AFRO-NETS> Food for an active engagement beyond thoughts

[Claudio Schuftan <aviva@netnam.vn>]

Food for an active engagement beyond thoughts
---------------------------------------------


Human Rights Reader 40

BEYOND CAPACITY ANALYSIS: ADDITIONAL ELEMENTS OF A HUMAN RIGHTS-BASED 
DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY [1] (see footnotes)

[In this Human Rights Reader series, we have focused on quite a few 
elements called for in the implementation of the emerging human 
rights-based approach to development -- mostly in health and nutri-
tion. Additional conceptual and operational elements for its imple-
mentation are added at this time. As said once earlier, the repeti-
tion of some human rights concepts is both inevitable and also part 
of this Reader's intention to have them 'sink-in' into the readers' 
everyday parlance by looking at these concepts from different an-
gles].

1. The 'chronic emergency' situation in the health, nutrition, educa-
tion and other service sectors in an important number of the develop-
ing countries only sporadically becomes a 'loud emergency'. However, 
if things stay their present course or worsen, such loud emergencies 
will increasingly become inevitable.

2. At the base of this is the fact that we are witnessing a failure 
of governments to sustain the provision of basic services, to pay the 
full cost of such public services and to respect, protect and fulfill 
people's human rights. Moreover, traditional sectoral approaches to 
development -- aid-backed or not -- are not delivering expected re-
sults (or are not delivering them fast enough to reach the Millennium 
Goals).

The need and the challenges: 
3. There is thus an urgent need to accelerate the implementation of a 
human rights-based development strategy centered around this emerging 
development paradigm that incorporates the poor beneficiaries as pro-
tagonist actors. This paradigm also merges ethics and science, ideol-
ogy and politics and theory and practice (i.e., what ought to be done 
and what can be done) into one consolidated development compact --one 
that effectively responds to the dire necessity here briefly sketched 
and one that is taken up as an active engagement or covenant with the 
people whose rights are being violated day-in, day-out.

4. A much wider participative and empowering Assessment-Analysis and 
Action (AAA) process [2] --as an operational framework for the human 
rights-based approach-- has to be set in motion (or strengthened if 
elements of it are already in place). To bring about change, people 
have to come from their very own experience (getting at their own re-
alities). AAA processes are thus tools of social mobilization and of 
mobilization and progressive control of the resources needed. Such 
proactive AAA processes should be ultimately pursued in all areas and 
sectors of development. Social mobilization only succeeds if the re-
petitive/iterative character of the AAA operational framework begins 
to work. Positive AAA processes will then lead to the needed social 
mobilization at the community level. This mobilization envisions a 
key role for mobilizers/animators with three types of skills, namely: 
* Moral Advocacy skills, 
* Social Activism skills, and 
* Political Advocacy skills. 
These animators are the indispensable promoters of the needed mobili-
zation process; they become the catalizers in the interaction between 
outsiders and the community -bridging the "them and us" schism be-
tween development organizations and the community. All active con-
comitant development AAA processes have to be identified and assessed 
at national and sub-national level so as to select our strategic al-
lies and mark and neutralize our strategic opponents in implementing 
this new human rights-based approach.

5. This rights-based approach will give equal importance to process 
and outcome achievements, carefully targeting the most vulnerable in 
the community -- those whose rights are most flagrantly being vio-
lated -- so as to make the endeavor truly equitable.

6. Quite a bit can be learned from successful coping mechanisms al-
ready used by households. Poor people are already doing; we need to 
asses what they are doing and build from there. [Note that reinforc-
ing coping mechanisms risks locking the poor into a 'low level of 
changes' trap; it may keep them away from pursuing a more radical re-
appraisal of their needs, one more related to the structural determi-
nants of their present condition]. Be it as it may, these spontaneous 
(or project-related) success factors need to be documented and better 
understood to consider them for eventual replication. (Keep in mind 
that going for small gains first is OK provided the ultimate vision 
remains to fully reverse gross violations of human rights).

The strategy: 
7. The new human rights-based strategy will focus-on/center-around 
the household and its members, i.e. around legitimate household mem-
bers' rights and their respective entitlements/claims. This means 
first providing for the household members' basic entitlements, i.e., 
reaching a minimum level of family security. It is at the household 
level that we ultimately need to achieve significant changes, espe-
cially in health, nutrition and sanitation behaviors and status.

