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ABSTRACT
This article empirically examines one of the most important causes of the non-implementation of human rights-based approaches to development (HRBAD): their alleged limited relevance for actors on the ground. The article argues that claims about local relevance can only be made after meaningful consultation with local rights-holders. Consulting local rights-holders in order to ensure responsive planning is not only relevant for HRBADs, but for development interventions more generally. The article presents new material on the Sanitized Villages programme in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to assess whether and how rights-holders are consulted, and identifies four mechanisms that can facilitate meaningful consultation.
Cet article examine de manière empirique l’une des causes les plus importantes de la non-mise en œuvre des approches du développement basées sur les droits de l’homme (ADBDH) : sa pertinence présumée limitée pour les acteurs sur le terrain. L’article soutient que les affirmations relatives à la pertinence au niveau local ne peuvent être faites qu’après une consultation véritable des détenteurs de droits. La consultation des détenteurs de droits locaux afin de veiller à une planification réactive est pertinente non seulement pour les ADBDH, mais aussi pour les interventions de développement de manière plus générale. Cet article présente de nouveaux supports relatifs au programme Sanitized Villages (villages assainis) mené en République démocratique du Congo pour évaluer si et comment les détenteurs de droits sont consultés, et identifie quatre mécanismes qui peuvent faciliter une consultation véritable.
El presente artículo examina empíricamente una de las causas más importantes para no implementar enfoques basados en los derechos humanos para el desarrollo (hrbad por sus siglas en inglés): su supuesta pertinencia limitada en el caso de los actores en el terreno. La autora sostiene que las afirmaciones relativas a la pertinencia local solo pueden formularse tras una cuidadosa consulta realizada a los derechohabientes locales. En aras de asegurar la implementación de la planeación flexible, la consulta a esta población reviste importancia para los hrbad y para otras intervenciones de desarrollo en general. Al respecto, el artículo da cuenta de nueva información surgida del programa de Aldeas Higienizadas implementado en la República Democrática del Congo, que puede ser utilizada para valorar si los derechohabientes son consultados y de qué forma lo son, identificando, además, cuatro mecanismos que podrían facilitar la realización de una consulta significativa.
Acknowledgements
The author is thankful to Lesley Turnbull and Jennifer E. Telesca for comments on earlier drafts of this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Tine Destrooper is the Managing Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at NYU's School of Law. She is also a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Antwerp. She obtained her PhD at the European University Institute, where she studied the strategies of social movements in post-conflict countries in Central America. Currently she is publishing on the topic of human rights from below, with a focus on gender and development.
Notes
1. For a general overview, see Andreassen and Crawford (Citation2013); Gready and Vandenhole (Citation2014); Gready and Ensor (Citation2005); Hickey and Mitlin (Citation2009); and Gauri and Gloppen (Citation2012).
2. Although participation in the Common Understanding refers to the broadest possible process of including rights-holders, there are several ways in which participation can be conceptualised and implemented to facilitate consultation. While both participation and consultation of local rights-holders are pinned on the assumption that the input of these rights-holders is valuable, neither is empowering in itself, and there is no simple causal relation between both terms.
3. SanMark approaches see water and sanitation as commodities in a market and limit the role of development actors to facilitating the free flow of goods in the market. CATS lay the main responsibility for water and sanitation with the community, without addressing structural or political inequalities.
4. Government contributes less than 1% of the programme funding. The rest comes from bilateral aid, largely coordinated by UNICEF.
5. UNICEF was one of the first UN programmes to formally adopt this approach in 1998, with Executive Directive 98-04. This sets out how human rights norms will henceforth inspire every intervention. A rhetorical adherence to a HRBA can be observed at all levels of UNICEF and is more explicitly present in the discourse of UNICEF than in many other organisations (Russell Citation2010; Gysler Citation2012). UNICEF, together with UNDP, was one of the first to operationalise HRBA (Nyamu-Musembi Citation2004; Russell Citation2010; Gysler Citation2012).
6. When we speak of ‘local voices’ or ‘voices from below’, we reject an understanding that places the global above the local or that sees local constituencies as uniform and static units organised around a shared culture. We argue that local realities can be a fertile ground for promoting human rights and development, but that it is the interplay between the transnational process and the practices of local users, which in the end holds the potential of making universal human rights norms and development programmes relevant for users.
7. The programme documents foresee that the village committee takes the lead in each step of the intervention, which implies that they should be consulted by the Local Health Office and technical assistants, especially in the early phase.
8. One interviewee reported that the village committee had warned the engineers not to construct the well on the southern side of the village, because of floods in the rainy season, but that this advice had been ignored, meaning that the current well is not operational for several months every year.
9. It should also be noted that local health officers usually are medical professionals, with little experience in the organising inclusive consultation processes, and that they are not trained on this in the framework of the Sanitized Villages programme.
10. The notion of duty-bearers is absent as such, but the meaning of ‘responsible' overlaps largely with that of duty-bearers in international law.
11. Previous research also showed that officers do not receive specific training on the implementation of a HRBA or on human rights issues more generally, and that there are only few hands-on implementation tools regarding these issues (Russell Citation2010; Destrooper Citation2015).
12. While this officer was more explicit about this issue than other interviewees, the officer seemed to voice what other interviewees were also hinting at.
13. Note that such upstreaming mechanisms did exist for practical concerns. For example, the U-Report system was an SMS service installed in the Sanitized Villages, which gave villagers the opportunity to flag problems with sanitation, like the outbreaks of diseases. These mechanisms could be used as blueprint for mechanisms for upstreaming input on strategic matters.
14. This article does not argue that HRBADs are more valuable than alternative paradigms such as the CATS as such, but takes issue with the rhetorical inflation of the HRBAD to an extent where it comes to mean very little, and with the introduction of new paradigms which have also been developed top-down and which are, as such, equally out of touch with local realities.
15. This is irrespective of the direct human rights obligations which UNICEF is considered to have. See Nyamu-Musembi (Citation2004) and Uvin (Citation2007).