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ABSTRACT
Contemporary scholarship has overwhelmingly focused on ‘rights-based approaches’ (RBAs) to development as being the principle way that development and human rights have merged in NGO practice. This article focuses on development-orientated campaign strategies, and in so doing challenges the ongoing RBA fixation by considering two praxis developments: (1) despite firm rejections of RBAs, alternative human rights strategies are being embedded in contemporary NGO practice, and; (2) over the past six years key changes in wider NGO campaigning contexts and environments have led to a further development in human rights approaches. Drawing on empirical findings from a ten-year in-depth research project on NGO practice, this article not only tracks developments in campaign practice, but also proposes two new models for consideration. These models – ‘rights-framed’ and ‘rights-referenced’, as practiced by influential NGOs – offer an innovative, strategic and instrumental embedding of a human rights discourse and practice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Hannah Miller has specialised in the practice of human rights and social justice (first as a practitioner and then as a practice-based scholar) since 2001. She has researched and published in the areas of charity law; NGO practice; rights-based approaches to development; poverty reduction/eradication strategies; campaign and protest strategies; solidarity movements for the Palestinian peoples. She is currently researching the human rights impacts of the UK’s Universal Credit system and alternative dispute resolution systems.
Notes
1 Actors have included the UNDP, UNICEF, World Bank, the UK’s departments for International Development and the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Oxfam, Save the Children, ActionAid and CARE. See Andrea Cornwall and Celestine Nyamu-Musembi, ‘Putting the “Rights-Based Approach” to Development into Perspective’, Third World Quarterly 25, no. 8 (2004).
2 Maxine Molyneux and Sian Lazar, ‘Doing the Rights Thing: Rights-Based Development and Latin American NGOs’, Viewpoints (London: ITDG Publishing, 2003); Brigette Hamm, ‘A Human Rights Approach to Development’, Human Rights Quarterly 23 (2001): 1005–31; 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; Emma Harris-Curtis, Oscar Marleyn and Oliver Bakewell, The Implications for Northern NGOs of Adopting Rights-Based Approaches (Oxford: INTRAC, 2005).
3 Harris-Curtis, Marleyn, and Bakewell, The Implications for Norther NGOs, 39–40; Joachim Theis, Promoting Rights-Based Approaches: Experiences and Ideas from Asia and the Pacific (Stockholm and Bangkok: Save the Children Sweden, 2004), 19.
4 Paul Nelson and Ellen Dorsey, New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights NGOs (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 93.
5 Harris-Curtis, Marleyn and Bakewell, The Implications for Norther NGOs, 39–40; Sam Hickey and Diana Mitlin, eds, Rights-Based Approaches to Development: Exploring the Potentials and Pitfalls (Sterling: Kumarian Press, 2009).
6 Laure-Helene Piron, ‘Rights-based Approaches and Bilateral Aid Agencies: More Than a Metaphor?’, IDS Bulletin: Developing Rights 36, no. 1 (2005): 19–30; Nelson and Dorsey, New Rights Advocacy.
7 Hannah Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches: A Social Constructionist View of Human Rights Practice, International Journal of Human Rights, 14, no. 6 (2010): 918; Hannah Miller and Robin Redhead, ‘Beyond “Rights-Based Approaches”? Employing a Process and Outcomes Framework’, International Journal of Human Rights, (2019): this issue.
8 Harris-Curtis, Marleyn, and Bakewell, The Implications for Norther NGOs, 39–40.
9 Wouter Vandenhole and Paul Gready, ‘Failures and Successes of Human Rights-based Approaches to Development: Towards a Change Perspective’, Nordic Journal of Human Rights 32, no. 4 (2013): 291–311; Hamm, ‘A Human Rights Approach to Development.’ It should also be noted that there have been previous concerns related to whether development-orientated actors are discussing (and implementing) ‘rights-based’ or ‘human rights-based’ approaches, or whether they are one and the same thing. This issue appears to have arisen when actors have been inconsistent with the usage. As I have previously noted: ‘broadly, some choose to emphasise the ‘human’, suggesting an alignment with the legal implications and normative quality of human rights as defined within international law. Others will use ‘rights-based approaches’ to indicate a certain distance from the international human rights system, with an increased association with citizen rights. Beyond this, the label ‘rights-based approaches’ can also represent a shorthand for ‘human rights-based approaches’ Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches’, 917. This article incorporates the latter.
10 Shannon Kindornay, James Ron, and Charli Carpenter, ‘Rights-based Approaches to Development: Implications for NGOs’, Human Rights Quarterly 34, no. 2 (2012): 480.
11 OHCHR, Frequently Asked Questions on a rights-based approach to development cooperation (New York and Geneva: United Nations, 2006), 35 https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FAQen.pdf; OHCHR, Frequently Asked Questions. For a fully developed analysis of this see our introduction to this volume, Miller and Redhead, ‘Beyond “Rights-based Approaches”?’
