[In this Human Rights Reader series, we have focused on quite a few elements called for in the implementation of the emerging human rights-based approach to development –mostly in health and nutrition. Additional conceptual and operational elements for its implementation are added at this time. As said once earlier, the repetition of some human rights concepts is both inevitable and also part of this Reader’s intention to have them ‘sink-in’ into the readers’ alter-ego by looking at these concepts from different angles].
1.The ‘chronic emergency’ situation in the health, nutrition, education and other service sectors in an important number of the developing countries only sporadically becomes a ‘loud emergency’. However, if things stay their present course or worsen, such loud emergencies will increasingly become inevitable.
2.At the base of this is the fact that we are witnessing a failure of governments to sustain the provision of basic services, to pay the full cost of such public services and to respect, protect and fulfill people’s human rights. Moreover, traditional sectoral approaches to development –aid-backed or not– are not delivering expected results (or are not delivering them fast enough to reach the Millennium Goals).
The need and the challenges
3.There is thus an urgent need to accelerate the implementation of a human rights-based development strategy centered around this emerging development paradigm that incorporates the poor beneficiaries as protagonist actors. This paradigm also merges ethics and science, ideology and politics and theory and practice (i.e., what ought to be done and what can be done) into one consolidated development compact –one that effectively responds to the dire necessity here briefly sketched and one that is taken up as an active engagement or covenant with the people whose rights are being violated day-in, day-out.
4.A much wider participative and empowering Assessment-Analysis and Action (AAA) process (2) –as an operational framework for the human rights-based approach– has to be set in motion (or strengthened if elements of it are already in place). To bring about change, people have to come from their very own experience (getting at their own realities). AAA processes are thus tools of social mobilization and of mobilization and progressive control of the resources needed. Such proactive AAA processes should be ultimately pursued in all areas and sectors of development. Social mobilization only succeeds if the repetitive/iterative character of the AAA operational framework begins to work. Positive AAA processes will then lead to the needed social mobilization at the community level. This mobilization envisions a key role for mobilizers/animators with three types of skills, namely:
-Moral Advocacy skills,
-Social Activism skills, and
-Political Advocacy skills.
These animators are the indispensable promoters of the needed mobilization process; they become the catalists in the interaction between outsiders and the community –bridging the “them and us” schism between development organizations and the community.
All active concomitant development AAA processes have to be identified and assessed at national and sub-national level so as to select our strategic allies and mark and neutralize our strategic opponents in implementing this new human rights-based approach.
5.This rights-based approach will give equal importance to process and outcome achievements, carefully targeting the most vulnerable in society –those whose rights are most flagrantly being violated– so as to make the endeavor truly equitable.
6.Quite a bit can be learned from successful coping mechanisms already used by households. Poor people are already doing; we need to asses what they are doing and build from there. [Note that reinforcing coping mechanisms risks locking the poor into a ‘low level of changes’ trap; it may keep them away from pursuing a more radical reappraisal of their needs, one more related to the structural determinants of their present condition]. Be it as it may, these spontaneous (or project-related) success factors need to be documented and better understood to consider them for eventual replication. (Keep in mind that going for small gains first is OK provided the ultimate vision remains to fully reverse gross violations of human rights).
The strategy
7.The new human rights-based strategy will focus-on/center-around the household and its members, i.e. around legitimate household members’ rights and their respective entitlements/claims. This means first providing for the household members’ basic entitlements, i.e., reaching a minimum level of family security. It is at the household level that we ultimately need to achieve significant changes, especially in health, nutrition and sanitation behaviors and status.
8.The needed community support mechanisms and structures to help identify and assist vulnerable households will have to be developed and/or strengthened. It is here where mobilizers (activists/advocates) become essential. We will not achieve our human rights goals unless we put in place a veritable “army” of such animators. (3)
9.The household entitlements/rights we are talking about here are in the realm of:
-food and nutrition (macro and micronutrients),
-cooking fuel,
-health (curative and preventive),
-the care of children an the support of women to do so,
-clean water supply and sanitation facilities and services,
-education (pre-primary and primary with a focus on girls and female
literacy/numeracy),
-shelter and clothing,
-income (in kind and in cash including employment opportunities),
-women’s own gender-related needs and entitlements,
-access to credit (especially by women) and to selected agricultural inputs
subsidies,
-legal protection (especially of women’s and children’s rights),
-physical environmental safety,
-physical personal safety during armed conflicts, and
-women’s personal safety from domestic violence.
10.Key, easily measurable, process and outcome indicators (or proxy indicators) for each of these entitlements will need to be agreed upon and monitored in our work with communities.
