Other attributes of the human rights-based approach (RBA): A mini-SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis:
Some of the RBA’s perceived strengths are
Other attributes of the human rights-based approach (RBA): A mini-SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis:
Some of the RBA’s perceived strengths are
- A rights orientation, we had said, compels us to be more accountable to claim holders (CHs). This contrasts with a results-oriented approach that, in the real world, emphasizes being accountable mostly to donors.
- The RBA takes responsibility for making resources available for reflection (revisioning and remissioning) processes of development organizations that wish to do so; this, since financial resources to support these exercises leading to a shift in the development paradigm are not easily found.
- Although it is to the rights workers advantage to use and quote international human rights law, it is not always needed to do so to have human rights (HR) upheld.
- Using HR instruments and laws, the RBA makes recommendations based on the rights that are relevant to development interventions being proposed. When projects are already being carried out, it points out the HR violations being perpetrated. Important is that the RBA promotes discussion of these issues; it creates space for CHs to construct their own meaning of injustice and to draw on their value systems to challenge and confront the violators of their rights; it lends legitimacy to community groups who engage in such public claiming.
Some of the RBA’s perceived weaknesses are
- Obtaining support from key CHs and duty bearers (DBs) is not always possible at the outset; it requires time and, most of all, persistence. Therefore, more time and support are needed for a HR-based project to get under way than for a ‘conventional’ project.
- If those whose rights are being violated are not supportive of a RBA, asking for accountability of DBs achieves little.
- Multiple internal organizational changes are needed at the implementing organization(s) to successfully apply the RBA to development. To begin with, a different set of skills is needed in the same organization(s).
There is thus a dire need for development practitioners to become more versed in the principles of HR.
Some of the RBA’s perceived opportunities are
- The RBA questions ‘conventional’ project results and asks about what processes are being set in motion; it further asks who is really benefiting from the results; it questions whether donor expectations are always in the best interest of the poor and marginalized CHs; it spots potential and real harm being done by donor-funded projects; it looks at benefits and harms accruing to the various social groups involved; it looks whether there is culturally rooted discrimination; it also looks at unexamined issues and unattended complaints of CHs.
- In the RBA, rights are used to inform and to organize practical actions. This involves a continuum of stages from diagnosis and participatory research to rights fulfillment. The rights framework is thus used to give voice to CHs, to prepare groups, for them to engage in a dialogue process with the decision-makers and then to maintain the practice; it is also used to broaden support networks by linking with all those who, in one way or another, advocate for human rights.
- The RBA is launched with a ’situation analysis’ carried out with the community. Households are disaggregated by social class and/or wealth strata. One can then prepare ‘problem trees’ and can prioritize the top 4 or 5 problems. Invariably problems identified are related to rights violations.
A very powerful tool and process the RBA encourages to use is ‘Participatory Budget Planning, Design and Monitoring‘ which is applied and carried out with CHs and DBs inputs.
- Making empowerment its centerpiece, going beyond participation, is key for the RBA; it ultimately aims at empowering people to take control of their own lives and livelihoods.
- Empowerment is also seen as needed for the implementing organization’s staff to give them voice, to increase their representation in the current institutional and project/program decision-making process, as well as to build the staff’s capacity to claim their own rights within the organization.
- Remissioning exercises provide an opportunity for the staff, and for invited representatives of the beneficiaries, to critique the way projects are designed and are being implemented; in these exercises, participating staff members are seen as claim holders and are expected to ask how the project is to be held accountable vis a vis the population being served.
Commitment, a common vision and solidarity among the staff are all requisites and are solidified during remissioning retreats; the staff is here given the skills they need to do better rights advocacy and more effective community mobilization –and being culturally sensitive when doing so.
- The role and involvement of local facilitators in the RBA is of extreme importance to validate what external HR workers are trying to do in the community.
- Structured HR action-learning, a central piece in the RBA, aims at joining forces in public advocacy campaigns using different entry points with different DBs; this learning creates safe spaces for discussion of taboos or sensitive issues; it builds constituencies around a common vision; it organizes civic action.
Some of the RBA’s perceived threats are
- Raising awareness of people’s rights changes the nature of the relationship of implementers with CHs and DBs. Confrontations can arise; and this is not necessarily bad. Simply, as the number of active stakeholders increases, new tensions arise that must be skillfully managed.
- Making individual DBs face up to the realization that they are not meeting their responsibilities brings with it a certain level of risk. (The RBA, therefore, engages in preliminary risk analyses).
- People and staff are not always clear when they use human rights language. Rights are often upheld only as moral obligations to provide equal opportunity and benefits, but are not upheld as international legal obligations!
Conclusions
- Innovation, creativity, courage, persistence, willingness to learn and to change are needed to implement the rights-based approach. All these attributes are needed to bring justice to marginalized groups whose rights are being violated. The changes that are needed entail: enhancing the latter groups’ sense of power and worth; uncovering the root causes of their everyday problems; with them, analyzing the prevailing inequities, as well as why they are excluded, marginalized and consequently vulnerable. (Beware: discrimination can have many hidden layers; disaggregating them is important). Also working with these groups, the RBA analyzes what the forces are that cause and perpetuate their disenfranchised condition. Such a participatory research is considered indispensable to initiate rights-based work. This, because through such work, one openly discusses with beneficiaries and partners the issues at the heart of inequity. This, with the aim of getting communities to take greater control over decisions being made that affect their lives and livelihoods.
- Efforts must be directed to work with both CHs and DBs. It is acknowledged that the challenges in confronting the culture and social norms that try to justify HR violations in society remain formidable. Therefore, a deepening commitment and engagement from our side is needed.
- Applying the RBA will bring about tensions with donors and with government officers. It may lead to a widening rift between donor expectations and yours –and government expectations and yours.
But, on the other hand, the RBA is also an opportunity to shift the donors’ –and the government’s– attitude towards those whose rights are being violated.
- It is too soon to tell whether the RBA can achieve sustainable impact, and change power relations. Bu it is high time we all assimilate all that has been said here into our organizational culture and structures. We absolutely need to start doing rights-based programming –and there are good tools out there to start doing this. (See, for instance, Urban Jonsson’s “Human Rights Approach to Development Programming”, UNICEF ESARO, Nairobi, 2003)
- There is yet no charted course. What we have, gives us a sense of what is possible albeit not with consistent clarity yet. But we are getting there. This Reader has been striving for that.
- A compelling case can be made for how much we can achieve in addressing poverty, preventable ill-health, malnutrition and deaths, as well as in combating inequity and marginalization by applying a rights-based approach.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City