From ‘rights-based’ to ‘rights-framed’ approaches: a social constructionist view of human rights practice

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, the dominant way in which a human rights discourse and practice has been formally embedded within international development NGOs' campaigns has been through what is referred to as ‘rights-based approaches’. Premised on a social constructionist view of human rights practice and reflecting on the findings of a recent research project, this contribution challenges the dominance of such approaches. It does this by offering a new framework for establishing an alternative approach, identified here as ‘rights-framed approaches’. The discussion concludes by highlighting some opportunities sociological research has to offer the re-theorisation of existing human rights campaign practice.

Keywords:

• rights-based
• rights-framed
• social constructionist
• campaigns
• NGOs

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Judith Glover, Darren O'Byrne, Damien Short, Diane Elson and Gregory Kent for their invaluable feedback on earlier draft forms, and also the anonymous reviewers of the BSA Sociology of Rights Study Group and The International Journal of Human Rights.

Notes

Workshop participant, cited in Alexandra Hughes, Joanna Wheeler and Rosalind Eyben, ‘Rights and Power: The Challenge for International Development Agencies', IDS Bulletin: Developing Rights 36, no. 1 (2005): 69.

Hannah Miller, ‘From Rights-Based to Rights-Framed Approaches: “Rights Talk”, Campaigns and Development Ngos' (PhD, Roehampton University, 2009), 11.

Reference to ‘rights talk’ is made here, as defined by Wilson. This concept is addressed within the second main section of the discussion.

For instance, IGOs include: UNDP, UNIFEM, UNICEF, UNHCHR. Major donors have included: the UK's DFID and SIDA. INGOs include Oxfam International, Save the Children, ActionAid, and CARE International. See Paul Gready and Jonathan Ensor, 'Introduction', in Reinventing Development?: Translating Rights-Based Approaches from Theory into Practice, ed. Paul Gready and Jonathan Ensor (London: Zed Books, 2005), 1; Celestine Nyamu-Musembi and Andrea Cornwall, ‘What Is the “Rights-Based Approach” All About? Perspectives from International Development Agencies'. IDS Working Paper 234 (Brighton: IDS, 2004), 12–42. It should also be noted that such actors have at times rhetorically adopted RBAs, without a significant operational change. See Peter Uvin, Human Rights and Development (Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, 2004).

See Emma Harris-Curtis, Oscar Marleyn and Oliver Bakewell, The Implications for Northern NGOs of Adopting Rights-Based Approaches (Oxford: INTRAC, 2005), 39–40; Gready and Ensor, ‘Introduction'; Olivia Ball, ‘Conclusion', in Reinventing Development?: Translating Rights-Based Approaches from Theory into Practice, ed. Paul Gready and Jonathan Ensor (London: Zed Books, 2005); Joachim Theis and Claire O'Kane, ‘Children's Participation, Civil Rights and Power', in Reinventing Development? Translating Rights-Based Approaches from Theory into Practice, ed. Paul Gready and Jonathan Ensor (London: Zed Books, 2005), 156–70, 288–90. Peter Uvin, 'On High Moral Ground: The Incorporation of Human Rights by the Development Enterprise', PRAXIS, The Fletcher Journal of Development Studies XVII (2002), 8–10.

Maxine Molyneux and Sian Lazar, Doing the Rights Thing: Rights-Based Development and Latin American NGOs, Viewpoints (London: ITDG Publishing, 2003), 6, emphasis in original.

Brigette Hamm, ‘A Human Rights Approach to Development', Human Rights Quarterly 23(2001): 1011; citing also ODI, ‘What Can We Do with a Rights-Based Approach to Development?', 3 Briefing Paper 1 (September 1999) .

Hamm, ‘A Human Rights Approach to Development', 1013–7

Ibid., 1017–8.

Ibid., 1018–20.

First promoted by the World Bank, this concept is widely criticised for being ‘insufficient’, restrictive, and a ‘distraction’, based on the premise that such an agenda is an overwhelming attempt to impose neo-liberal political models on developing countries, Ibid., 1020–1.

