Abstract
Human rights-based approaches (HRBAs) promise greater alignment of development efforts with universal norms, as well as a focus on the root causes of poverty. While HRBAs have been widely adopted across the development sector, there is little systematic evidence about the actual impact of this strategic shift. Evaluating the effectiveness of HRBAs is challenging because various non-governmental and other organizations have developed very different understandings of how to apply a rights-based framework in the development context. This essay takes a step toward the rigorous evaluation of HRBAs by offering a comprehensive review of rights-based programming implemented by Plan International, a child-centered organization. It shows that Plan's adoption of HRBA-inspired strategies has transformed its interactions with local communities and added an explicit focus on the state as the primary duty bearer. There is evidence for a systematic increase in individual rights awareness, greater ownership exercised by community organizations, and the application of evidence-based advocacy aimed at scaling up proven program activities. But Plan's peculiar brand of HRBA neglects collaboration with domestic social movements and civil society, largely avoids a more confrontational approach towards the state, and has yet to produce evidence for regular successful rights claims by disadvantaged communities against governmental representatives at local, regional, or national levels. The study also reveals a limited ability of Plan to address disparities and discrimination within local communities, as well as a need to define clearly the organization's own accountability and duties deriving from its presence in local communities across more than fifty developing nations.
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Notes
William R. Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (New York: Penguin Press, 2006).
Sam Hickey and Diana Mitlin, eds., Rights-Based Approaches to Development: Exploring the Potential and Pitfalls (Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press, 2009).
Peter Uvin, Human Rights and Development (Bloomfield, CT: Kumarian Press, 2004).
Paul J. Nelson and Ellen Dorsey, New Rights Advocacy: Changing Strategies of Development and Human Rights NGOs (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2008).
The United Nations established the HRBA portal to offer resources on the mainstreaming of the human rights-based approach as well as the facilitation of inter-agency collaboration focused on HRBAs (http://hrbaportal.org/).
Laure-Hélène Piron, Learning from the UK Department for International Development's Rights-Based Approach to Development Assistance (London: Overseas Development Institute, 2003).
Ellen Dorsey, Mayra Gómez, Bret Thiele, and Paul Nelson, “Millennium Development Rights,” Monday Developments 29 (2011): 17–18, Malcolm Langford, “A Poverty of Rights: Six Ways to Fix the MDGs,” IDS Bulletin 41 (2010): 83–91.
The practice of rating NGOs only based on financial health has been widely criticized by practitioners and scholars alike; see George E. Mitchell, Watchdog Study: Reframing the Discussion about Nonprofit Effectiveness (Washington, DC: DMA Nonprofit Federation, 2010), and Ann Goggins Gregory and Don Howard, “The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle,” Stanford Social Innovation Review 7 (2009): 48–53. In response, Charity Navigator, one of the main NGO watchdogs operating in the United States, has begun to expand its rating system to also include information about levels of accountability and transparency as well as actual results of program activities; for an update on the methodology, see Charity Navigator's methodology section at www.charitynavigator.org and Ken Berger's blog at www.kenscommentary.org/.
Paul Gready, “Reasons to Be Cautious about Evidence and Evaluation: Rights-based Approaches to Development and the Emerging Culture of Evaluation,” Journal of Human Rights Practice 1 (2009): 380–401.
Habib Mohammad Zafarullah and Mohammad Habibur Rahman, “Human Rights, Civil Society and Nongovernmental Organizations: The Nexus in Bangladesh,” Human Rights Quarterly 24 (2002): 1011–34; Mac Darrow and Amparo Tomas, “Power, Capture, and Conflict: A Call for Human Rights Accountability in Development Cooperation,” Human Rights Quarterly 27 (2005): 471–538; Alessandra Lundström Sarelin, “Human Rights-Based Approaches to Development Cooperation, HIV/AIDS, and Food Security,” Human Rights Quarterly 29 (2007): 460–88; Benjamin Mason Meier and Ashley M. Fox, “Development as Health: Employing the Collective Right to Development to Achieve the Goals of the Individual Right to Health,” Human Rights Quarterly 30 (2008): 259–355.
