Putting the ‘rights‐based approach’ to development into perspective

Abstract This paper seeks to unravel some of the tangled threads of contemporary rights talk. For some, the grounding of rights‐based approaches in human rights legislation makes them distinctively different to others, lending the promise of re‐politicising areas of development work—particularly, perhaps, efforts to enhance participation in development, that have become domesticated as they have been 'mainstreamed' by powerful institutions like the World Bank. Others complain that like other fashions, the label 'rights‐based approach' has become the latest designer item to be seen to be wearing, and has been used to dress up the same old development. We pose a series of questions about why rights have come to be of interest to international development actors, and explore the implications of different versions and emphases, looking at what their strengths and shortcomings may come to mean for the politics and practice of development. Notes Andrea Cornwall and Celestine Nyamu‐Musembi are at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, East Sussex, BN1 9RE, UK. Email: A. Cornwall@ids. ac. uk; C. Nyamu@ids. ac. uk We would like to thank Rosalind Eyben and Garett Pratt for comments, and Emma Jones and Jonathan Gaventa for research assistance. We'd also like to thank the people from international agencies who gave their time to share their views with us, and Sida, SDC and DFID for funding the work on which this article is based. All errors of interpretation remain ours. These trends are captured in R Eyben, 'The rise of rights', Institute of Development Studies Policy Briefing, 2003; and evidenced in a range of recent documents from INGOs and donor agencies, from CARE's 'Defining characteristics of a rights‐based approach: promoting rights and responsibilities', Atlanta, 2002, to DFID's Target Strategy Paper, Human Rights for Poor People, London, 2000. We discuss different agencies' discourses on the rights‐based approach in more depth in a forthcoming IDS Working Paper, entitled: 'What is the Rights‐based approach all about? ' (Nyamu‐Musembi see also H Slim, 'A response to Peter Uvin, making moral low ground: rights as the struggle for justice and the abolition of development', Praxis, XV11, 2002, pp 1–5. RC Offenheiser R Eyben R Eyben, op cit, 2003; N Kabeer, op cit, 2002; J. Gaventa, 'Introduction: exploring citizenship, participation and accountability', IDS Bulletin, 33 (2), 2002, pp 1–11. C Nyamu‐Musembi, 'Toward an actor‐oriented perspective on human rights', IDS Working Paper 169, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2002; C Moser P Hunt, S Osmani R Crook F Manji, op cit, 1998; C Nyamu‐Musembi, op cit, 2002. F Manji, op cit, 1998, p 16. One example of contradictions within the colonial project that opened up spaces for some social groups is in the area of marital relations. Chanock discusses the example of a colonial officer and a Chewa paramount chief in North Eastern Zambia in the 1920s who took it upon themselves to grant divorces to rural women who had been abandoned by their husbands. The husbands had migrated into mining centres and towns and had entered into relationships with other women and did not remit money to their wives. Yet the area's Native Authorities and the Catholic Missionaries would not allow them to divorce their husbands. The unilateral actions of the colonial officer and the Chewa paramount chief freed them to move on and explore new economic opportunities for themselves (M Chanock, Law, Custom and Social Order: The Colonial Experience in Malawi and Zambia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p 152). UNDP, Human Development Report: Human Rights and Human Development, New York: UNDP, 2000. M Robinson, 'Bridging the gap between human rights and development: from normative principles to operational relevance', World Bank Presidential Fellows Lecture, 3 December 2001. Available at www. worldbank. org/wbi/B‐SPAN/subₘaryᵣobinson. htm. There were 146 votes in favour. Industrial countries that voted in favour of the declaration include Australia, Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand and Norway. The single vote against the declaration came from the United States. Eight abstained, including Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom. Source: I Brownlie, 'The human right to development', Commonwealth Secretariat, Human Rights Unit Occasional Paper, November 1989. On this subsequent resolution, eleven states voted against (United States, Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal and the United Kingdom). The total number of votes in favour fell to 133. Australia, which had voted in favour of the first resolution, abstained this time around. Source: I Brownlie, op cit, 1989. I Brownlie, op cit, 1989, p 12. Amnesty International, 'The rights‐based approach to development: indivisibility and interdependence of ALL human rights', statement of Colm O'Cuanachain, Chairperson, International Executive Committee to World Social Forum, Porto Alegre, 2002. DFID, Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the Twenty‐First Century, White Paper on International Development, London: DFID, 1997. DFID, Eliminating World Poverty: Making Globalisation Work for the Poor, White Paper on International Development, London: DFID, 2000. DFID, Making Government Work for Poor People: Strategies for Meeting the International Development Targets, London: DFID, 2001. LH Piron, 'The right to development: a review of the current state of the debate for the department for international development', Overseas Development Institute, 2003. Available at www. odi. org. uk/pppg/publications/papersᵣeports/dfid/issues/rights01/index. html. A workshop on 'Rights and Power' held at IDS in November 2003 included an exercise to draw out the key historical events that have influenced the emergence of rights based approaches in development. When the Declaration on the Right to Development was mentioned by one of the authors no more than four of the 26 participants drawn from donor agencies had ever heard of it. See P Uvin, op cit, 2004, for a fuller discussion of the emergence of human rights discourses within the development arena. P J Nelson R Eyben, op cit, 2003; A Cornwall, op cit, 2000. For a fuller presentation of the positions of various international development agencies see C Nyamu‐Musembi see also LH Piron CARE, Benefits‐Harms Facilitation Manual, Nairobi: CARE International, 2001. For additional materials on CARE's experience with a rights‐based approach to programming see also 'Defining characteristics of a rights‐based approach', CARE, Promoting Rights and Responsibilities Newsletter, February 2002; and 'CARE's experience with adoption of a rights‐based approach: five case studies', available at www. careinternational. org. uk/resourcecentre/humanrights/finalcaseₛtudiesₘergedⱼune₂4₀2. pdf. CARE, idem. See www. kcenter. com/phls/rba. htm. Interview with Muhoro Ndung'u, (then) Assistant Country Director, Nairobi, 10 April 2003. See www. actionaid. org/policyandresearch/policyandresearch. shtml. ActionAid, Fighting Poverty Together: Participatory Review and Reflection 2001, CD‐ROM, 2002. ActionAid‐Kenya, 2002, Country Strategy Paper 2002–2005, p 1. ActionAid staff involved in the Sugar Campaign were summoned to a meeting convened by DFID (from whom ActionAid receives substantial funding) to 'clarify' their approach to the campaign. There appeared to be a perception that the campaign was an attack on British commercial interests: at the time, two British firms held lucrative contracts to manage sugar factories that were under receivership. Interview with Peter Kegode, ActionAid Consultant on Sugar Campaign, Nairobi, 15 August 2002. C Moser A Cornwall C. Nyamu@ids. ac. uk