12 Hamm, ‘A Human Rights Approach to Development’; Hickey and Mitlin’s survey of RBA research has also led to the identification of RBA ‘packages’. From this perspective, ‘packages’ (dependent on RBA ‘interpretations’) are likely to be inclusive of the following rights dimensions: ‘(Pressure for) formal rights as laid down within some legal systems, stipulations, rules, or regulations; The implementation of such rights through legal campaigns and stronger links with the legal profession; A more complete system of interconnected rights, rather than single rights; Adherence to international rights and a hierarchy of rights at local, national and international scales; The explicit acknowledgement that engaging with rights requires an overtly political approach’ Hickey and Mitlin, Rights-Based Approaches, 8.
13 Shela Patel and Diana Mitlin ‘Reinterpreting the Rights-Based Approach: A Grassroots Perspective on Rights and Development’, in Hickey and Mitlin, Rights-Based Approaches,107–24; Vandenhole and Gready, ‘Failures and Successes’; Hannah Miller, ‘Rejecting “Rights-Based Approaches” to Development: Alternative Engagements with Human Rights’, Journal of Human Rights 16, no.1 (2017).
14 Paul Gready, ‘Rights-based Approaches to Development: What is the Added Value? Development in Practice 18, no. 6 (2008): 735–47; Paul Gready, ‘Organisational Theories of Change in the Era of Organisational Cosmopolitanism: Lessons from ActionAid's human rights-based approach’, Third World Quarterly 34, no. 8 (2013): 1339–60; Kindornay, Ron, and Carpenter, ‘Rights-Based approaches’, 472–506; Hickey and Mitlin, Rights-Based Approaches to Development.
15 For example, Vandenhole and Gready provide important insight into the ‘drivers’, ‘obstacles’ and ‘spoilers’ to organisational change. Vandenhole and Gready, ‘Failures and Successes’
16 See for instance, Gordon Crawford and Bard Andreassen, ‘Human Rights and Development: Putting Power and Politics at the Centre’, Human Rights Quarterly 37, no. 3 (2015): 662–90.
17 See Nelson and Dorsey, ‘Who Practices Rights-based Development?’ 97–107.
18 This is also core to the overall contribution of this special issue, see Miller and Redhead, ‘Beyond “Rights-Based Approaches”?’
19 Kindornay, Ron, and Carpenter, ‘Rights-Based approaches’, 487.
20 Peter Uvin, Human Rights and Development (Bloomfield: Kumarian Press, 2004).
21 Laure-Hélène Piron, ‘Rights-Based Approaches and Bilateral Aid Agencies: More Than a Metaphor?’ IDS Bulletin: Developing Rights 36, no.1 (2005): 19–30.
22 WB/OECD-Compendium, Integrating Human Rights into Development. Donor Approaches, Experiences, and Challenges. 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2013).
23 The categories suggested by Uvin and Piron and O’Neil straddle the spectrum of human rights practice, from thick to thin uses respectively.
24 Niel Stammers, ‘Social Movements and the Social Construction of Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly 21 (1999): 980–1008; Lydia Morris, Rights: Sociological Perspectives (London: Routledge, 2006).
25 Richard Ashby Wilson, ‘Afterword to “Anthropology and Human Rights in a New Key”: The Social Life of Human Rights’, American Anthropologist 108, No.1 (2006): 77–83.
26 Richard Ashby Wilson, ‘Tyrannosaurus Lex: The Anthropology of Human Rights and Transnational Law’, The Practice of Human Rights: Tracking Law Between the Global and the Local, Mark Goodale and Sally Engle Merry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 350.
27 See Hannah Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches: A Social Constructionist View of Human Rights Practice’ in Sociology and Human Rights: New Engagements, Pracillia Hynes, Michele Lamb, Damien Short, Matthew Waites (London: Taylor and Francis, 2012).
28 Prior to 2015 ‘Global Justice Now’ were formally known as the ‘World Development Movement’ (WDM). With the exception of one reference from 2005, they are referred throughout as ‘Global Justice Now’.
29 Of the respective list of nine, the first three had adopted RBAs, whilst the further six had not. The first three loosely represent mainstream RBA NGOs; the middle three, (‘leftist’) political NGOs, and; the final three, faith-based NGOs from either a Christian or Catholic tradition.
30 Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches’, 923
31 Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches’, 915-931; Miller, ‘Rejecting “Rights-Based Approaches” to Development’.
32 Global Justice Now, War on Want, Jubilee Debt Campaign, Tearfund and CAFOD.
33 In the wider research project the term ‘conceptual level’ was used in reference to: official approaches, conceptualizations of poverty, end goals and strategic priorities. The ‘operational level’ was in reference to the deployments of human rights discourses and practices within campaign activities. See Hannah Miller, ‘From Rights-Based to Rights-Framed Approaches: “Rights Talk”, Campaigns and Development NGOs’ (PhD thesis, Roehampton University, 2010).
