TWO FRAMEWORKS AND THEIR POTENTIAL COMPLEMENTARITY 

A troubled history exists between the human rights framework and the concept of development as a tool for lifting lower-income countries to similar standards of living as “developed” countries. Much of the criticism focuses on challenges within the present regime, such as the tendency to focus solely on economic growth as an indicator for development (neglecting human factors), prioritising industrialisation and the simple provision of infrastructural implements (such as the number of schools or hospitals built) over assessing their quality or long-term sustainability, and, importantly, failing to include local stakeholders in consultative and participatory processes of development planning. Scholars have particularly emphasised the long-term negative impacts of the fundamentally unequal “donor-beneficiary” dichotomy existing between wealthy “donor” states and lower-income “beneficiary” states. 

In his seminal work In Larger Freedom, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was insistent in his recognition of human rights, development, and peace and security as the three main pillars of the United Nations framework. A human rights-based approach to development has slowly found legitimacy at the international and regional level, informing the structure and design of programs and projects at the EU—and also national level, such as Austrian Development Cooperation. Many EU-level trade partnerships with third countries include among their stipulations obligations towards upholding key human rights norms as a condition for further business. However, even these conditions tend to overly focus on civil and political rights—such as the right to vote; the right to assembly, association, and freedom of speech; and the right to free and fair elections.

While such rights are absolutely crucial within free, fair, and liberal democracies, the neglect of economic, social, and cultural rights is particularly evident. These rights, for example, include the right to an adequate standard of living; the right to social security; the right to adequate access to healthcare, food, and water; and the right to fair and equal employment in human conditions. The goals of development as a concept—reducing poverty, improving skills and livelihoods, and providing work opportunities—can thus be linked to the protection of economic, social, and cultural rights in this regard. 

But on what feet can such development projects stand when prominent examples have been found to worsen existing inequalities in the countries they are ostensibly supporting? 

THE CASE OF THE LESOTHO HIGHLANDS WATER PROJECT

University of Oregon Professor Yvonne A. Braun’s paper, titled The Reproduction of Inequality: Race, Class, Gender, and the Social Organization of Work at Sites of Large-Scale Development Projects, offers a case study analysis of the need for a human right-based approach to development. Braun considers The Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), analysing the feasibility and sustainability of large-scale development projects towards poverty reduction initiatives in Global South countries. While “development” was advertised as a nebulous endeavour towards providing employment opportunities to the local population, the reality was a stark reminder of the reproduction of existing inequalities on grounds of race, class, and gender informing such employment choices in the first place. 

The Project itself was an $8 billion endeavour designed to sell water from the rural highlands of Lesotho to South Africa. Poor planning and management over several years has, however, resulted in thousands losing their land and subsistence livelihoods. As such, dependency has subsequently increased on such large-scale projects to provide employment and livelihood opportunities for the beleaguered local population. 

The mission statement of the Project includes implementing it “through capable and engaged people”. This supposedly does not mean Basotho men, women, or even migrants, since—according to Braun’s findings—the upper echelons of management are occupied by white European and South African men living in luxurious, barbed wire-protected employee villages (with spacious homes, electricity, paved roads, a gym, an Irish bar, and tennis courts)—none accessible by the local population. Middle management positions are given to Black South African men housed together —eight to ten per room—in overcrowded, “nondescript trailers” within the vicinity of the project compounds, lacking heating or electricity. Very few women were formally employed by the development authority, and most work available was “informal, unregulated and low-paid”. Many have thus turned to sex work as a last resort. 

Such limited, precarious work deprives the local population of the Project’s initial promises, such as the assurance that the national income generated would improve the socioeconomic development of Lesotho as a whole. For a rural population struggling to maintain an adequate standard of living amongst challenges such as increasing agricultural competition, declining productivity, and generally high rates of unemployment, an open, transparent, and participatory development process is crucial in this regard. Despite ostensibly aiming towards “progress, employment and poverty reduction,” ill-managed development projects risk worsening existing racial, gender, and class inequalities within local contexts and creating more problems in their wake.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A HUMAN RIGHTS-BASED APPROACH 

The experience of the Basotho population is unfortunately not a unique one. Similar findings have been reported from the fertile Garbh region of Morocco, from state-funded rural development projects in India, and jurisprudence from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights regarding Indigenous populations not consulted by state authorities before initiating mega-projects on their territories. 

Many Global South countries continue to reel from the deleterious impact of the structural adjustment policies imposed upon them in the 1980s by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. A key characteristic is the consequent widening gap in quality between private- and public-funded services, which could negatively impact the protection of essential human rights obligations towards education, healthcare, and social security. Socioeconomically-disadvantaged communities who cannot afford the costs of high-quality private education are thus unfairly denied long-term equality of opportunity due to the deficit in skills required for a rapidly-changing, increasingly technologically-focused society and economy. Within the present COVID-19 pandemic, the threat to their health and security is even more pronounced when one considers access to such services through insurance and social security. 

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2030 are hailed as a positive change from their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), due to their focus on social inclusion and environmental protection. The SDGs have been described as a key component of human rights-based approaches to such projects conducted within all states, regardless of income. Kofi Annan’s UN Reform 1997 called for the mainstreaming of a human rights-based approach in all UN activities. Scholars from the economics and social science fields such as Amartya Sen have further demonstrated that the protection of economic, social, and cultural rights are preconditions for sustainable development. 

Societies mired in armed conflict and humanitarian crises face the enduring likelihood that such conflict was precipitated by violations of fundamental human rights and the experience of deprivation and poverty. When essential rights are threatened by external forces in the name of narrowly-defined “development” ideals, it is questionable to what extent any “development” might actually come to be and whether any positive consequences will be equitably distributed. 

A number of international bodies have made promising moves towards integrating a human rights-based approach to all development activities; it remains, however, absolutely imperative that the emerging praxis is centred on the essential principle of protecting human dignity in all its operations.

Pallavi is a student at the University of Vienna, currently completing her Master of Arts in Human Rights. She has extensive experience in the fields of education, women's rights, community organization and development, and aims to channelize her research interests towards actionable change for vulnerable and marginalized populations.

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