PHA-Exchange> Food for a principled thought expressed with conviction

[Claudio]

Human Rights Reader 102

 

More on Poverty and Human Rights
 

Many have the misfortune of being born in a poor country, but not a poor world!  

 

1. Traditional development cooperation has failed to curb poverty and human rights (HR) abuses despite the fact that almost all measures in it are now being given 'the-poverty-alleviation-label'; for instance, development through privatization has proven a recipe for further impoverishment, and PRSPs are also failing: they do not consider the budgetary implications of the measures that are being proposed, so paradise is promised. [Incidentally, the label 'Human-Rights' is also now timidly appearing in traditional development cooperation projects; the question is if it is so for the right reason].

 

2. Not only have we witnessed that 'clever solutions' have not solved the resilient poverty and HR problems the world over, but they may have further had the unintended (?) consequence of detracting from the less attractive, painful structural reforms that were ultimately needed to solve the same problems.

 

3. Focusing public resources on the poor (as in traditional development) to 'lift' them out of poverty is not the way to go: sustained societywide-targeted-income-transfers/redistribution measures are needed for poverty reduction. 

 

4.To achieve this, poor  people must gain voice and influence to claim their rights in front of the relevant social sector institutions and in the national political discourse overall ( thus reversing decades of exclusion). 

 

5. To have a higher probability for solutions to the poverty and HR problems to work, these have to be structurally sound, i.e., be designed to tackle the basic socioeconomic and political causes of the problem. 

 

6. These days, the HR-based approach to development cooperation has to be oriented to developing the capacities and the resolve of duty-bearers-to-meet-their-obligations and the capacities and the resolve of claim-holders-to-claim-their-rights. 

 

7. This calls for a big shift, one that places individuals and communities and their rights and responsibilities at the center of the development process. The shift also has to result in forgoing the myopic focus on higher per-capita income as a goal, to be replaced by key social and HR goals --this, a matter of social choice.

 

8. Are these old recipes for a different new world? Not in my view! Quite on the contrary, they represent a principled position maintained with conviction in the face of new challenges.in the same old world.

 

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn

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Mostly taken from Ted Freeman and Urban Jonsson, F&D, 41:1, March 2004 (IMF), F+D  Vol 41: 2, June 2004, IFPRI Forum, March 2004, and D+C Vol. 31, Aug/Sept 2004.
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