11.To make sense of these indicators, the human rights-based strategy will have to have its own Conceptual Framework (2) that will allow us to move up and down the causality chain to inquire about/find out what determines the findings represented by those indicators. Such a conceptual framework is crucial to help us create a consensus on the causes of family insecurity and the violation of its members’ rights. When using the conceptual framework, interpretation of the analyses is inevitably value laden; therefore, the values have to be shared. (It is good to be reminded that, as social actors, we inescapably become technicians with an identifiable –even if hidden– political agenda).
[My own preference is for this conceptual framework to be “upside-down” in relationship with the 1990 UNICEF conceptual framework of the causes of preventable ill-health, malnutrition and early deaths: i.e., the basic causes should be on top. If interested in one such tentative conceptual framework being prepared for wider discussion, you can request a copy from my email address below.
12.The role of an indispensable (and specially designed) Information/ Education/Communication (IEC) component in the human rights-based strategy needs to be emphasized here.
(Part two follows)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
(1): Capacity Analysis takes what is being proposed to be done for each dete[In this Human Rights Reader series, we have focused on quite a few elements called for in the implementation of the emerging human rights-based approach to development –mostly in health and nutrition. Additional conceptual and operational elements for its implementation are added at this time. As said once earlier, the repetition of some human rights concepts is both inevitable and also part of this Reader’s intention to have them ‘sink-in’ into the readers’ alter-ego by looking at these concepts from different angles].
1.The ‘chronic emergency’ situation in the health, nutrition, education and other service sectors in an important number of the developing countries only sporadically becomes a ‘loud emergency’. However, if things stay their present course or worsen, such loud emergencies will increasingly become inevitable.
2.At the base of this is the fact that we are witnessing a failure of governments to sustain the provision of basic services, to pay the full cost of such public services and to respect, protect and fulfill people’s human rights. Moreover, traditional sectoral approaches to development –aid-backed or not– are not delivering expected results (or are not delivering them fast enough to reach the Millennium Goals).
The need and the challenges
3.There is thus an urgent need to accelerate the implementation of a human rights-based development strategy centered around this emerging development paradigm that incorporates the poor beneficiaries as protagonist actors. This paradigm also merges ethics and science, ideology and politics and theory and practice (i.e., what ought to be done and what can be done) into one consolidated development compact –one that effectively responds to the dire necessity here briefly sketched and one that is taken up as an active engagement or covenant with the people whose rights are being violated day-in, day-out.
4.A much wider participative and empowering Assessment-Analysis and Action (AAA) process (2) –as an operational framework for the human rights-based approach– has to be set in motion (or strengthened if elements of it are already in place). To bring about change, people have to come from their very own experience (getting at their own realities). AAA processes are thus tools of social mobilization and of mobilization and progressive control of the resources needed. Such proactive AAA processes should be ultimately pursued in all areas and sectors of development. Social mobilization only succeeds if the repetitive/iterative character of the AAA operational framework begins to work. Positive AAA processes will then lead to the needed social mobilization at the community level. This mobilization envisions a key role for mobilizers/animators with three types of skills, namely:
-Moral Advocacy skills,
-Social Activism skills, and
-Political Advocacy skills.
These animators are the indispensable promoters of the needed mobilization process; they become the catalists in the interaction between outsiders and the community –bridging the “them and us” schism between development organizations and the community.
All active concomitant development AAA processes have to be identified and assessed at national and sub-national level so as to select our strategic allies and mark and neutralize our strategic opponents in implementing this new human rights-based approach.
5.This rights-based approach will give equal importance to process and outcome achievements, carefully targeting the most vulnerable in society –those whose rights are most flagrantly being violated– so as to make the endeavor truly equitable.
6.Quite a bit can be learned from successful coping mechanisms already used by households. Poor people are already doing; we need to asses what they are doing and build from there. [Note that reinforcing coping mechanisms risks locking the poor into a ‘low level of changes’ trap; it may keep them away from pursuing a more radical reappraisal of their needs, one more related to the structural determinants of their present condition]. Be it as it may, these spontaneous (or project-related) success factors need to be documented and better understood to consider them for eventual replication. (Keep in mind that going for small gains first is OK provided the ultimate vision remains to fully reverse gross violations of human rights).
The strategy
7.The new human rights-based strategy will focus-on/center-around the household and its members, i.e. around legitimate household members’ rights and their respective entitlements/claims. This means first providing for the household members’ basic entitlements, i.e., reaching a minimum level of family security. It is at the household level that we ultimately need to achieve significant changes, especially in health, nutrition and sanitation behaviors and status.