For example see Uvin, Human Rights and Development; Andrea Cornwall and Celestine Nyamu-Musembi, ‘Putting the “Rights-Based Approach” to Development into Perspective', Third World Quarterly 25, no. 8 (2004); Srirak Plipat, ‘Developmentalizing Human Rights: How Development NGOs Interpret and Implement a Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Policy' (PhD thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 2005); Laure-Helene Piron, ‘Rights-Based Approaches and Bilateral Aid Agencies: More Than a Metaphor?', IDS Bulletin: Developing Rights 36, no. 1 (2005); Harris-Curtis, Marleyn, and Bakewell, The Implications for Northern Ngos of Adopting Rights-Based Approaches; Gready and Ensor, ‘Introduction'; Molyneux and Lazar, Doing the Rights Thing: Rights-Based Development and Latin American NGOs.

Piron, ‘Rights-Based Approaches and Bilateral Aid Agencies: More Than a Metaphor?'; Nyamu-Musembi and Cornwall, ‘What Is the “Rights-Based Approach” All About? Perspectives from International Development Agencies'; Rosalind Eyben, ‘The Rise of Rights: Rights-Based Approaches to International Development', IDS Policy Briefing, 1360, 17 (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2003).

Piron, ‘Rights-Based Approaches and Bilateral Aid Agencies: More Than a Metaphor?'.

See Eyben, The Rise of Rights: Rights-Based Approaches to International Development; Piron, ‘Rights-Based Approaches and Bilateral Aid Agencies: More Than a Metaphor?'; Cornwall and Nyamu-Musembi, ‘Putting the “Rights-Based Approach” to Development into Perspective'.

Piron, 'Rights-Based Approaches and Bilateral Aid Agencies: More Than a Metaphor?'.

Philip Alston, ‘The Shortcomings of A “Garfield the Cat” Approach to the Right to Development', California Western International Law Journal 15 (1985): 152–3.

Piron, ‘Rights-Based Approaches and Bilateral Aid Agencies: More Than a Metaphor?', 23.

Harris-Curtis, Marleyn and Bakewell, The Implications for Northern Ngos of Adopting Rights-Based Approaches, 39–40, emphasis added.

Brian Pratt, ‘Rights or Values? Viewpoint', Ontrac, 23 January 2003, 2, cited in Paul Nelson and Ellen Dorsey, New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights NGOs (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 93, emphasis added.

Nyamu-Musembi and Cornwall, ‘What Is the “Rights-Based Approach” All About? Perspectives from International Development Agencies', 5, emphasis added.

Joachim Theis, Promoting Rights-Based Approaches: Experiences and Ideas from Asia and the Pacific (Stockholm and Bangkok: Save the Children Sweden, 2004), 19.

See Harris-Curtis, Marleyn and Bakewell, The Implications for Northern NGOs of Adopting Rights-Based Approaches, 11; Nelson and Dorsey, New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights Ngos, 121.

Balakrishnan Rajagopal, International Law from Below: Development, Social Movements and Third World Resistance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 223, emphasis added.

This was the case for three of the NGOs covered in the research project.

Both statements suggested here reflect the message of two responses given by campaigners during the ethnographic study of the research project, but are not used as direct quotes.

The theory of ‘voice’ was employed during the project as a means to identify the various expressions of rights talk articulated within the development NGO sector, and constructed by the social actors (campaigners). See Liz Stanley, ‘Feminist Praxis and the Academic Mode of Production: An Editorial Introduction', in Feminist Praxi: Research, Theory and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology, ed. Liz Stanley (London: Routledge, 1990); and Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).

The author is currently in the early stages of conducting a second ethnographic study, for the purpose of developing a comparative in-depth analysis of different rights-framed approaches (RFAs) in practice.

See, Damien Short, ‘Sociological and Anthropological Approaches', in Human Rights: Politics and Practice, ed. Michael Goodhart (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 103.

Ibid., 106; Michael Freeman, Human Rights, Key Concepts (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002), 85.

Richard Ashby Wilson, ‘Human Rights Culture and Context: An Introduction', in Human Rights, Culture and Context: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. R Wilson, A (London: Pluto Press, 1997), 3–4, emphasis added.

