Development and Social Action: Selected Essays from Development in Practice (Development in Practice Reader) - Softcover

Eade, Deborah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0855984155 ISBN 13: 9780855984151

Verlag: Lynne Rienner, 1999

Inhaltsangabe

Throughout the world, civil society organisations (including NGOs) are playing an increasingly prominent role in promoting pro-poor policy change both in their own countries and internationally, whether through advocacy or through direct action and popular mobilisation. In the global re-alignment following the end of the Cold War, the challenge is that of moving from mere protest and opposition to constructive forms of engagement both with the state and with the private sector. Contributors to this book draw on experiences of social action from as far afield as Belgium and Brazil, in areas such as new social movements, governance and the state of law, North-South NGO relations and development theatre for social and political change.

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Mr. Kothari is a consultant for a large number of local, national and international non-governmental organizations and UN agencies. In 2000, Mr. Kothari was appointed the first Special Rapporteur on adequate housing as a component of the right to an adequate standard of living, and on the right to non-discrimination in this context.

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Development and Social Action

Selected Essays from Development in Practice

By Miloon Kothari, Deborah Eade

Oxfam Publishing

Copyright © 1999 Oxfam GB
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-85598-415-1

Contents

Preface Deborah Eade, 5, 
Globalisation, social action, and human rights Miloon Kothari, 9, 
Inclusive, just, plural, dynamic: building a 'civil' society in the Third World Smitu Kothari, 34, 
Civil society and substantive democracy: governance and the state of law in Belgium Koenraad Van Brabant, 54, 
EURODAD's campaign on multilateral debt: the 1996 HIPC debt initiative and beyond Sasja Bokkerink and Ted van Hees, 71, 
A new age of social movements: a fifth generation of nongovernmental development organisations in the making? Ignacio de Senillosa, 87, 
NGOs and advocacy: how well are the poor represented? Warren Nyamugasira, 104, 
Disaster without memory: Oxfam's drought programme in Zambia K. Pushpanath, 120, 
Development theatre and the process of re-empowerment: the Gibeon story Alex Mavrocordatos, 133, 
Transparency for accountability: civil-society monitoring of Multilateral Development Bank anti-poverty projects Jonathan Fox, 150, 
Strengthening unions: the case of irrigated agriculture in the Brazilian North East Didier Bloch, 158, 
The People's Communication Charter Cees. J. Hamelink, 163, 
Annotated bibliography, 173, 
Organisations concerned with social action, 188, 
Addresses of publishers and other organisations, 190, 

CHAPTER 1

Globalisation, social action, and human rights

Miloon Kothari

Introduction

The concern with social action and development dates back to the struggles for independence in the period following World War II. The original notion of development was to open up spaces for deprived social sectors who were themselves often deeply involved in the struggles for self-determination. In that context the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) was conceived, and the United Nations (UN) was set up to promote processes which subsequently gave rise to the concept of development. The state was supposed to be, in its counter-imperial and post-colonial role, a catalyst for social action: a role that received serious attention from civil society organisations (CSOs).

The state's role as a catalyst for social action was, however, subverted by monopolistic tendencies. Soon after the post-colonial phase, both the state and international agencies began to emphasise social and economic policies that focused on wealth-creation. 'Development' thus became tied to the creation of national market economies, to be integrated into a global economic system that was based on market principles. This approach, much accelerated by the deregulation of global markets from the 1980s, has led to growing disparity in the distribution of wealth, polarisation of social classes, and increasing dependence on foreign aid and international capital in many Third World countries. The most recent of these tendencies, especially after the collapse of the socialist states and the emergence of a unipolar world, is known as economic globalisation.

This paper argues that there is a major crisis in the philosophy, the reality, and the very notion of development which, instead of being a process to create conditions for self-reliant, sustainable communities, has become simply a project. The misuse and atomisation of the original understanding of development, which was directly linked to the achievement of social justice, has led to deepening poverty, even in times of economic boom for investors and soaring stock-market indices. This misappropriation has left a painful legacy whose lexicon of acronyms — IMF, WB, SAPs, GATT, WTO, NAFTA — represent lost ideals, lost decades, and a consistent assault on the true development capacities of people and communities.

For those who advocate stable social institutions that can foster policies, laws, and programmes aimed at bringing about social justice, respect for human rights, and development, economic globalisation is already leaving pernicious and long-lasting effects. Further, the dismantling of socially conscious legislation, institutions and programmes, is eroding the social gains made through decades of civil-society struggle.