8.The needed community support mechanisms and structures to help identify and assist vulnerable households will have to be developed and/or strengthened. It is here where mobilizers (activists/advocates) become essential. We will not achieve our human rights goals unless we put in place a veritable “army” of such animators. (3)
9.The household entitlements/rights we are talking about here are in the realm of:
-food and nutrition (macro and micronutrients),
-cooking fuel,
-health (curative and preventive),
-the care of children an the support of women to do so,
-clean water supply and sanitation facilities and services,
-education (pre-primary and primary with a focus on girls and female
literacy/numeracy),
-shelter and clothing,
-income (in kind and in cash including employment opportunities),
-women’s own gender-related needs and entitlements,
-access to credit (especially by women) and to selected agricultural inputs
subsidies,
-legal protection (especially of women’s and children’s rights),
-physical environmental safety,
-physical personal safety during armed conflicts, and
-women’s personal safety from domestic violence.
10.Key, easily measurable, process and outcome indicators (or proxy indicators) for each of these entitlements will need to be agreed upon and monitored in our work with communities.
11.To make sense of these indicators, the human rights-based strategy will have to have its own Conceptual Framework (2) that will allow us to move up and down the causality chain to inquire about/find out what determines the findings represented by those indicators. Such a conceptual framework is crucial to help us create a consensus on the causes of family insecurity and the violation of its members’ rights. When using the conceptual framework, interpretation of the analyses is inevitably value laden; therefore, the values have to be shared. (It is good to be reminded that, as social actors, we inescapably become technicians with an identifiable –even if hidden– political agenda).
[My own preference is for this conceptual framework to be “upside-down” in relationship with the 1990 UNICEF conceptual framework of the causes of preventable ill-health, malnutrition and early deaths: i.e., the basic causes should be on top. If interested in one such tentative conceptual framework being prepared for wider discussion, you can request a copy from my email address below.
12.The role of an indispensable (and specially designed) Information/ Education/Communication (IEC) component in the human rights-based strategy needs to be emphasized here.
(Part two follows)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
rminant of a human rights violation at each causal level and looks at what is already being done or not being done (and why) for that problem. It then looks at who should be doing something about it [individual(s) and/or institution(s) who is (are) the corresponding duty bearer(s)] and attaches the name of that (those) person(s) or institution(s) to each proposed solution. This results in a list of the most crucial persons/institutions that have to be approached to push them to get the major proposed solution(s) for each main problem implemented.
(2): Situation analyses have to be based on an Assessment and an Analysis of the existing situation that will then lead to decisions being made for Action; this has been called a triple A (AAA) process. But the assessment and the analysis cannot be done in a vacuum –without previously having worked on a Conceptual Framework of the causes of the problems that are to be solved. This means that one has to have an in depth understanding of how those problems come about –what their determinants are before one can, in a participatory way, decide what the best options are to do something about them, i.e., “one finds what one looks for”. The essence of a good situation analysis, then, is to carry out a Causal Analysis based on a pre-existing Conceptual Framework and to base all decisions for action to be taken on this analysis. Therefore, appropriate interventions for the main causes at each causal level have to be found. Addressing each cause is necessary, but not sufficient to change the outcome (i.e. preventable ill-health, malnutrition and excess deaths). That is why communities need to act at all levels of determinants at the same time (and this is also why so many “selective PHC interventions” have failed in the past). AAA processes are happening all te time already (consciously or not) in all decision-making. From the perspective of the outcomes we want to achieve, we can identify positive, negative and neutral AAA processes: it behooves us to start and strengthen positive and neutralize the negative AAA processes in the realm of human rights.
(3): A mobilizer has a complex set of roles. Among them, some of the following can apply:
she listens, observes and consults, she validates scientific information, she validates what is permissible/fair/possible/doable/right for the local context, she shares knowledge, she influences perceptions, she puts things/concepts in a local context, she fosters evidence-based decision-making, she catalyzes/facilitates, she mobilizes/inspires people in the community, she advocates/convinces/persuades, she influences actions, she builds people’s capacities, she empowers them, she lobbies, she networks/liaises, she negotiates and goes into strategic and tactical partnerships, she carries out social and political mapping of resources, she mobilizes local and outside resources, she educates, she organizes, leads, manages, she sets an example, acts as a role model and is trustworthy, she assesses/re, analyzes/re, she coordinates/starts new actions, she creates space for such actions, she supervises, monitors and evaluates, she fosters and instills a vision and a hope, she raises political consciousness, she delegates, she makes decisions and solves problems, she is interested in learning from outside.