NEW WINE IN OLD WINE-SKIN? THE RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH TO DEVELOPMENT
3.2 The Rights-Based Approach To Development
3.2.9 RBA Matrix Features
Based on this, there are a number of things which should be noted. First the assessment matrix suggested above can be used to assess any human right whether civil and political or economic, social and cultural rights. Secondly, many states are quick to commit themselves to level one and hardly go beyond commitment level two. Often most states' commitment to human rights is highly questionable judging from their actions and steps taken. Thirdly, this framework presents a graded level of commitment so that a project or programme's commitment can be assessed based on the level of commitment it indicates. Fourthly, scores can be used to determine the state's level of commitment.
The advantage of including the commitment indicators is that it enables projects to be assessed not just on one level, that is, on norms, but at all levels of commitment. Although this is more amenable to evaluating state programmes, the matrix can be adjusted to suit non-state programmes.
In the above matrix, levels of commitment are key in determining the score for a particular project or programme. To determine what score a project gets, the norms and commitment indicators can be assigned nominal values. Since the principles are not graduated values, they are assigned the same numerical value say 1. As for the commitment indicators, due to the fact that different levels reflect different degrees of commitments, each level is assigned a number that reflects the degree of seriousness in the commitment. For instance, acknowledgment represents a lower level of commitment than recognition or measures levels. As shown in Table 3.2 above, acknowledgement is assigned the value of 1, recognition the value of 2, measures level the value of 3 and effectuation the value of 4 proportional to the increasing degree of commitment. Different numerical values can be used as long as they reflect the degree of commitment. A particular project, for example, can be rated out of 50. A project which scores 25 out of 50, can be described as satisfactory, while one that scores below 25 can be rated unsatisfactory and therefore not in compliance with RBA requirements. In this way, the RBA matrix can be a helpful tool of taking stock of government commitment to a particular right and also a reflection of areas that need to be improved on.
Conclusion
This chapter has discussed the human rights debates and their link to RBA. What surfaces from this discussion is that human rights have been controversial over the centuries, and the understanding of what exactly human rights are remains highly contested. But the controversies about rights should be expected given that human rights express moral and ethical norms, and as such, people are bound to have different opinions. Further, the debate should actually be encouraged so that the substantive issues can be clarified in the course of the debate (Sen, 2004).
Although with the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a considerable degree of consensus has been secured, there are still differences as regards what should be recognized as human rights. This divergence of views was evident in the two 1966 International Covenants: one on civil and political rights and the other on economic, social and cultural rights with certain countries ratifying only the first ignoring the other.
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Unfortunately, such differences also surface at the practical level where in some countries much attention is given to the realization of civil and political rights giving the impression that others are not actually genuine human rights (Donnelly, 1989). Due to this tendency to split human rights, various international agreements and documents such as the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action have reiterated that rights are indivisible, interdependent and complementary, but that has done little to abate the practical tension between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. Thus, the consensus expressed in these international documents are really put to test especially in countries that keep insisting on separating civil and political rights from economic, social and cultural rights.
Effects of these differences can be seen when it comes to socio-economic rights. Although as many as 142 states (see HDR 2000) have at least signed the Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights, very few have given the same status to economic, social and cultural rights as the civil and political rights in domestic legal documents such as constitutions and statutory laws. In most countries, there is almost an instinctive fear that once these socioeconomic rights are included in the bill of rights, government will be required to spend a lot of money to fulfil these rights.
These debates about human rights spill over into the strategies of incorporating human rights into development programme, policy and implementation. Although RBA is a relatively new approach in development theory and practice, it suffers from the deeply entrenched notions of human rights. While governments enthusiastically sign to international treaties, documents and plans of action, not much gets translated from documents to concrete plans. Part of the challenge of implementing RBA is to find ways of ensuring that governments that have committed themselves to covenant values take their commitment seriously by adopting appropriate measures towards meeting the obligations that they freely undertake.
In spite of all the weaknesses, RBA has the potential to enable the state as a duty bearer to fulfil its obligation while providing the opportunity for the right-holder to not just hold the rights in vain. For this approach to have a significant influence, there is need for adequate and responsive institutions through which the rights can be claimed and the duties effectively fulfilled. However, it must be noted that the ambiguities surrounding RBA do militate against it wide adoption, implementation and impact on the lives of the poor. As Veneklasen, et al have noted, while there is a growing trend towards RBA
as an effective way of addressing "structural, systemic causes of poverty and exclusion... many organizations are struggling to make sense of the significance of RBA in practice" (2004: iii).
RBA challenges are even more pronounced in the case of access to water which suffers from inadequate explicit recognition as a human right. In both international human rights instruments and Zambia's domestic law, water is not sufficiently recognized as a human right. This in itself poses a great challenge in using RBA to address issues related to water deprivation and inadequate access, as the next chapter highlights. In the Zambian case, the situation is aggravated by the absence of the political will and the lack of adequate and responsive institutions through which the right can be asserted, contested and claimed. While explicit recognition of water as a human right does not amount to a magic bullet for the current problems related to access to water, a clear recognition of water as a human right does open up other possibilities of effectuating the right.
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