LOS CONTACTOS PLUTÓN-SATURNO

The recognition gained by and the subsequent implementation of RBA since the mid-1990s has resulted from the convergence of different socio-historical strands, presented below.

As the Cold War ended, western governments no longer had to shy away from economic, social and cultural (ESC) rights, which had been considered part of a collective and socialist agenda for East-West geopolitical reasons (Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2005; Macpherson, 2009). Therefore, this post-Cold War climate formed the groundwork for a more comprehensive view of human rights, including not only civil and political (CP) rights, which had been considered part of an individualistic and capitalistic agenda, but also ESC rights (Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2004; Pettit & Wheeler, 2005).

In terms of the international human rights framework, the 1986 UN Declaration on the Rights to Development—which proposed the inclusion of ESC rights—paved the way for linking traditional CP rights with development processes (Cornwall &

Nyamu-Musembi, 2004; Uvin, 2007). In the post-Cold War climate, the idea of rights to development were re-adopted at the 1993 UN World Conference on Human Rights in

15 _{For a large part of this section, I draw on Kimura (2013).}

NGO

Duty-bearers

Rights-holders

Vienna and became “a global legal consensus” (Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2004; Gready & Ensor, 2005; Uvin, 2007, p. 598).

Particularly from the Vienna Conference onwards, the activism of NGOs and indigenous social movements in the South started influencing international

agenda-setting processes. For example, women’s rights groups partly influenced the outcome of the Vienna Conference with a renewal of support for human rights (Nelson & Dorsey, 2008). At the subsequent World Social Development Summit at Copenhagen 1995, NGOs and indigenous social movements in the South led a campaign for RBA (Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2004).

From the viewpoint of development implementation, an alternative to ‘technical fix’ and project approaches and the persistent focus on modernisation has been called for. The reason for this is that, first of all, structural and political problems such as inequality and exclusion have not been solved by depoliticised technocratic solutions and limited piece-meal interventions (Pettit & Wheeler, 2005). Second, the persistent modernisation and neoliberal assumption and orientation behind policies, programmes and projects tend be aloof from structural inequality and political oppression (Nelson & Dorsey, 2008). Hence, there has been a growing awareness and impetus where

development needs to tackle rights and political fronts (Pettit & Wheeler, 2005; Macpherson, 2009).

Related to the strand just mentioned, the general shift in aid delivery from sector/project approaches to direct budget support to governments has given leverage for donors to influence governments in terms of their governance and accountability (Cornwall & Nyamu-Musembi, 2004). From a slightly different angle, Uvin (2007) and Macpherson (2006) argue that the failure of structural adjustment programmes was attributed to governments’ lack of governance, accountability and democracy. Hence the conditionality of further aid is linked to those issues (Macpherson, 2006), and one of the manifestations of such conditionality is RBA.

Related to the previous two strands of development implementation and

governance, participation discourse had been discussed only as a means through which development interventions were implemented, and thus had not been considered as a means through which people become involved in decision-making or influenced it in the wider political space, to solve structural and political problems such as inequality, exclusion and the lack of accountability (Hickey & Mohan, 2004). Therefore, Cornwall

and Nyamu-Musembi (2004) and Hicky and Mohan (2004) suggest that rights are a way of reframing participation as political processes; in other words, re-politicising an approach to development. Cornwall and Nyamu-Musembi (2004) argue that:

Rights talk provides a new frame within which to signal a move towards a more genuinely inclusive and democratic process of popular involvement in

decision-making over the resources and institutions that affect people’s lives. (p. 1424).

Lastly, Amartya Sen’s work of development as freedom contributed to the formation of the RBA (Gready & Ensor, 2005; Uvin, 2007; Nelson & Dorsey, 2008). His notion of substantive and expanded freedoms16 is akin to the aforementioned more comprehensive concept of human rights which emerged because of the post-Cold War climate and includes CP and ESC rights (Sen, 1999; Macpherson, 2006). Sen (1999) argues that these expanded freedoms are both the goals and the processes of

development; namely, rights are among the constituent elements of development on their merits, whilst they play instrumental roles in development. More specifically on the instrumental roles of rights, structural and political problems of the kind mentioned above bring about a lack of freedom or deprivation of rights, by which people cannot fully exercise their capacities, thereby causing poverty (Sen, 1999; Gready & Ensor, 2005; Nelson & Dorsey, 2008).

As seen, although RBA includes indigenous experiences of the South and lessons learnt there, it cannot escape the fact that it has been re-packaged as one of the international human rights discourses in the West. Hence, Nelson and Dorsey (2008) stress that “rights-based development initiatives are not only grounded philosophically in internationally recognised human rights [in the West], they are identified, designed, implemented, monitored, and evaluated with reference to those human rights standards” (pp. 1039-48, comments in brackets added). Whilst this clearly sets accountability and standards that aid agencies need to meet, it is rather positivistic that—regardless of contextual differences—RBA calls for the adherence to ‘internationally recognised human rights.’ This has caused some implementation difficulties in RBA, as will be discussed in the next section.

16 _{These freedoms include “elementary capabilities like being able to avoid such deprivations as}

starvation, under-nourishment, escapable morbidity and premature mortality, as well as the freedoms that are associated with being literate and numerate, enjoying political participation and uncensored speech and so on” (Sen, 1999, p. 36).