Three exceptions include Shannon Kindornay, James Ron, and Charli Carpenter, “Rights-Based Approaches to Development: Implications for NGOs,” Human Rights Quarterly 34 (2012): 472–506; Sheena Crawford, The Impact of Rights-Based Approaches to Development: Bangladesh, Malawi and Peru (London: UK Interagency Group on Human Rights Based Approaches, 2007); and Gready, “Reasons to Be Cautious.”
Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Uwe Gneiting, Hans Peter Schmitz, and Otto Valle, Rights-Based Approach to Development: Learning from Guatemala (Syracuse, NY: Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, 2009); Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Uwe Gneiting, and Hans Peter Schmitz, How does CCCD Affect Program Effectiveness and Sustainability? A Meta Review of Plan's Evaluations (Syracuse, NY: Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs, 2011).
Craig Johnson and Timothy Forsyth, “In the Eyes of the State: Negotiating a ‘Rights-Based Approach’ to Forest Conservation in Thailand,” World Development 30 (2002): 1591–1605.
John Gaventa and Rosemary McGee, Citizen Action and National Policy Reform: Making Change Happen (London: Zed Books, 2010).
Uvin, Human Rights and Development.
Ibid., 179.
Jennifer Chapman. Rights-based Development: The Challenge of Change and Power (London: ActionAid International, 2005).
Paul Gready, “Rights-Based Approaches to Development: What is the Value-Added?” Development in Practice 18 (2008): 735–47.
Srirak Plipat, Developmentizing Human Rights: How Development NGOs Interpret and Implement a Human Rights-based Approach to Development Policy (University of Pittsburgh, Doctoral Thesis, 2005).
Jonathan Menkos, Ignacio Saiz, and Maria Jose Eva, Rights or Privileges? Fiscal Commitment to the Rights to Health, Education and Food in Guatemala (Madrid/Guatemala City: Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales and The Center for Economic and Social Rights, 2009).
Irko Zuurmond, ed., Promoting Child Rights to End Child Poverty (Woking, UK: Plan International, 2010).
Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Gneiting, and Schmitz, Meta Review, 6.
Plan International, Global Effectiveness Framework (Woking, UK: Plan International, 2008).
Hickey and Mitlin, Rights-Based Approaches to Development, 225.
Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Gneiting, and Schmitz, Meta Review, 11.
Ibid., 41.
Plipat, Developmentizing Human Rights.
Sarah Bradshaw, “Is the Rights Focus the Right Focus? Nicaraguan Responses to the Rights Agenda,” Third World Quarterly 27 (2006): 1329–41.
Emily B. Rodio and Hans Peter Schmitz, “Beyond Norms and Interests: Understanding the Evolution of Transnational Human Rights Activism,” International Journal of Human Rights 14 (2010): 442–59.
Plipat, Developmentizing Human Rights.
Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Gneiting, Schmitz, and Valle, Learning from Guatemala.
Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken and Hans Peter Schmitz, “A Gap between Ambition and Effectiveness,” Journal of Civil Society 7 (2011): 287–92.
Jude Rand and Gabrielle Watson, Rights-Based Approaches: Learning Project (Boston/Atlanta: Oxfam America/CARE USA, 2007).
Plan International, Global Effectiveness Framework.
Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Gneiting, and Schmitz, Meta Review, 23.
Ibid., 26.
Anthony Bebbington, “Donor-NGO Relations and Representations of Livelihood in Nongovernmental Aid Chains,” World Development 33 (2005): 937–50.
Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Gneiting, and Schmitz, Meta Review, 40.
Crawford, Bangladesh.
Bruno-van Vijfeijken, Gneiting, and Schmitz, Meta Review, 32.
Gready, “Reasons to Be Cautious.”
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The findings reported here are partly based on two evaluations commissioned by Plan Guatemala in 2009 and Plan U.S.A. in 2011. During the research process, Plan U.S.A.'s Senior Program Manager Justin Fugle and CEO Tessie San Martin, as well as Plan Guatemala's country director Ricardo Gomez-Agnoli, provided unrestricted access to archives and other sources. The research team based at the TNGO Initiative included Uwe Gneiting and Tosca Bruno-van Vijfeijken. The author also thanks Joannie Tremblay-Boire, the members of the APSA task force, and its chair, Michael Goodhart, for their important feedback on earlier versions of this article.
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Schmitz, H. A Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) in Practice: Evaluating NGO Development Efforts. Polity 44, 523–541 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2012.18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2012.18