PHM-Exch> Food for an inconvenient thought

[Claudio Schuftan]

Human Rights Reader 313



*IT IS HUMAN RIGHTS THAT ARE THE CONVENIENTLY FORGOTTEN INTRINSIC PART OF
GOOD GOVERNANCE! *

* *



Has the concept of good governance been overused and has it become a rather
insincere cliché? It is certainly old. The World Bank Development Report of
1997 was on good governance.



If I stick to the title, governance assessments simply have to use a human
rights perspective; they must identify the specific problems and needs of
marginalized population groups in each country and the actions taken (or
not) by government to address them. Among other, the assessment must also
identify duty bearers and claim holders and advise on how to assess their
respective capacities, the same being a) to fulfill their human rights
obligations and b) to actively claim their human rights respectively.



Let’s take an example: Comparing the indicator ‘utilization of health care
facilities’ of children who live in poverty in a country, with the same
indicator for the general population (or of other groups in the population)
gives us an indication of the level of equality of fulfilling the human
right to health in the country in question; the aggregated indicator of
utilization of health care facilities of the whole population thus hides
the actual fulfillment of this right for the different social groups,
notably the most vulnerable. Right? Well, how does this relate to
governance? If we take the attributes of good governance: Is it an issue of
mismanagement or corruption? No. An issue of transparency? No. An issue of
effectiveness? No. But an issue of non-inclusiveness, of accountability, of
discrimination, of missing responsiveness and of equality, YES….all these
being principles of human rights to hold governance and governments to
account.



To read the complete Reader, go to

http://wp.me/plAxa-1GV

Claudio
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