Identified as the ‘social forms that coalesce in and around formal rights practices and formulations, and which are usually hidden in the penumbra of the official political process’, see Anon., ‘Afterword To “Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key”: The Social Life of Human Rights', American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 78.

Anon., ‘Tyrannosaurus Lex: The Anthropology of Human Rights and Transnational Law', in The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law between the Global and the Local, ed. Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 350.

These questions in part reflect those suggested by Wilson, ‘Afterword To “Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key”: The Social Life of Human Rights', 78. He suggests studies should ask: ‘what sort of social practices are rights claims embedded in? How do various social actors understand the various claims, immunities, privileges, and liberties articulated in the language of human rights? How do they apply them or reject them? And what do they hope to achieve in so doing?’

Jane Cowan, Marie-Benedicte Dembour and Richard Wilson, ‘Introduction', in Culture and Rights: Anthropological Perspectives, ed. Jane Cowan, Marie-Benedicte Dembour and Richard Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 11.

Wilson, ‘Afterword To “Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key”: The Social Life of Human Rights', 77.

Ibid., 78.

Harris-Curtis, Marleyn and Bakewell, The Implications for Northern Ngos of Adopting Rights-Based Approaches, 40.

As was the case for the three RBA NGOs covered in the research project.

Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), 2.

David Snow and Robert Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization', in International Social Movement Research, Vol 1, from Structure to Action, ed. Bert Klandermans, Hanspeter Kriesi, and Sidney Tarrow (London: JAI Press, 1988), 308; Doug McAdam, John McCarthy and Mayer Zald, ‘Introduction', in Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings, ed. Doug McAdam, John McCarthy and Mayer Zald (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 6.

Dorethea Hilhorst, The Real World of Ngos: Discourses, Diversity and Development (London: Zed Books, 2003).

Tearfund, Why Advocate for Water, Sanitations and Hygiene? (Pamphlet) (Teddington: Tearfund, 2005).

Ibid., 5.

Ibid., 5.

For example the right to water has been recognised in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the Convention on the Rights, of the Child (CRC), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

Tearfund, Advocacy Strategy: 2006–2009 (Teddington: Tearfund, 2006).

See for instance WDM, Annual Review for 2003 – Justice for the World's Poor (London: WDM, 2003).

Anon., WDM Supporting Briefing October 2006: Water Is a Human Right (London: WDM, 2006).

Ibid., 2, 4.

For instance by demanding access for all, irrespective of material wealth or status, and by calling for binding regulations to be enforced.

Including CEDAW, CRC, and the committee of the ICESCR.

See WDM, WDM Supporting Briefing October 2006: Water Is a Human Right.

This was a particular finding across the three RBA NGOs covered in stage one of the research.

Snow and Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization'; McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, ‘Introduction'.

McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, ‘Introduction'.

Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movements: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

Snow and Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization'.

Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics.

Ibid.

As observed by Wilson, ‘Afterword To “Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key”: The Social Life of Human Rights', 77.

As defined by Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, 95.

Sanjeev Khagram, James Riker and Kathryn Sikkink, ‘From Santiago to Seattle: Transnational Advocacy Groups Restructuring World Politics', in Restructuring World Politics: Transnational Social Movements, Networks, and Norms, ed. Sanjeev Khagram, James Riker and Kathryn Sikkink (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 11–7; Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, 2.

Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics.

‘Conceptual level’ is used here in reference to an NGOs' formal conceptualisation of poverty, development goals and strategic priorities. By contrast, the ‘instrumental level’ is in reference to the deployment of human rights discourses and practice, within everyday campaign activities. See Miller, ‘From Rights-Based to Rights-Framed Approaches: “Rights Talk”, Campaigns and Development NGOs', Chapter 8.

Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, 95.

Ibid., 95.

Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics, 95, emphasis in original.

Ibid., 95.

Ibid., 95.

As observed by Wilson, ‘Afterword To “Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key”: The Social Life of Human Rights', 77.

Hilhorst, The Real World of Ngos: Discourses, Diversity and Development, 32–3.

Wilson, ‘Afterword To “Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key”: The Social Life of Human Rights', 77.

Ibid.; Freeman, Human Rights.