This paper also argues both that the onus is on CSOs to recapture the radical notion of development and that, ironically, the catalyst for doing so is to be found in the very processes that have been produced by economic globalisation. Ever more intense collaborative transnational alliances are needed to restore what has been destroyed in recent decades. But the inability to understand the many dimensions, some quite technical, of globalisation, the reluctance to challenge the institutions that spearhead it, and a focus only on local-level action will serve to marginalise CSOs, and to consign many millions of people to further exclusion and poverty.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, economic globalisation is the phenomenon that dominates the world stage. Its many manifestations are all around us, as are its manifold failures. The iniquitous outcomes of economic globalisation have been confirmed in numerous UN reports. Even the international economic policy forums now recognise that the so-called 'trickle down' effect, for long the social justification for economic liberalisation, is not occurring. Studies such as UNCTAD's Trade and Development Report 1997 and UNDP's Human Development Report 1997 (HDR) convincingly show that the opposite is true. UNCTAD demonstrates that since the early 1980s the world economy has been characterised by rising inequality, both among and within countries, that income gaps between North and South continue to widen, and that the income share of the richest 20 per cent has risen almost everywhere, while that of both the poorest 20 per cent and also the middle class has fallen. The HDR 1997 similarly shows that, although poverty has been dramatically reduced in many parts of the world, one-quarter of the human race remains in severe poverty; that the human development index (HDI) declined in the previous year in more than 30 countries — more than in any year since the HDR was first issued in 1990; and that economic globalisation had indeed helped to reduce poverty in some of the largest and strongest developing economies, but had also produced a widening gap between winners and losers among and within countries.

The USA, whose ideology created and sustains the global architecture on which economic globalisation depends, is disgraced, both politically and in terms of its own domestic dispossession and poverty. Poverty is now more widespread and extreme in the USA than in any other industrialised country. What right, then, does the USA have to dictate the world's economic ideology? Powerful voices are now emerging within the USA to question the 'Washington Consensus', the basis of economic globalisation as we know it, including such establishment figures as the Chief Economist of the World Bank, Dr Joseph Stiglitz.

As if the adverse effects of the liberalisation of trade and investment were not enough, attempts are being made to create conditions which will allow for uncontrolled capital flows. The trend began with the establishment of global deregulated markets in the 1980s and 1990s. While massively increased financial mobility has become a primary danger to the health of national economies — as demonstrated by the crisis in Southeast Asia — the scale of such financial flows is astounding and indicates the exponential growth in this area.

For those pushing for further liberalisation of investment, the past two years have witnessed the attempt to adopt a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI). This was until recently being negotiated at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the international club of the world's 29 richest countries. If adopted, the MAI would have contributed a significant chapter in what has been called the 'constitution of a single global economy', or 'a bill of rights and freedoms for transnational corporations ... a declaration of corporate rule'. Until February 1997, when a draft was leaked, it was for the most part negotiated in secret and was driven by the aggressive advocacy of the International Chamber of Commerce, the US Council on International Business, and other corporate-backed groups. Essentially, the MAI sought to complete the economic liberalisation agenda, favouring the rights of transnational investors and corporations over the rights of workers, consumers, communities, and the environment.

In December 1998, under intense pressure from CSOs (described below), and in response to the withdrawal of France from the negotiations, the OECD abandoned the MAI. However, the increased freedom for investment is very much on the agenda at various global and regional forums. Provisions that made the MAI notorious with the environment, human rights, and development NGOs are cropping up at the WTO, the IMF, the FTAA (the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas), and elsewhere. CSOs thus need to be more, and not less, vigilant.

It is against the background of attempts to liberalise finance, trade, and investment still further that we contemplate perhaps the greatest challenge to social action: how to sustain countervailing forces that challenge, expose, demystify, and discredit the lure of economic globalisation and blunt the power of those who are devising ways to push the world closer to the edge of economic and social disaster — processes already evident with the recent crises in Southeast Asia, Russia, and Brazil.

It is imperative that CSOs recognise this omnipresent threat and use all available international instruments and mechanisms, as well as government commitments from the recent series of UN conferences. For social actors and activists who want to remain relevant in a rapidly changing world, the pressing need is to grapple with the world's economic systems, at whatever level possible — from gathering information and gaining understanding to carrying out research on the impacts, from advocacy work aimed at reform of global institutions to staking claim to space during international and regional negotiations on economic treaties, and an increased role for the UN. Without such forthright countering of economic globalisation and without taking advantage of the spaces it has inadvertently opened up, social action and development have a bleak and fragmented future.

Approaches to social justice and sustainable development

While ever more people and institutions now acknowledge the problems with the economic liberalisation model, what is conveniently being overlooked is the framework within which economic policy needs to be formulated for the benefit of humankind. The existing international human-rights instruments and UN monitoring mechanisms for compliance with these instruments already provide such a framework and confer upon states the legal obligations to protect, promote, and fulfil human rights. A number of instruments of a declamatory nature also exist. Together, these form useful points of departure in articulating and putting into practice collective rights, such as the right to development and to a clean environment. Certain instruments also promote the rights of specific population groups such as indigenous and tribal peoples, minorities, and disabled persons. Collective rights are emerging as an important area of articulation and action among social movements and campaigns around the world for rights such as clean drinking water, or for the rights of women, indigenous peoples, peasant farmers, and so forth.

