Human Rights in Development Training

(Nairobi , December 2005)

Ideas for ILC, from workshop report PDF 96KB and Catherine Gatundu's learner's report PDF 45KB

These ideas are intended to help ILC secretariat and council understand how and why rights-based approach are to our efforts to improve secure land access.

1. What is relevance of human rights instruments to development?

• Human rights are often grouped into civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights, following international covenants. But in practice these rights are interdependent - enjoyment or violation of some can contribute to enjoyment or violation of others.
• Obligations of states to realize human rights include: (a) maximizing available resources, (b) making consistent progress toward realizing rights, instead of experiencing slippage - i.e., regressive steps are worse than no steps at all, and (c) taking appropriate measures, e.g., allocating budgets to implement laws designed to fulfill specific rights.
• Non-state actors are increasingly considered to be "duty-holders", i.e., to have obligations toward fulfilling human rights. Particularly development agencies or TNCs whose activities influence whether certain rights are fulfilled or violated.

2. What are some basic needs in order for human rights to be fulfilled?

• People need to know and understand their rights - often, people don't know what international agreements their governments have signed or ratified, or what national laws and regulations have been passed.
• People need to be able to demand their rights - this requires collective action.
• There needs to be ongoing monitoring of the obligations of both state and non-state actors, particularly where they are identified as "duty-holders". This needs to be detail-oriented.

3. Rights-based approach (RBA) compared to Needs-based approach (NBA)

• Basis of NBA is to develop programs or policies that fulfill needs identified within a given community or population. This approach tends to treat people and communities as "objects" or "beneficiaries" who receive goods and services from NGOs, international agencies or other sources.
• In contrast, RBA intends for people to be informed and full participants in defining and articulating their needs. In this sense, people and communities are not passive "beneficiaries" - they are active "partners" who have both rights and responsibilities in development activities. While both have problem analysis stage to designing programs and policies, a RBA would aim to organize this in a more people-centered manner. This participation by community partners then carries through implementation and evaluation phases as well.
• In addition, RBA should include a capacity assessment - what are the capabilities needed by duty-holders and rights-holders involved? Often, the capacities of both these sides need to be strengthened in order to ensure that rights are fulfilled.
• Use of RBA by UN projects and programs is endorsed by Secretary General, via the "Action 2" initiative that was introduced in 2002.
• In the end, interventions under RBA should allow for people and institutions to do things differently from their normal way of doing things - there needs to be change in behavior, actions, etc., in order to achieve realization of rights that thus far are not fulfilled.

4. Recommendations from Catherine's learners report

• There is need to support people to demand their rights. Program activities should include a learning component , through which people and communities that participate can strengthen their ability to demand, protect and monitor actively the status of their rights. .
• Many peoples' organizations and other grassroots organizations do not have direct access to agencies or institutions which address those development policies that bear on human rights. ILC is thus well-positioned to bridge this gap, especially for national-level organizations, by linking them to UN and intergovernmental agencies and other international bodies and processes.
• At same time, this link to the grassroots level will strengthen advocacy work by ILC and other organizations (international agencies and NGOs), by involving them in direct learning process with communities - i.e., advocacy targets and key points will be more in tune with actual needs as articulated by people who are demanding their rights.