PHA-Exchange> Food for a morally imperative thought

[Claudio]

Human Rights Reader 106
 

Feeling helpless or lost (or being used) in your work?: Adopt the Human Rights-based Approach to development!

 

In development policy, human rights are frequently understood above all as values;  their legal nature is often neglected. Human rights contain both: values, but also binding obligations.

 

1. Introducing the rights-based-approach-to-development (RBA) represents a totally different way to marshal, organize and deploy resources. The RBA aims at changing the historically dependent nature of most claim-holders/duty-bearers relationships, at the same time that it attempts to reduce claim-holders' vulnerability as they are socially and politically empowered. A caveat is due here though: The struggle for the realization of human (people's) rights does not have to end-up in conflict --although it often does; so, we should not instinctively shy away from a justified confrontation. In other words, human rights work has to be both promotional and proactive in vigorously tackling human rights (HR) violations --particularly when the state is unwilling to protect public welfare. 

 

2. On top of promoting a national consensus around HR, mainstreaming the RBA also means improving the legislative basis of HR. Striving for a strong, independent judiciary is also, therefore, a working front for HR activists; the judiciary needs strong, independent lawyers and judges, well versed in HR issues. Consequently, the RBA aims at influencing national legislation, legal practice, distribution of budgetary resources and national policies in critical rights-related areas. 'Social observatories' can and should be set-up to monitor the allocations in the national budget every year. [The participative, popular budget preparation process in Brasil's Porto Alegre Municipality is a fitting example].

 

3. The RBA is meant to produce verifiable results in terms of changes in processes and changes in the capacities of claim-holders and of duty-bearers. It ultimately tests our ability to make a country's authorities abide by the HR covenants they have signed. Therefore, monitoring the achievements of the RBA puts emphasis on capacities developed by duty-bearers and claim-holders, checking that they have resulted in verifiable improvements (more so as regards intentional than incidental impacts).  Capacity development is crucial to link HR standards and the specific development processes set in motion.      

 

4. Applying 'good programming' does not in itself constitute a RBA; a RBA requires unique additional elements like the following:

-Identifying the unfulfilled rights of claim-holders and the correlative obligations of duty-bearers, as well as the underlying and basic causes of the non-realization of those rights;

-assessing the capacity of claim-holders to claim their rights and of duty-bearers to fulfill their obligations;

-monitoring both outcomes and HR-directed processes set in motion; and

-doing all programming based on recommendations emanating from existing HR bodies and covenants.

 

5. It is, therefore, for example, not enough to build a school and to say that we are with it fulfilling the HR to education; rather, HR themselves have to be promoted throughout the education system, perhaps incorporating the topic in all major curricula.

 

6. Ergo, as HR activists, when using the RBA we are not trying to achieve the biggest-difference, but the most-qualitatively-correct-and morally-called-for-difference. 

 

7. To achieve the above, the media should also be lobbied so they contribute their share to spreading constitutional, democratic and HR ideals. But, as the HR Readers have contended previously, this is often not the case: abuses of power and flagrant violations of HR are covered only occasionally. There is a 'potential for democratization' there, but national press coverage has yet to become democratic; so far, there is no sign of this happening (enough). 

Transparency rules are of little use unless active media and civil society organizations involved in HR serve as watchdogs to alert the wider public about ongoing abuses (the latter either through or not through the media). This, also because --unless they are reported-- distortions, violations and abuses continue to occur even under conditions of improved transparency.

What this means is that anyone who is not party to knowledge about ongoing violations, is excluded from exerting the power to revert the same violations by holding the corresponding duty-bearers accountable.  This explains why this Reader has always been of the opinion that political and historical development perspectives should be analyzed in the light of class interests. [Beware, knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives. Knowledge is power, but sharing information also is progress. Without knowledge, an effective demand cannot be achieved to have a chance to influence public HR policy]. (D+C) ( IDS)

 

8. Granted, many practices in the RBA may infringe social customs which people do not (yet) regard as wrong (e.g., female genital mutilation). But the fact that HR principles were first postulated in Europe and North America is merely a historical, but not an ethnocentric fact.  As early as 1990, the South Commission, under former Tanzanian president Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, already described democracy and HR as key foundations of development. Social peace, it was said, only prevails where all citizens are able to pursue their interests and rights through legitimate means and with realistic chances of success. 

 

9. Moreover, in HR work, institutions are also key actors. Therefore, policy measures in the HR domain will have no long-term impact without institutional reform.  Rights-based solutions need to be customized --with proposed reforms firmly anchored in the local political realities. In an effort to make the pertinent institutions truly accountable to the people they are supposed to serve, we have to make sure they 'own' these reforms before they are adopted. A lot of advocacy needed here.

 
10. But in 2005, this is not an easy road to follow. As long as the G8 countries continue to define development policy along the lines of  security policy, and as long as fragile states are myopically seen as breeding grounds of terrorism, HR will continue to be violated with impunity mostly by using sheer might. The military will simply never become a true partner in development work. In such a world, we need to forcefully counter the renewed tide of hawkish authoritarian influences.

 

11. Development and security policy need to be kept strictly separate; they pursue different goals and use different tools. At the very minimum, these opposing policies bring about conflicts in the distribution of resources, i.e., how much money is allocated for development and how much for security work. If we do not start our struggle at this level, much of what we do afterwards will be simply reactive and not proactive.  

 

12. The RBA contends that inequitable public policies --even if beefed-up with more resources to tackle social problems targeted at specific vulnerable  groups --will not succeed. In the RBA, a deeper level of political and economic action is called-for. The RBA assigns social value to what is considered to be unfair, avoidable and unnecessary within the spectrum of inequities found; and what is unfair is a social and political decision.  Inequities arise from patterns of ownership, of wealth, of employment, of trade, and of political influence; these are all more consistently addressed in the RBA than in the current development paradigm.

 

13. Greater equity is achieved by sharing empowering-knowledge-to-be-used-as-evidence and by building-the-political-momentum-for-that-knowledge-to-be-used-for-sustainable-equitable-and-HR-friendly-changes. 

 

14.Confronting inequity cannot, therefore, be separated from the political struggle for better policies and more resources for the poor and rightless.

In sum, organization and social mobilization are fundamental to equity and HR. An early success will depend on the extent to which the RBA tackles inequity by giving priority to the organizational aspects to combat it.

 

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

claudio at hcmc.netnam.vn

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Mostly adapted from Ted Freeman and Urban Jonsson, D+C Vol. 31, June, July, Aug/Sept and Oct 2004, Perspectives in Global Development and Technology, Vol 3, No. 1-2, 2004, and Insights 51, Dec 04 (id21-IDS). 

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