What can we do with a Rights-Based Approach to Development?

A rights-based approach to development sets the achievement of human rights as an objective of development. It uses thinking about human rights as the scaffolding of development policy. It invokes the international apparatus of human rights accountability in support of development action. In all of these, it is concerned not just with civil and political (CP) rights (the right to a trial, not to be tortured), but also with economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights (the right to food, housing, a job)

The new rights agenda runs alongside an agenda derived from the international development targets, which focuses on poverty and human development. CP and ESC rights are both a component of human development, and a means to it: participation and the elimination of discrimination against women, for example, are desirable in their own right, and also necessary conditions for the material well-being of the poor to increase. But, in this case, it is legitimate to ask whether a rights-based approach offers value-added over a poverty or a human development approach. Is a rights discourse simply another form of advocacy for human development? Many other questions arise. Are rights really indivisible, in the sense that ESC rights are equally as important as CP rights? If ESC rights are legitimate, how can they be made operational? And who has the responsibility to protect and fulfil those rights? Is it the state in which the right-holder lives, or do others (other states, non-state actors) carry a share of the burden? There are challenges here to theory and to law, but more important to the policy and practice of many different actors in the international community. [author]