PHA-Exchange> Food for an obscene thought

[Aviva]

Human Right Reader 35

'CHARITY IS OBSCENE FROM A HUMAN RIGHTS PERSPECTIVE' (Immanuel Kant)

1.In many communities, Human Rights (HR) values still need to be promoted
from above, because they have not yet been internalized by unknowing,
potential claim holders. This promotion from above is far removed from
traditional charity approaches (*) to development though.
[*: Charity is here seen as "love and the right feeling towards one's fellow
human being"].

2.Ultimately, HR cannot be imposed; they must be sought/pursued from within,
and only be supported from outside.

3.In our work, it is primarily the (majority) deprived/poor people (**) who
are the main holders of rights; our HR work with them is to have them
empower themselves to claim their rights and to choose their own development
path (i.e., circumstances and chance should no longer dominate their lives).
[**: Poverty is here seen as a lack of choice and minimum control of
resources].

4.HR are thus to be seen as what they really are, namely, the legal
expression of our human dignity. Because of that, HR are universal; they are
indivisible; and they are interdependent. There is nothing like 'basic
rights'.

5.But HR do not yet feature explicitly (***) in the charters or mission
statements of many international private voluntary  organizations
(importantly those NGOs traditionally involved in mostly charity-type work);
we all need to become more vocal in demanding this be done.
[***: Or may have been added lately without those organizations having
operationalized these principles in their field work yet].

6.Participation, you may not know, is a HR per-se; it should be treated as a
necessary outcome of development work and has to become a necessary part of
the process. Charity may share this concept, but definitely does not share
the HR perspective that it is inescapable to directly address the
basic/structural causes of rights violations (see below).

7.So, what is then involved in a truly participatory HR-based planning and
programming?  And who is to do it?

8.To start with, UN and bilateral agencies and NGOs with active programs in
the field should already be applying HR-based programming --with the
participation of their respective constituencies! National governments
should, ideally, follow suit as a way to concretize their commitment to HR
(this can, therefore, at the same time, be a test of commitment).

9.Participatory HR-based planning has several recognized steps:

A. Participatory Causality Analysis:
Before anything, communities must first recognize they have problems, and
then characterize them; they must then collectively identify the causes of
the same. (Without a reasonable consensus on the causes of the problems at
hand, it is not likely that there will be a consensus later-on about how to
solve the same). Any causality analysis is greatly helped by an explicit
Conceptual Framework (e.g., the one UNICEF uses since 1990 for the causes of
preventable ill-health, malnutrition and deaths). Planning in a HR context
requires a full understanding of the causes at all levels (immediate,
underlying and basic) with simultaneous attention being given to addressing
the causes at different levels. Causes of problems related to the violation
of people's rights that are identified with the help of the framework need
to be analyzed for each violation at each level of causality; then, a quali
and quantitative relationships must be established among them. This is to be
followed by reaching consensus regarding the most important determinants
affecting the realization of those rights found to be violated.
The Causality Analysis will thus produce a list of rights that are being
violated together with the major causes of these violations.

B. Participatory Pattern Analysis:
This step explores the relationships between claim holders and duty bearers;
these relationships form a pattern. The work to identify duty bearers for
each particular right benefits from the earlier causality analysis in that
one can identify duty bearers at different levels. One has to insist that,
at this point, it is necessary to focus on priority problems to reduce the
analysis to a limited set of claim-duty relationships that are likely to be
the most critical in the given situation; if not limited, one risks ending
up with a very large number of such relationships that we will not be able
to tackle and a number of actors too large to involve and support (i.e., the
situation analysis should cover all rights while programming will address
the most relevant violations first).
Pattern Analysis thus arrives at a list of the most crucial claim-duty
relationships for each particular set of rights violations selected.

C. Participatory Capacity Analysis:
This next step is about analizing why duty bearers do not seem to be able
(or capable) to perform their duties as is expected from them. It s about
identifying their shortcomings and confronting them with such evidence. As
pointed out in HR Reader 33, this analysis looks at the
responsibility/authority/resources components of  capacity (or about how
duty bearers should act, may act,  and can act). The importance of two-way
communication systems are to be recognized here so as to put resources to
really work for the benefit of claim holders.
Capacity Analysis thus ultimately identifies capacity gaps of each duty
bearer for each identified rights violation to be redressed (also see HR
Reader 33).

D. Participatory Selection of a Strategy and Best Actions:
Here, actions are selected to help close capacity gaps identified in the
previous step.
This step thus results in a list of candidate actions organized into a draft
strategy.

E. Partnership Analysis:
At this point, discussions are held with key partners/strategic allies with
the aim of reaching agreements on who will do what, how, where and when.

F. Programming:
This final step aggregates all activities in the strategy into (a)
program(s) and/or project(s). No general advice is sensible enough here to
prescribe how best to do this. Groups involved in the planning will have to
learn from practice on how to best cluster activities for maximum results
(by sector, by theme, by geographical location, by level of causality, etc).

10.As can be seen, HR are thus not to be treated as a 'separate' concern of
development planning; they are an integral part of it. Without explicitly
addressing HR, the problems of economic underdevelopment and poverty will
never be fully solved. (****)
[****:The principle of 'low cost - high impact' pursued in traditional
development planning is merely utilitarian; in HR-based planning it must
thus sometimes be rejected. Simply put, morality often leads to a different
set of priorities than those of an economic analysis].

11.But, beware, the HR approach is not a magic panacea either. It will not
see resources and policies and power instantly transferred to the poor and
vulnerable... Keep in mind that --unlike the WTO-- the UN or any other
international body have no practicable way of imposing punishment or fines
on governments that violate or ignore their internationally sanctioned
commitments to HR; we all need to contribute our grain of salt to help
empower people to stop these violations.

[Mostly taken from Jonsson U., An approach to HR-based programming in UNICEF
ESARO, SCN News No.20, pp.6-9, July 2000].

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
aviva at netnam.vn