Underpinning the human-rights instruments are the basic principles of non-discrimination, equality, and self-determination, and the right to political participation. Viewed from the perspective of people and communities fighting for adequate food, heath care, housing and living conditions, education, and a voice and representation on political bodies, these instruments provide a bulwark, a standard to aspire to, and, for civil-society groups, a set of rights to be claimed. A more forthright and comprehensive approach to human rights can provide for a sharper critique of government responsibility and provide benchmarks for interventions by all sectors of society, including those who are marginalised and suffer discrimination.

Human rights provide the perspective, the context, and the substance (through the entitlements contained in numerous instruments) to realise sustainable development and social justice for all. The holistic approach offered by the concept of human rights can strengthen (to take some examples) struggles for women's rights and for the environment. Viewed in such a light, the realisation of human rights for every woman, man, and child is the primary system through which international investment, finance, and trade regimes can be held accountable. For the policies, programmes, and instruments emanating from economic globalisation affect people at the local level, both directly through the acquisition of natural resources and indirectly through the influencing of national policies that undermine the capacity of people and communities, especially the marginalised, to control their own space and resources. Such impacts are clearly a violation of internationally accepted obligations under human-rights treaties.

The four fundamental principles that are under threat, as outlined by the International NGO Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment, form a useful framework to explain the all-encompassing scope of this approach, and also offer clear directions for gaining and retaining human rights:

The primacy of human rights: The promotion and protection of human rights must be accepted as the fundamental framework for and goal of all multilateral and bilateral investment, trade, and financial agreements. Such agreements cannot exclude or ignore human-rights principles and objectives without losing their most fundamental claim to legitimacy.

Non-retrogression: All states have a duty to respect, protect, ensure and fulfil international human-rights obligations and cannot derogate from or limit them except as expressly provided for in the relevant human rights treaties. 'Rollback' and 'standstill' requirements, as formulated in the MAI, are incompatible with the requirement that economic, social and cultural rights be realised progressively, as explicitly stated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR). Governments must demonstrate that they are taking concrete steps towards realisation of these rights. Moreover, state parties have a specific duty not to take retrogressive measures that would jeopardise economic, social, and cultural rights.

The right to an effective remedy in the appropriate forum: The right to an effective remedy for anyone whose rights have been violated cannot be contracted away by the state nor denied by the operations of intergovernmental institutions. Investment or trade bodies should not adjudicate concerns that fall firmly into the human-rights domain, as disputes between corporations and state actors, but these should be dealt with by appropriate domestic, regional, and international human-rights fora and enforcement mechanisms.

Rights of participation and recourse of affected individuals and groups: Human rights cannot be effectively realised unless the right of participation of the affected populations in planning, implementation, and seeking redress for violations is respected. The participation of women in all these processes is particularly important.

The new social movements which have adopted this holistic approach have done much not only to strengthen the pro-environment lobby and women's movements, but also to demonstrate the imperative of viewing human rights and development as complementary and mutually reinforcing means of achieving social justice for all.

There are also valuable insights and directions offered by the resolutions emanating from the UN human-rights programme. Take, for example, the resolution adopted on 20 August 1998 by the UN Sub-Commission for the Prevention of Discrimination and the Protection of Minorities and entitled:

'Human rights as the primary objective of trade, investment, and financial policy'. In this resolution the Sub-Commission emphasised that the realisation of the human rights and fundamental freedoms described in the international human-rights instruments is the 'first and most fundamental responsibility and objective of States in all areas of governance and development'. This phrase reaffirms language adopted by the world's governments in the Declaration and Plan of Action from the 1993 World Conference on Human Rights. The Sub-Commission also expressed concern about the human-rights implications of the MAI 'and particularly about the extent to which the Agreement might limit the capacity of States to take proactive steps to ensure the enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by all people, creating benefits for a small privileged minority at the expense of an increasingly disenfranchised majority'.

Taking these international instruments as point of departure, several international NGOs have mobilised at local, national, and international levels to promote economic, social, and cultural rights in the context of economic globalisation. Two examples will serve as illustration.

Habitat International Coalition (HIC): Basing its work on the right to housing and land, HIC works through its three committees: housing and land rights, women and shelter, and housing and environment. The Coalition's work proceeds from a holistic perspective which seeks, through alliance building, training, use of the UN system, research and fact-finding, to counter the negative effects of economic globalisation through stressing the inviolability of the gaining and retaining of housing and land rights as essential to the realisation of all human rights.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Development and Social Action by Miloon Kothari, Deborah Eade. Copyright © 1999 Oxfam GB. Excerpted by permission of Oxfam Publishing.
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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Lynne Rienner
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1999
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0855984155
• ISBN 13: 9780855984151
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 192
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar