72. The worst tactic is to impose the transition to a HR-based approach (HRAP) by fast-tracking. More sensitization and in-depth training on the HRAP is needed. Good time has to be spent on training a core group. Then one can move on to district trainers and facilitators and finally to community mobilizers; all this with the aim of developing HR-based community action plans.

1. For claim-holders to build their capacity is for people to understand their rights, to claim them and to contribute to realizing them. Claim-holders simply have to hold duty-bearers accountable and, to do this, claim-holders themselves have to set up systematic monitoring systems. Human rights (HR) monitoring IS about assessing accountability. (Do not forget, here, that international monitoring also is a cornerstone of accountability analysis). Among other, monitoring by claim-holders has to look into whether development processes are ethically acceptable and of a minimum quality; are non-discriminatory and participatory; are owned by beneficiaries and empower them in a way that respects their dignity.

2. Capacity is the key factor determining how well rights are claimed and how duties are fulfilled. In HR work, it is ultimately the basic causes of HR violations (e.g., malnutrition and preventable ill-health) that determine capacity levels and the degree of control (power) that both claim-holders and duty-bearers end up having.

3. Therefore, a given duty-bearer cannot be held accountable for not fulfilling a duty if s/he lacks the conditions necessary to do so. For someone to be held accountable, s/he must accept the responsibility (SHOULD act), must have the authority to carry out the duty (MAY act), and must have access and control over the resources required (CAN act).

4. The identification of capacity gaps in failed human development (or maldevelopment) is thus to become the starting focus of development programming. Therefore, it is capacity gaps that claim-holders need to assess and subsequently monitor. But because the Right to Development implies disparity reductions in many aspects pertaining different basic causes, it demands action to eliminate HR violations in many contexts and domains.

5. Key elements that are part of the capacity of duty-bearers that we need to strengthen in the direction of HR are:

-responsibility/motivation/leadership;

-authority;

-control over resources (human, economic and organizational, including access to networks);

-capability to make informed decisions and learn from results; and

-communications capability.

6. It needs to be kept in mind here that helping-people-claim-their-rights is different from helping-them-change-their-behavior! The behavior-change model is essentially one-way in nature (from duty-bearer to claim-holder)…as in social marketing.

In HR work, we do not market pre-selected innovations or  behaviors. HR work aims at increasing the connectivity-among and assertiveness-of claim-holders to arrive at their own priorities for change.

7.So, claim-holders are to change their behavior –yes. But in a way that helps them to assert and claim their rights. Behavioral change will then occur as a result of empowerment. Ergo, claim-holders, not duty-bearers, are to set the development agenda.

8. Claim-holders and duty-bearers have to dialogue as equals to find out why expected duties have not been carried out. Developing active communication channels therefore helps claim-holders express themselves and helps duty-bearers to listen and respond.

9. We have to stop this attitude of ‘we tell them how to behave and how to use their scarce resources’. Such an approach is clearly incompatible with a HR-based approach. HR is about communication strategies based on dialogue and consensus rather than about top-down message transmission.

10. In HR programming, the causality analysis will result in a list of rights that are either being violated or are at risk of being violated, together with the causes of these violations. But the list risks to be too long. When shortening the list, we will have to recognize difficult trade-offs that will have to be made (at least initially) in the face of objective resources constraints.

11. The reality is that it is necessary for us to set priorities for addressing rights being violated. Focusing on priority problems will help reduce the analysis to a more limited set of claim-duty relationships. For each right chosen, a list of claim-holders and duty-bearers should be prepared. But note that the final prioritization should be a result of negotiations and consensus building, and not arrived at from the top. HR programming is, therefore, about making strategic choices and arriving at a set of priority actions required to accelerate the realization of selected HR.

Two important caveats

1. Prioritizing does not preclude that HR have to progressively be made more ambitious!
2. Strong and separate efforts will also have to be devoted to developing the capacity of children and adolescents to claim their own respective rights. It is unacceptable for children and adolescents to be regarded as ‘targets’].

12. All the above can guide us in actions at the community level. But the biggest challenge in the HR approach to (development) programming (HRAP) still remains sustaining community motivation and commitment. This invariably requires for the community to perceive key needed changes and to discern which changes they can realistically make happen. A step-by-step approach with emphasis on actions controlled by the communities themselves –as well as lobbying for those actions needed for which resources are controlled by duty-bearers outside the community– will eventually pay-off.

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

cschuftan@phmovement.org