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Common Features in Development Practice: Themes and Strategies

Themes and strategies are drawn from background research and surveys conducted with over 150 practitioners at country and regional levels, and do not refer exclusively to the eight country examples highlighted on the web portal.

Advocacy Strategies

Many countries surveyed for this web portal used advocacy strategies to link human rights and the MDGs. In some situations, this supported ongoing programming, in other situations, it was an independent activity. When advocating to governments and political actors, it was generally helpful to partner with actors who increased the legitimacy of advocacy efforts, either because of their relationship to the government, their technical expertise, or their social position and reputation. Some country offices reported that hard statistical evidence or scientifically sound methodologies were essential for successful advocacy. Other country offices found that contextualizing principles in local cultural or religious traditions was essential.

Some country offices reported that governments resisted advocacy because human rights based approaches tend to appear overly complex and burdensome. In response to this, one country office suggested that human rights based approaches be presented as composed of 3 simple steps: (1) identify targets in the international human rights treaty framework, (2) identify the actors and institutions best positioned to realize targets (duty holders), and (3) apply a human rights principled methodology for prioritizing and making trade-offs if necessary (the methodology in (3) must be (a) participatory, (b) provide and maintain the minimum standards of all targets established in step one, and (c) avoid violating other rights)

In contexts where human rights were politically sensitive, partnering with actors from within government was also a common strategy. Many country offices first advocated with specific government actors on specific issues, and then partnered with those actors to advocate on broader issues and to a wider audience, after a relationship and common understanding had been developed. Many country offices found a key partner in national human rights institutions, in the form of ombuds institutions, secretariats, ministries or commissions. Practitioners reported a variety of advantages to partnering with national human rights institutions, including perceived legitimacy, technical expertise and institutional relationships which improved contacts and coordination between national and local actors. Practitioners also reported some disadvantages. National human rights institutions are sometimes viewed with suspicion by government actors and civil society actors alike, and this can compromise gains in legitimacy.

Many country offices worked also with government development planning institutions, and complemented formal submissions to planning bodies with informal advocacy and media pressure. Several country offices reported that development events covered by the media, such as the opening of a school or signing of an Memorandum of Understanding, often provided an excellent platform to advocate for non-contentious human rights principles, and to link those principles to more progressive development objectives.

Many country offices reported that national reporting and planning processes such as human rights reporting or MDG reporting provided an excellent entry point for advocacy that linked the two. This is especially facilitated when UNDP provides technical support to these processes, such as MDG reporting. This provides an effective platform for drawing conceptual and instrumental links between human rights and the MDGs. One country utilized a ‘boomerang strategy’ to advocate between human rights and MDG institutions. Workshops and consultations were used to incorporate the MDGs into the National Human Rights Action Plan, which was subsequently fed into the drafting of Nepal’s Five Year Development Plan.

Complementary Programming

Complementary Programming refers to synergies between programmes that overlap or complement each other in terms of objectives, actors, regions or tools. In many instances, this itself may constitute the link between MDGs and human rights, when human rights programming and MDG programming utilize the same institutions or processes. Some country offices have, for example, used community groups established for MDG localization to implement or promote human rights based approaches. Others have noted that programming events such as workshops may quite easily cater to both human rights and MDGs programming, and act as learning forums for the exchange of knowledge and resources.

Addressing both human rights and MDG programming elements in capacity development exercises can improve efficiency and minimize budgets. Many practitioners have also stressed that basing workshops and other activities on existing programme activities not only increases effectiveness and avoids redundancy, but helps to prevent human rights activities from becoming detached and peripheral activities. Similarly, building development programming activities onto existing social structures and community practices improves the quality of awareness-raising activities and participation generally.

Repeat partnerships has also allowed for linkages, especially when one type of programme has a monitoring or validation phase that the other does not, and partners may then address both human rights and MDG components in that phase.

Using the results of human rights based surveys in MDG planning or MDG reporting processes was a very common strategy among country offices surveyed. Many country offices implemented MDG and human rights programmes in the same pilot municipalities, over the same time span, and reported that this generally produced synergies and increased efficiency.

Some country offices have stressed certain risks inherent in complementary programming. Several practitioners have noted a vast number of overlapping programmes implemented at the local level, and that a preliminary analysis of all development programmes being implemented was necessary to ensure that programming was not redundant, addressing needs that would be filled by other programmes. Within country offices, harnessing the synergies of different programmes is considered good development practice, and requires effective channels for exchange of information and expertises between programme officers. Failure to do so has led to programming redundancies in some country offices, where resources have been devoted to planning of activities already conducted. Other practitioners expressed a concern that complementary programming might be perceived as redundant by government counterparts who are not familiar with human rights approaches, and that this would threaten funding.

Other country offices have integrated human rights into programming, applying human rights principles and approaches to complement existing best practices in municipal development. Providing an ‘integrated’ programming package has legitimized human rights based approaches in the eyes of many municipal actors, as it does not threaten conventional economic analyses. This approach has also provided concrete benefit to communities, by targeting social factors that would not have been addressed by conventional development practice.

Targeting Municipalities

Among the programming links between MDGs and human rights researched for the web portal, the majority of programmes targeted municipalities and municipal or regional development problems. Focus on local development is in keeping with the human rights principles of participation and inclusion, and reinforced by the increasing attention surrounding MDG localization. MDG Localization also provided many country offices with a concrete entry point for linking human rights to the creation of local targets, indicators, planning and reporting mechanisms.

Targeting municipalities is not without complications, however. Several programme managers noted the paradoxical fact that while municipal governments are in direct contact with local populations, and are thus best positioned to identify and assess needs, municipalities tend to lack resources for effective action. Social development projects tend to be planned and implemented at the national level, moreover, while municipal planning tends to rely on economic analyses, which often address social factors such as health and education as instruments for achieving economic development.

Many country offices dealt with this by engaging simultaneously with municipal and national actors. Coordination between policy levels was a common theme among the programmes surveyed, and many country offices partnered with national actors that had institutional links to municipalities, such as municipal branches, or substantive links, such as a ‘Ministry of Local Self Government.’ Such partnerships facilitated coordination among actors and helped pave the way for replicating programmes in other municipalities, or ‘nationalization’, in some countries. No country offices have reported any concrete benefits in terms of funding or resource allocation from the national to municipal level.

Strategic Partnerships

As mentioned above, many country offices used strategic partnerships to improve coordination among national and municipal actors, actors from the public, private and civil society sectors. Country offices have also partnered with actors on the basis of their close interaction with communities, or on the basis of specialized expertise, such as the human rights expertise of NGOs, government institutions or international organizations, or the technical expertise of universities or scientific organizations. Such partnerships are reported not only to have improved the quality of work through their expertise, but often to have had concretely added legitimacy to the work of country offices. Another partnership strategy to increase national legitimacy was the choice to partner with those actors within government most open to human rights work, and to use those partnerships in negotiating with other, more resistant government actors.

National human rights institutions, universities and national civil society organizations featured prominently as partners among those country offices surveyed. Strategic partnerships at the national and sub-national level are largely ad-hoc, however, and vary considerably depending on the specific aims and mechanisms of the programme. One country office is preparing to utilize legal expertise by partnering with the national bar association, and is currently exploring possibilities to bring public interest lawsuits against municipalities for failure to fulfil MDG and human rights commitments.

Neither does it appear uncommon to partner with international organizations, institutions and consultants. Many country offices seemed to perceive an inherent difficulty with such partnerships in local work, however, as international actors are rarely familiar with the subtleties of local social patterns and power dynamics, and international actors may compromise local ‘ownership’ of development processes. In light of this, many country offices stressed the importance of hiring local consultants. One country office balanced the benefits of international technical expertise and local ownership by hiring a renowned international human rights expert to construct methodologies and to assist local teams, while local teams were completely responsible for drafting reports and strategies.

Human Rights Based Approaches

Many of the practitioners surveyed for this portal make the link between human rights and the MDGs by adopting a human rights based approach. Whilst practitioners vary in their approaches, there is consensus on common themes:

The standards and principles laid down in national and international human rights instruments provide the framework for development programming: human rights standards and principles help set the objectives of programmes whilst also guiding the entire programming process.

A human rights-based approach emphasizes programming that empowers people to determine the development process and to be actively engaged in it.

Through framing development in terms of human rights the human rights-based approach establishes the existence of claims and corresponding obligations. Programming thereby focuses on building the relationship between individuals and groups with valid claims (rights-holders) and state and non-state actors with correlative obligations (duty- bearers).

These elements are reflected in the ‘UN Common Understanding’ on a human rights-based approach to development cooperation, as adopted in 2003 at Stamford, USA.

UN Common Understanding on a Human Rights Based Approach

1. All programmes of development co-operation, policies and technical assistance should further the realisation of human rights as laid down in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments.

2. Human rights standards contained in, and principles derived from, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights instruments guide all development cooperation and programming in all sectors and in all phases of the programming process.

3. Development cooperation contributes to the development of the capacities of ‘duty-bearers’ to meet their obligations and/or of ‘rights-holders’ to claim their rights.

The human rights principles to guide development programming identified in this agreement are:

• universality and inalienability;

• indivisibility;

• inter-dependence and inter-relatedness;

• equality and non-discrimination;

• participation and inclusion;

• accountability and rule of law.

While the human rights-based approach is still evolving this ‘Common Understanding’ is a first step in reaching conceptual clarity on a human rights-based approach within the UN and the wider development community.

In 2004 the Common Understanding was applied through the UNDP pilot project, Operationalising Human Rights Approaches to Poverty Reduction, which involved 8 UNDP country offices (Argentina, Armenia, Benin, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cape Verde, Comoros, Ecuador and Macedonia, who figure prominently in the experiences surveyed for the HuRiLink webportal). The pilot project concluded in May of 2007, though activities in individual countries are ongoing. The project has published an interim report, and a final report is currently being composed. Further ueries regarding the pilot project should be directed to the project coordinator at julia.kercher@undp.org.

Consultation, Inclusion and Participation

Nearly all surveyed programmes contained specific mechanisms for including local populations and marginalized groups in development processes. Many country offices conducted surveys, consultations and other diagnostic exercises, to represent how local populations and individuals experience development. Often these consultations emphasized how development priorities and human rights are perceived as well as enjoyed. A common strategy was to feed human rights-based survey information on people’s perceptions and priorities into MDG planning processes or reporting, or PRSP reviews.

In some countries, consultations were performed by civil society organizations who directly engaged local populations. Sometimes, informal local groups, such as school clubs, were trained by civil society groups to perform both awareness raising and diagnostic activities. In other contexts, diagnostics were conducted through workshops, organized cooperatively by several stakeholder groups. Country offices reported that this seemed to facilitate further dialogue and cooperation in development processes, and may lay groundwork for future cooperation between government, business and civil society actors.

Several country offices reported that such diagnostics appear to be more effective when accompanied by awareness raising exercises. Conducting popular media campaigns on human rights before conducting surveys on how rights are enjoyed, for example, can improve the quality of responses. Promoting or publishing the results of such consultations can increase their impact in official planning processes by adding political pressure. Both strategies may foster grass-roots demand for rights and specific development action. In some countries, diagnostics, awareness raising, and promotion in planning processes were all performed by the same actors.

Several programmes established participatory ad hoc groups or institutions, which were composed of all relevant local stakeholders, with broad local representation. These groups were often responsible for coordinating a number of different activities, and remained active from the planning and assessment stages, through implementation and evaluation stages. In order to ensure the widest possible participation in development planning, one group used focus groups to represent groups that were unable to travel in order to participate. Nearly all practitioners surveyed stressed that both community representatives and government representatives should be included in such groups and processes as early as possible, increasing the likelihood that necessary capacities and political support would be present in implementation phases.

Duties, Rights and Accountability

A common strategy underlying many of the programmes surveyed was to promote the roles of duty bearers and right holders. Many practitioners asserted that “framing” human development in terms of human rights and state obligations was perhaps the most important link that could be made between human rights and MDGs, as the human rights paradigm was generally seen to empower individuals, lend strength to local development demands, and reinforce the accountability of governments. Recognizing that no single programme or initiative is capable of changing the way all stakeholders talk and think about development, practitioners saw their programmes as contributing to a larger rhetorical and conceptual development (both nationally and internationally) with a momentum all its own.

Several programme documents explicitly reference such aims, and a variety of means are used. Awareness raising campaigns have met with success in some contexts. More common is the use of workshops and training sessions, targeting both rights holders and duty bearers. Similarly, one country office is cooperating with a national bar association to produce two training manuals on the links between human rights and the MDGs, one for community groups, and one for municipal governments.

Some practitioners commented that there is methodological imbalance in identifying right holders and duty bearers. The former is generally self-evident, from the determination that a right has been violated. Identifying duty bearers can be more challenging, especially in terms of many economic and social rights, and when the violation at hand is a failure to protect or fulfil. This will often be even more complicated in the context of decentralization, when responsibilities for social sectors may be widely dispersed among actors at municipal, local, regional and cantonal levels, and even more complex if human rights are to be linked to MDGs in the context of MDG localization, when MDG commitments are made by both national and sub-national actors, each with different priorities and resources sets. Nevertheless, practitioners recognize that the identification of duty bearers is an essential component of a human rights approach, and that capacity analysis is an important element in such identification. Many country offices have developed toolkits to help them identify duty bearers when linking MDGs to human rights, while others use less formal procedures.

Several practitioners saw the assertion of right holders and duty bearers as a first step towards accountability, and followed naturally by monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. Many of the programmes surveyed had planned monitoring phases, and some had designed mechanisms by which governments could be questioned on the fulfilment of their MDG commitments and human rights duties. Often this took the form of public advocacy pressure, and was most often executed by civil society actors with whom UNDP had partnered in other projects or project phases.

Many programmes analyzed their human rights legal contexts, including national and international legislative frameworks, in order to reinforce the obligatory nature of human rights and MDG commitments (though see this has also posed challenges). Many country offices note that national constitutions often reference a state’s human rights obligations (often as obligations of a higher legal order than domestic law) and that this can be a useful tool for reinforcing the legitimacy of human rights norms. One country found that the national constitution even provided a link between human rights and the MDGs, in as far as human rights and social services are due equally to all citizens. Opportunities are currently being explored by this country office to bring public interest litigation against municipalities that fail to deliver on these commitments.

Incrementalism: Linking Human Rights and the MDGs in Steps

Many of the practitioners surveyed in preparation for this Web portal stressed the incremental nature of their work, which they described as progressing only in increments, one step at a time, and that each step and small victory was an accomplishment that could be retained and built upon in future steps.

In contexts where human rights were politically sensitive, practitioners spoke of “sensitizing” counterparts by first discussing the principles and practices of a human rights based approach to development, without using human rights rhetoric, and only introducing human rights language once a general practice had been accepted. Others introduced human rights into politically sensitive climates by beginning with rhetoric and working towards conceptual integrity, or by beginning with social and economic rights, and working incrementally towards acceptance of civil and political rights.

Step by step progress was often addressed explicitly in capacity development exercises which aimed to train stakeholders in steps, or to build the capacities of stakeholders in order that they could take over programme activities. Many capacity development tools and exercises aimed to train stakeholders in replicating processes in new localities. Some practitioners described incrementalism as an inherent aspect of human rights realization, and most described their efforts to link human rights and the MDGs as one step in a larger evolution, reasserting the view that making tentative and preliminary links between human rights and the MDGs in programming enables stronger links in the future programming.