13.A new human rights-based strategy will thus
-be rights-based (emphasis here on purpose),
-be process and outcome oriented,
-be beneficiary centered/driven,
-be participatory in a de-facto empowering way (4),
-be problem identifying/problem solving (using participatory positive AAA
processes as an operational framework),
-be guided by a scientific causal analysis (using an explicit conceptual
framework),
-be implemented progressively and in a targeted way, and
-be advocacy/activism-focused (using ethical, scientific, technical and
political arguments and avenues to achieve the goals set; the “global
embarrassment” trump card is also to be used widely). (5)
14.The human rights-based strategy will combine top-down and bottom-up actions (making it bottom-centered) and will explore and take advantage of all potential synergisms and convergences when applying different cross-sectoral interventions. [Traditional sectoral boundaries should become virtual in a true human rights-based strategy].
15.Decentralization-cum-democratization (and not only deconcentration) with devolution of decision-making power to the periphery through community-driven actions backed by funds being truly made available locally are all crucial to the human rights-based approach.
16.The mobilization of financial resources is to cover both (the higher) initial costs of interventions and their (lower) recurrent maintenance costs –the latter being progressively borne by local communities for a) sustainability purposes, and b) to assure the process is actually more and more controlled by the beneficiaries themselves.
17.In the existing ocean of confusion about the term, ‘community participation’ will be more clearly defined as a truly empowering tool in the context of the human rights-based strategy. (4) Guidelines will need to be written on how to apply its principles.
18.The long-term vision and aims of the human rights-based strategy will have to be defined as well, especially on how priorities will respond to the most pressing felt needs of the people as set locally (and not set in general by the strategy proponents at central level).
19.Additionally, beyond completing a participatory capacity analysis,
the human rights based strategy will focus:
-on empowering people (this is crucial),
-on reducing poverty and inequities (especially around gender issues),
-on mobilizing all necessary local and external resources for relevant actions
(with the community progressively gaining control over them),
-on using the pressure of facts –acquired through the use of local
information systems– to trigger action by fueling relevant positive AAA
processes and genuine micro-regional planning. (This encompasses the
participatory assessment and measurement of actionable indicators so as to
create awareness and a true dialogue among the people),
-on using this community surveillance data to prompt and keep up
local mobilization efforts,
-on demanding accountability and transparency, as well as on exposing
corruption at all levels,
-on delivering basic services, and on expanding access to and coverage and
utilization of them, as well as improving their quality,
-on assuring an adequately functioning peripheral health care system with
both viable and fitting curative and preventive, as well as rehabilitative care
strategies (arrived at in true partnership between providers and users),
-on making services more responsive to the needs of the population,
-on building capacity and raising people’s political consciousness,
-on developing human resources that are conversant with the principles of
the human rights-based approach,
-on strengthening existing institutions to do the above, as well as on
organizing meaningful exchange visits,
-on achieving sustainability and assuring replicability, as well as on
geographically converging different actions to maximize outcomes,
-on communicating and sharing successes,
-on networking, on building coalitions and on doing active national and
international solidarity work,
-on identifying and working with strategic allies/helping forces and on
neutralizing strategic opponents/hindering forces,
-on applying operations research techniques to decide on the best long-term
course of action to follow,
-on setting up ongoing on-the-job cum support supervision activities that
will replace workshop-based, mostly theoretical, training,
-on building, equipping and staffing minimum needed PHC infrastructures
and, from there, providing ongoing outreach services,
-on working with ‘deserving’ NGOs that have revisioned their future and
have taken up a new mission around the human rights-based approach,
-on giving environmental protection a higher profile, and
-on setting up more equitable cost-sharing approaches.
20.Moreover, the human rights-based strategy will not neglect improving management practices at local level allowing communities to de-facto share the responsibility of co-managing resources and services.
21.The strategy will need one or two explicit, quantified and timed ‘poverty redressal objectives’ monitored at least yearly. (6) Social and political mapping of resources and their control will thus have to be carried out yearly as well. (7)
22.Finally, the human rights-based strategy will have to take an unequivocal proactive stand towards reversing the negative effects:
-of structural adjustment programs,
-of the processes of globalization and privatization being pushed by the WB,
the IMF and other agencies,
-of the diverse multilateral and bilateral donor, as well as NGO development
projects not in line with the human rights-based approach,
-of social marketing unidirectionally applied to change people’s behavior
without letting them decide why such change is needed,
-of existing national development policies that have become obsolete, and
-of existing current government development resources allocation formulae
not in line with human rights priorities.
In closing
23.The additional elements here presented emphasize the sizeable dissemination and lobbying challenge ahead of us in the next decade in our efforts to have governments, development agencies and NGOs –as well as beneficiaries– adopt the new human rights-based strategy.
24.We are talking about creating a movement; not only using the human rights-based approach as a methodology (as a tool box); if we do the latter, we will fail, as many packaged tool boxes have failed before –even if those tools evolved some as they were used.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
________________________________________________________________________________
(4): Any attempted operational definition of empowerment will carry a certain bias depending on the conceptual glasses one is wearing. What is clear is that, in a mostly zero-sum game, the empowerment of some, most of the time, entails the disempowerment of others –usually the current holders of power. Different local contexts may make the same action(s) sometimes empowering, other times not. (Also, empowering people in community development work may sometimes be dangerous; it can well trigger repressive actions by the authorities). Empowerment is not an outcome of a single event. It is a continuous process that enables people to understand, upgrade and use their capacity to better control and gain power over their own lives. It provides people with choices and the ability to choose, as well as to gain more control over resources they need to improve their condition. It expands the ‘political space’ within which Assessment-Analysis-Action processes operate in any community.
(5): Global embarrassment is a term coined a few years ago in the context of lobbying. It refers to publicly blaming national and global leaders about the unacceptable levels of poverty, ill-health and malnutrition found, as well as about the host of human rights being violated in almost every country in the world; the idea is that by publicly blaming them for such an embarrassment one can trigger their response and generate greater political pressure to get the problems resolved.
(6): Poverty redressal objectives are objectives explicitly worded to reflect the specific, quantified reductions in parameters/indicators of poverty sought.
(7): Social and political mapping exercises refer to deliberate periodic assessments carried out to determine who controls the different resources the communities need to foster development actions, i.e., which social groups control them and what are their ultimate political motivations and leanings.