By Victoria Butanu
Recently, human rights and development have been merging. The development community recognizes the connection between rights violation, exclusion, poverty, discrimination, and conflict. As a result, many of the member countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) have adopted the human rights-based approach to development. In this way, multilateral donors can address human rights more strategically, as a way to better the delivery and management of aid and the overall quality of development co-operation.
“Development cannot be achieved simply by digging up a well or putting up an electric cable. Actual, sustainable development comes when we focus on the human beings living there”, says Margot Skarpeteig of the Oslo SDG Initiative. In this way, development focuses on people rather than mere services, improving human rights first, after which development naturally follows.
The human rights-based approach
H.O. Sano, of the Dutch Institute for Human Rights, summarizes the discussion on the human rights-based approach to development stating that it is comprised of three crucial elements:
This approach, at its core, is about the integrity of the person, equal opportunity, and livelihood security. As effective and holistic as this may be, it will not solve all injustices. However, it can create a space of protection and dignity around the person so that development can progress.
The human rights-based approach is somewhat a response to the criticism that has surrounded the development community for decades, stating that development programs do not address core issues and are there as a mere geopolitical tool. It moves away from the common forms of assistance that have traditionally been projects aimed at the realization of specific goals. A more strategic use of human rights is the design of country programs and global initiatives.
Another way in which agencies can work is to mainstream human rights into all areas of current aid interventions and to always include human rights issues in the political dialogue between donors and country leadership.
Sophia Woodman, a researcher at the University of Edinburgh, in her thorough analysis of China, its problems with human rights, and aid, argues the reasons for a strategic approach to human rights. She says that bad programs are not necessarily just a waste of time and money, but may actually do harm.
“Badly conceived and implemented programs have sheltered repressive regimes from scrutiny, wasted vital resources, distorted domestic institutions and fostered social division” she argues.
The hallmark of truly good programs is their relevance to the beneficiaries they are aimed at. However, from the donor’s perspective, the aid process is often negatively affected by a lack of people with a thorough knowledge of the country and its hidden issue, as well as the language skills needed to work on project design and management. Together with time constraints, these factors can hinder the human rights-based approach.
Most rights need resources for their realization. This may represent a constraint to realizing development in a world of limited resources. In this situation, policymakers have to gradually achieve these rights over a period and this often means trade-offs among alternative rights. However, the unintentional upside of this is that the longer it takes to implement a program can actually strengthen it by offering more space to better understand the workings of a country. Economic growth softens the resource constraint which can speed up the process and, most importantly, avoid certain trade-offs.