34 The identification of these core areas emerges directly from the grounded approach of the research project, whilst also being inspired by the work of Snow and Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization’; McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, ‘Introduction’; Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movements: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), Margaret Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).
35 Global Justice Now – focus group, 5 November 2015.
36 Global Justice Now – focus group, 5 November 2015; Jubilee Debt Campaign – Director, Interview, 22 February 2016.
37 Tearfund – Senior Campaigner, Interview, 17 December 2015; CAFOD – Director of Advocacy and Communications, Interview, May 2016.
38 Jubilee Debt Campaign – Director, Interview, 22 February 2016; War on Want’s Chief Executive, Interview, 28 August 2016
39 Jubilee Debt Campaign – Director, Interview, 22 February 2016; War on Want’s Chief Executive, Interview, 28 August 2016; Global Justice Now – focus group, 5 November 2015
40 For an interesting analysis, see Crawford and Andreassen, ‘Human Rights and Development’. See also Andrea Cornwall and Celestine Nyamu-Musembi, ‘Why Rights, Why Now? Reflections on the Rise of Rights International Development Discourse in “Developing Rights”’, IDS Bulletin 36, no. 1 (2005); Uvin, Human Rights and Development.
41 Global Justice Now – focus group, 5 November 2015; War on Want – Chief Executive, Interview, 13 October 2015; Jubilee Debt Campaign – Director, Interview, 22 February 2016.
42 Interview, 13 October 2015.
43 This strategy is consistent with what Keck and Sikkink identify as ‘solidarity campaign strategies’, see Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders, 95.
44 See Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches’.
45 Global Justice Now – focus group, 5 November 2015; Jubilee Debt Campaign – Director, Interview, 22 February 2016; Tearfund – Senior Campaigner, Interview, 17 December 2015; CAFOD – Director of Advocacy and Communications, Interview, May 2016.
46 Interview, 5 October 2016.
47 War on Want – Chief Executive, Interview, 13 September 2016
48 Global Justice Now – focus group, 5 November 2015; War on Want – Chief Executive, Interview, 13 September 2016.
49 Jo Becker, Campaigning for Justice: human Rights Advocacy in Practice (California: Stanford University Press, 2013); Tess Kingram, The Good Campaigns Guide: Campaigning for Impact (NCVO, 2005)
50 War on Want, Global Justice, Tearfund
51 See Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches’; Miller, ‘Rejecting “Rights-Based Approaches” to Development’.
52 Jubilee Debt Campaign – Director, Interview, 22 February 2016.
53 Global Justice Now, Campaigns and Policy Officer, Interview, 5 November 2015.
54 War on Want – Chief Executive, Interview, 13 October 2015, emphasis added.
55 Tearfund – Senior Campaigner, Interview, 17 December 2015; CAFOD – Director of Advocacy and Communications, Interview, May 2016.
56 For instance, see Thomas Charman, ‘Sexual Violence of Torture? The Framing of Sexual Violence Against Men in Armed Conflict in Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports’, in Sexual Violence Against Men in Global Politics, ed. Marysia Zalewski, Paula Drumond, Elisabeth Prugl, Maria Stern (London: Routledge, 2018); David Snow and Robert Benford, ‘Ideology, Frame Resonance, and Participant Mobilization’, in International Social Movement Research, 1; McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, ‘Introduction’; Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movements: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
57 Miller, ‘From “Rights-Based” to “Rights-Framed” Approaches’.
58 Jubilee Debt Campaign – Director, Interview, 22 February 2016.
59 War on Want – Chief Executive, Interview, 13 October 2015.
60 Global Justice Now – Policy Officer, Interview, 5 November 2015.
61 Faith-based NGO, interview (this statement has been anonymized following the ‘in my personal opinion’ prefix).
62 Global Justice Now – Campaigns and Policy Officer, Interview, 5 November 2015.
63 See Hannah Miller, ‘A Change in Charity Law for England and Wales: Examining War on Want's Foremost Adoption of the new Human Rights Charitable Purpose’, International Journal of Human Rights, 16, no.7 (2012): 1003–22.
64 War on Want, Memorandum of Association of War on Want. London, War on Want (2007).
65 War on Want – Chief Executive, Interview, 28 August 2016.
66 For instance, the idea of a ‘weapon’ was discussed by War on Want’s Chief Executive, Interview, 28 August 2016.
67 Utilizing a frame as a means to transform the terms and nature of debate is of course a well-documented strategy of activists. See Keck and Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders.
68 Global Justice Now – Global Justice Now Policy Officer, group interview, 5 November 2015.
69 Interview, 28 November 2016.
70 See Cornwall and Nyamu-Musembi, Putting the ‘Rights-Based Approach’, supra note 5, at 1418, 1432; Crawford and Andreassen, ‘Human Rights and Development’.