Foreign Aid: Mainstreaming Human Rights and Human Rights Programming experience of a donor

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Foreign Aid  Mainstreaming Human Rights and
Human Rights Programming (experience of a donor)

• By
• Donald Rukare

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Contents

• Introduction
• Development assistance redefined
• Nexus between human rights development
• How and who development partners support
• Human rights mainstreaming
• Challenges
• Conditions for effective mainstreaming
• Conclusion

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Introduction

• Common practise for development partners (donors)
  to run programs that have a human rights
  component
• Across government non-governmental divide
• Human rights program linked to governance
  foreign policy
• Some development partners have adopted human
  rights mainstreaming through HRBA

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Development assistance redefined

• Terms donors and foreign aid have been
  replaced by development partners and
  development assistance
• Conditionalities have been replaced with
  undertakings and prior actions
• Change mainly in form not content

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Nexus between human rights development

• Human Rights are the cornerstone of democracy and
  development
• Development and human rights share the common
  tenet of putting people at the center of their
  agenda
• RBA acknowledged as the preferred modus operandi
  of several development agencies and national
  governments

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Development partnersWho do they support?

• Governmental/national institutions i.e. national
  human rights institutions
• Non-governmental organizations i.e. NGOs, civil
  society, CBOs
• DPs have country assistance paper
• Country assistance paper makes linkages to
  national development programs (PEAP-Uganda,
  NPEAP-Nigeria, MKUKUTA-Tanzania)
• Project budget support main methods

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Development partnersHow do they support?

• Projects common feature over last 2 decades
• DPs identify particular activity for support
• Setup administrative (project implementation
  unit)
• Financial structure
• Net effect several donor projects further
  weakening of existing administrative structures

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Development partnersHow do they support?

• Islands of excellence
• High salaries
• Operational funds available
• Lack of sustainability
• Exit nightmare
• Above led to change to budget support

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Development partnersHow do they support?

• Budget support
• Introduced in the late 90s
• Entails supporting entire budget not specific
  activities of the budget
• Sector wide approaches introduced
• Leads to greater local ownership, flexibility, DP
  coordination harmonization
• Facilitates greater resource inflows
• Reduces transactions costs for government

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Development partnersHow do they support?

• Basket funds commonly used
• Pooling of resources of various DPs
• One lead donor
• Unified reporting system to all
• Joint reviews
• NGO networks with national coverage
• Fear of development cartel great leverage in
  policy development

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Development partnersHow do they support?

• OECD-DAC harmonization principles (Paris
  declaration) calls upon DPs to
• Harmonize practises
• Specialize
• Human rights indicators have been developed by
  DAC network on governance (government)
• Development assistance pegged to human rights
  record (UK Ireland cut assistance)

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What is Human Rights mainstreaming?

• ensuring that human rights issues are explicit
  and verifiable at institutional and operational
  levels including all phases and processes of
  policy, planning, implementation, monitoring and
  evaluation
• Can be done by adopting HRBA to the development
  planning process

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What is Human Rights mainstreaming?

• Entry point could be poverty reduction strategy
  papers (PRSPs)
• Democracy, development and respect for human
  rights and fundamental freedoms are
  interdependent and mutually reinforcing - Vienna
  Declaration (UN World Conference 1993)

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Rights based approach

• Conceptual framework for the process of human
  development that is normatively based on
  international human rights standards and
  operationally directed to promoting and
  protecting human rights.
• Integrates the norms, standards and principles of
  the international human rights system into the
  plans, policies and processes of development.

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Rights based approach

• Principles include
• equality and equity
• express linkage to rights
• accountability
• empowerment
• participation
• non-discrimination and attention to vulnerable
  groups

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Rights based approach

• Viewed as legally enforceable entitlements (an
  essential ingredient of human rights approaches)
• Creation of express normative links to
  international, regional and national human rights
  instruments.

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Rights based approach

• RBA considers the full range of indivisible,
  interdependent and interrelated rights civil,
  cultural, economic, political and social
• This calls for a development framework with
  sectors that mirror internationally guaranteed
  rights, thus covering, for example, health,
  education, housing, justice administration,
  personal security and political participation

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Rights based approach

• These approaches are incompatible with
  development policies, projects or activities that
  have the effect of violating rights, and they
  permit no "trade-offs" between development and
  rights.
• Focus on raising levels of accountability in the
  development process by identifying claim-holders
  (and their entitlements) and corresponding
  duty-holders (and their obligations)

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Rights based approach

• Looks at the positive obligations of duty-holders
  (to protect, promote and provide) and at their
  negative obligations (to abstain from violations)
• Takes into account the duties of the full range
  of relevant actors, including individuals,
  States, local organizations and authorities,
  private companies, aid donors and international
  institutions.

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Rights based approach

• States must have both the political will and the
  means to ensure their realization, and they must
  put in place the necessary legislative,
  administrative, and institutional mechanisms
  required to achieve that aim.
• Under the International Covenant on Economic,
  Social and Cultural Rights, States are required
  to take immediate steps for the progressive
  realization of the rights concerned, so that a
  failure to take the necessary steps, or any
  retrogression, will flag a breach of the States
  duties.

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Rights based approach

• While primary responsibility under the human
  rights system lies with individual States, the
  international community is also duty bound to
  provide effective international cooperation,
  inter alia in response to shortages of resources
  and capacities in developing countries.

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Rights based approach

• Gives preference to strategies for empowerment
  over charitable responses.
• RBA focuses on beneficiaries as the owners of
  rights and the directors of development, and
  emphasize the human person as the centre of the
  development process (directly, through their
  advocates and through organizations of civil
  society).

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Rights based approach

• The goal is to give people the power, capacities,
  capabilities and access needed to change their
  own lives, improve their own communities and
  influence their own destinies.

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Case studies

• Malawi
• Right to Food campaign
• village level rights education and activism with
  government level advocacy
• The campaign worked with (1) duty bearers, to
  ensure that the necessary rights were enshrined
  legally at national and local levels and (2)
  rights bearer to inform them of what their rights
  were, how these rights related to their food
  security and how they could go about claiming
  those rights

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Case studies

• Malawi

National actors
National policy legislation action ensuring the
people would be able to claim the necessary
rights to respond to their needs
Regional actors
Linked to
Village education groups
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Case studies

• Uganda
• Justice, Law and Order Sector (JLOS) is in the
  process of developing its second strategic
  investment plan (SIP II)
• JLOS has adopted as one of its key focus areas ,
  the fostering of a human rights culture by
  JLOS institutions
• In developing the SIP II all key stakeholders are
  participating in and have been consulted both a
  national and local levels. In developing SIPII
  the need to be accountable to the people has been
  taken into account.

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Rights based approach

• It can be summarised from the above that human
  rights mainstreaming does not mean business as
  usual
• For each sector to truly mainstreaming human
  rights may require extensive change and
  refocusing within the sector
• It therefore goes without saying that several
  challenges will invariably be met

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Challenges

• Concept not fully understood or accepted
• Single issue agendas
• Political overtones
• Several mainstreaming themes
• Move from theory to practise
• Focus on financial management accountability
• Lack of predictability certainty of funds
• Ownership of process
• Citizen participation is weak (demand is low)
• Lack of coherence, coordination between DPs
• Lack of reliable data

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Conditions for successful mainstreaming

• Commitment from the highest level
• Development partnership based on sound partner
  principles
• Local ownership of the process
• Acknowledgment that is a process that will take
  time and not happen over night

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Conclusion

• The promotion, protection and respect for human
  rights are basic tenets of any democracy and are
  essential in the development process.
• The mainstreaming of human rights in the
  development process through the adoption of the
  Human Rights based approach should be an
  approach supported by all key players in the
  development process