Human rights and development

DELACERNA

Today is International Human Rights Day, and it is everybody’s duty to do something to promote human rights in their own little ways to major ones.

With the ongoing war against drugs, human rights have been associated with probing the reported extrajudicial killings that have caught even international attention.

But today I prefer to focus on human rights as the center of development. In my desire to look for other references on human rights, I found Maria Socorro I. Diokno’s book “Human Rights Centered Development: Theory and Practice” very inspiring but challenging.

The book provides guidelines for policy makers, a checklist for Human Rights Situation Analysis, guidelines for comparing status of selected rights against budgetary allocations as well as human rights budget indicators.

The book also maps out human rights centered development tools of analysis, namely: participation checklist, defining the problem in the context of human rights through symptom-cause-effect analysis, actor analysis in the context of human rights, checklist on claim-holder analysis, claim-holder analysis and entitlement mapping, duty-holder analysis and obligations mapping, force-at-work analysis, identifying projects in the context of human rights, monitoring in the context of human rights, evaluation in the context of human rights.

Published in 2004, the book declares that human rights have finally taken center stage in the development world.

This is perhaps because past development paradigms have failed to eradicate the poverty, homelessness, hunger, joblessness, hopelessness, and despair that continue to plague millions of people throughout the globe.

Or perhaps because many world decision makers have come to the painful realization that it is precisely the poverty, homelessness, joblessness, and hunger that have incited many people to use any and all means at their disposal — including violence — to lift themselves from their hopelessness and despair.

For whatever reason, human rights are now emerging as an integral part of development.

Many in the development sector adopt “right-based approach towards development” or integrate norms, standards and principles of the international human rights system into the plans, policies and processes of development.

While this is a long awaited and most welcome, and while there are quite a number of references to a “rights-based approach” to date, there is yet to be a single authoritative paper or document that accurately and adequately describes this approach. Existing material indicates that there appears to be no single human rights approach to development, but instead different human rights approaches toward different aspects of development.

The book which is a manual does not present a rights-based approach to development but implies the adoption and implementation of particular procedures (e.g. operating manuals), processes (e.g. programming methods and tools), policies and systems (e.g. staffing requirements, organizational structure). Rather it attempts to present a human rights centered framework that can serve as a guiding philosophy for current development efforts.

There are several reasons why development efforts should center on human rights.

First, human rights transcend human needs, human aspirations, human ideals, human goals; human rights entail freedom and entitlements: freedom of action, guarantees of security, and command over the totality of things a person must have in order to be a human person.

While human rights imply development goals, sadly, development goals do not always imply human rights. Since human rights are the totality of civil, cultural, economic, political and social freedoms and entitlements, human rights goals are holistic, comprehensive, interrelated, indivisible, multifaceted and multidimensional.

Second, human rights impose upon states certain duties and responsibilities from which states cannot escape. This is because human rights regulate relations between states and peoples placing upon the state the primary responsibility of enforcing, protecting, promoting, and guaranteeing the enjoyment and exercise of human rights.

Third, human rights are legally enforceable entitlement. A fundamental right often overlooked is the right of reparation. This essential right becomes operative when other human rights are violated because it is the foundation for claiming freedoms and entitlements and seeking redress for every human rights violation.

Fourth, human rights set norms, rules, limits, and checks on state action and actions by other nonstate controllers of the economic, social, and political processes in society.

Fifth, human rights address issues of power, equity, and discrimination — issues often left un- or underaddressed by current development efforts.

Human rights form valuable strategic entry points for addressing the ways by which power relations produce and reproduce deprivations of fundamental freedoms and entitlements.

Sixth, human rights are not only the ends but also the means to achieve a quality of life consistent with one’s humanity and dignity. Human rights are concerned not only with being human, but also with the state of being human.

Seventh, human rights impose three types of individual duties to the community of human persons in society — not to the state. These duties especially apply to development policy makers, planners, and programmers — who are precisely tasked with charting the very future — and quality — of life in society.