8. The needed community support mechanisms and structures to help 
identify and assist vulnerable households will have to be developed 
and/or strengthened. It is here where mobilizers (activ-
ists/advocates) become essential. We will not achieve our human 
rights goals unless we put in place a veritable "army" of such anima-
tors. [3]

9. The household entitlements/rights we are talking about here are in 
the realm of: 
* food and nutrition (macro and micronutrients), 
* cooking fuel, 
* health (curative and preventive), 
* the care of children an the support of women to do so, 
* clean water supply and sanitation facilities and services, 
* education (pre-primary and primary with a focus on girls and fe-
  male literacy/numeracy), 
* shelter and clothing, 
* income (in kind and in cash including employment opportunities), 
* women's own gender-related needs and entitlements, 
* access to credit (especially by women) and to selected agricultural
  inputs subsidies, 
* legal protection (especially of women's and children's rights), 
* physical environmental safety, 
* physical personal safety during armed conflicts, and 
* women's personal safety from domestic violence.

10. Key, easily measurable, process and outcome indicators (or proxy 
indicators) for each of these entitlements will need to be agreed 
upon and monitored in our work with communities.

11. To make sense of these indicators, the human rights-based strat-
egy will have to have its own Conceptual Framework [2] that will al-
low us to move up and down the causality chain to inquire about/find 
out what determines the findings represented by those indicators. 
Such a conceptual framework is crucial to help us create a consensus 
on the causes of family insecurity and the violation of its members' 
rights. When using the conceptual framework, interpretation of the 
analyses is inevitably value laden; therefore, the values have to be 
shared. (It is good to be reminded that, as social actors, we ines-
capably become technicians with an identifiable --even if hidden-- 
political agenda). [My own preference is for this conceptual frame-
work to be "upside-down" in relationship with the 1990 UNICEF concep-
tual framework of the causes of preventable ill-health, malnutrition 
and early deaths: i.e., the basic causes should be on top. If inter-
ested in one such tentative conceptual framework being prepared for 
wider discussion, you can request a copy from <aviva@netnam.vn> ].

12. The role of an indispensable (and specially designed) Informa-
tion/Education/Communication (IEC) component in the human rights-
based strategy needs to be emphasized here. (Part two to follow)

Claudio Schuftan
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
mailto:aviva@netnam.vn

--
Footnotes:
[1]: Capacity Analysis takes what is being proposed to be done for 
each determinant of a human rights violation at each causal level and 
looks at what is already being done or not being done (and why) for 
that problem. It then looks at who should be doing something about it 
[individual(s) and/or institution(s) who is (are) the corresponding 
duty bearer(s)] and attaches the name of that (those) person(s) or 
institution(s) to each proposed solution. This results in a list of 
the most crucial persons/institutions that have to be approached to 
push them to get the major proposed solution(s) for each main problem 
implemented.

[2]: Situation analyses have to be based on an Assessment and an 
Analysis of the existing situation that will then lead to decisions 
being made for Action; this has been called a triple A (AAA) process. 
But the assessment and the analysis cannot be done in a vacuum --
without previously having worked on a Conceptual Framework of the 
causes of the problems that are to be solved. This means that one has 
to have an in depth understanding of how those problems come about --
what their determinants are before one can, in a participatory way, 
decide what the best options are to do something about them, i.e., 
"one finds what one looks for". The essence of a good situation 
analysis, then, is to carry out a Causal Analysis based on a pre-
existing Conceptual Framework and to base all decisions for action to 
be taken on this analysis. Therefore, appropriate interventions for 
the main causes at each causal level have to be found. Addressing 
each cause is necessary, but not sufficient to change the outcome 
(i.e. preventable ill-health, malnutrition and excess deaths). That 
is why communities need to act at all levels of determinants at the 
same time (and this is also why so many "selective PHC interventions" 
have failed in the past). AAA processes are happening all te time al-
ready (consciously or not) in all decision-making. From the perspec-
tive of the outcomes we want to achieve, we can identify positive, 
negative and neutral AAA processes: it behooves us to start and 
strengthen positive and neutralize the negative AAA processes in the 
realm of human rights.

[3]: A mobilizer has a complex set of roles. Among them, some of the 
following can apply: she listens, observes and consults, she vali-
dates scientific information, she validates what is permissi-
ble/fair/possible/doable/right for the local context, she shares 
knowledge, she influences perceptions, she puts things/concepts in a 
local context, she fosters evidence-based decision-making, she cata-
lyzes/facilitates, she mobilizes/inspires people in the community, 
she advocates/convinces/persuades, she influences actions, she builds 
people's capacities, she empowers them, she lobbies, she net-
works/liaises, she negotiates and goes into strategic and tactical 
partnerships, she carries out social and political mapping of re-
sources, she mobilizes local and outside resources, she educates, she 
organizes, leads, manages, she sets an example, acts as a role model 
and is trustworthy, she assesses/re, analyzes/re, she coordi-
nates/starts new actions, she creates space for such actions, she su-
pervises, monitors and evaluates, she fosters and instills a vision 
and a hope, she raises political consciousness, she delegates, she 
makes decisions and solves problems, she is interested in learning 
from outside.

--
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