to the extent that the obligated party must understand the rules that are required of him. Also to the right to information in order that the right is information and it is applied the broad criteria of the Supreme Court of Justice that already defined the subjective face of the right . On the other hand, to participate in society it is essential, particularly because the citizen must internalize his rights and obligations before the State. This is a new right that is not yet specified as such in Argentine legislation. For this reason we must remember that the Argentine Constitution does not restrict the existence of rights only to those listed in it, so the right to understand can be in the gallery of the new generation of rights . On the other hand, the “right to understand the language of the administration” It is a kind of generic “right to understand the environment that surrounds us” , which is linked to the so-called cognitive accessibility. In Argentina, as in so many countries as a result of the impact of Covid-19, economic assistance plans aimed at many social sectors had to be launched and, to access them, citizens had to fully enter the digital world by applying in online procedures. Unfortunately, 6 out of 10 citizens do not know how to carry out these procedures, according to a survey carried out by a private consultancy . The innumerable procedures and the complex administrative language could be undermining the legitimacy of the democratic system or putting popular sovereignty itself at stake if an effort by the bureaucracy to get closer to the interests of the citizen, especially the most vulnerable ones, is not in sight . It is that it is an obligation of the State to guarantee the effective enjoyment of rights and the fulfillment of duties of citizens. When we talk about access without difficulty, the language of the State cannot be ignored in everything related to administrative, legislative and judicial activities that the citizen has the right to understand. Therefore, "without an understanding of legal language, the exercise of rights and the fulfillment of obligations are limited" / . That is why not having access to the language of the administration is discrimination that, like all discrimination, "by its very nature harms human capacities unfairly, creating cycles of disadvantages and denials of freedom that hinder human development" .

II Right to understand
The legal framework that supports it comes from rights and principles recognized by the National Constitution, International Human Rights Conventions, Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities, International Declarations on Human Rights, among other sources. It is related to a) Sovereignty of the people, c) Publicity of government acts and transparency b) Citizen participation, c) Extension of the right to information , d) Equal treatment and consideration, e) Access to Justice, f) Equal opportunities , g) Equal access to the scientific benefits of society . From all this arises the need for public policies that mainly guarantee equality by also providing training to various social groups. Until the National, Provincial and Municipal State advances in the implementation of clear legal language, it is necessary for the citizen to have a legal action that allows them to request the review of that procedure, for example, that is not understandable.
I Cognitive Accessibility. Right to understand the information that surrounds us as a new Human Right
Cognitive abilities are those that allow people to know and understand their surroundings through the processing of the information they receive. These are: attention, perception, memory, problem solving, comprehension, decision making, learning and language processing, among others. When people with some difficulty in these capacities face an unknown or changing environment, where the information is not clear, their participation in society is limited. Accessibility enables people to participate in the social and economic activities for which different environments are designed . The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, approved by the UN General Assembly on December 13, 2006, tries to promote the so-called " Cognitive Accessibility" as a right of all people to understand the information that surrounds them. In general, people with some degree of intellectual or physical disability are mainly thought of, but it is very reasonable to deduce from what we develop in this work that, in order to guarantee full accessibility to knowledge or full cognitive accessibility, we all require some help . According to the Deputy of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires Juan Manuel Valdés "10% of the city's population has some degree of disability". A modern society must be concerned that respect for human rights is not hindered by the non-existence accessibility conditions appropriate to the needs of all people. It is a society that integrates and that responds sensitively and intervenes effectively by organizing spaces and resources for coexistence based on human diversity. The Easy Reading Institute of Seville (Spain) states that one in four people have difficulties understanding information. The opinion of the users (that is, that of those who move and act in the environments, use the objects or read the texts) is the most reliable source of information when assessing whether something is "very, quite, little or not at all" understandable and, also, the one that makes it possible to more directly identify which elements are more difficult to understand and may require adaptations". The crisis of democracy is also an opportunity to genuinely expand the rights of the citizen. The recognition of the right in the head of the citizen empowers him and contributes to reduce State discretion until a truly citizen-oriented Administration is achieved.