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Rights-Based Development: Formal & Process Approaches in Pakistan Shiona Hood PhD, School of Social and Political Studies University of Edinburgh 2004 Contents Acknowledgements 4 List of Acronyms 5 Abstract 6 Map of Pakistan locating trainings 8 Chapter 1 Introduction 9 Outline of the thesis A core divide Rights & development Chapter 2 Literature review & theoretical perspectives 23 Introduction Human rights: 'given' or 'made' A formalist, centralist & pluralist divide Power, social relations & actors Human rights in a Muslim context Conclusion Chapter 3 Methodology 57 Introduction The RBA process in Pakistan Background & approach: interpretive, ethnographic case study & grounded theory Methods Methodological issues Conclusion Chapter 4 Rights & the 'Enabling Framework' in Pakistan 88 Introduction Normative confusion & legalised discrimination 2 The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) as a development metaphor Rights in Pakistan: too 'soft' or too sensitive Distinguishing means & ends Conclusion Chapter 5 Critical analysis & 'ways of seeing' 119 Introduction An absence of questions Ways of seeing Conclusion Chapter 6 Rules versus interpretive approaches 145 Introduction Enforcing rules versus social change From 'eating the food of America' to internal drivers for change Conclusion Chapter 7 Givers or makers of rights 172 Introduction Iqbal Sahib: from 'this is our religion' to analysis of power Ideals & practice 'Givers' & 'receivers' of rights Conclusion Chapter 8 Operationalising a rights-based approach 212 Introduction A spectrum of responses: from whose perspective? Conclusion Chapter 9 Conclusion 242 Responses to & interpretations of RBA Formal & process approaches: reinforcing or transforming the structure Conclusion: implications for theory, policy & practice Bibliography 266 3 Acknowledgements This thesis grew from my work in a post supported by the Department for International Development (DFID) with UNICEF in Pakistan. The thesis was funded through DFID's Associate Professional Officer Scheme (APOS), Social Development award. I am grateful to Ann Keeling for taking me to Pakistan and for support all along the way. In Pakistan, I am thankful to many colleagues in UNICEF and outside, above all to: Khalida Ahmed, Shehnaz Kapadia Rahat, Carrell Long, Serap Maktav, and Raana Syed; to colleagues working on human rights and gender equality; and especially to the Rights­ Based Approach trainers and counterparts who, because I have not named them in the thesis, I will not name here. I am grateful to my supervisors at the University of Edinburgh for excellent support - to Mike Adler originally, and to Kay Tisdall (Social Policy), Anne Griffiths (Law) and Sheena Crawford (Anthropology/ Social Development). Finally, I am grateful to Elisabeth Paulson, and to Philip Ruhemann. 4 List of Acronyms CEDAW Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women CRC Convention on the Rights of the Child DFID Department for International Development ECOSOC Economic and Social Council GoP Government of Pakistan HIPC Heavily Indebted Poor Countries HRCP Human Rights Commission of Pakistan HRW Human Rights Watch IN GAD Inter-agency Gender and Development Group IPRSP Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper MDGs Millennium Development Goals MoWD Ministry of Women's Development, Social Welfare and Special Education NCCWD National Commission for Child Welfare and Development NCSW National Commission on the Status of Women NWFP North West Frontier Province PIHS Pakistan Integrated Household Survey PPA Participatory Poverty Assessment PRS Poverty Reduction Strategy PRSP Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper RBA Rights-Based Approach RBD Rights-Based Development RBAP Rights-Based Approach to Programming ToT Training of Trainers UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights UNDP United Nations Development Programme UNHCHR United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund WDR World Development Report 5 Abstract This thesis examines the ways in which development actors respond to and interpret a Rights-Based Approach (RBA) to development. It draws on a case study undertaken over a period of more than two years in Pakistan. The central research vehicle is a capacity-building process on RBA involving around 300 development professionals. The thesis examines the different responses to and understandings of RBA emerging in the case study, whether there are indications of changes in thinking and practice, and how the analysis fits with existing ideas about rights and development. Analysis draws on an ethnographic perspective and on participant observation, questionnaires, interviews and a range of tools, within the RBA process and from the wider social development field. It is argued that organisations increasingly aim to operationalise RBA through more inclusive, participatory development which enables the claiming of rights and promotes accountability for their fulfilment. One strand of RBA emphasises implementation of a universalising legal framework; another turns to more consciously political processes of struggle for, and institutional responses to, people's claims. The strands reflect a tension that runs through both the fieldwork and examined literature, between formal, centralist, and pluralist, actor-oriented approaches. Adopting one or the other of the two approaches has profound implications for what is 'seen' in development. The thesis shows that, depending on the approach taken, relations in the private sphere are either shut out or exposed, and the operation of power either hidden or revealed. Actors' responses to RBA are absorbed into, and used within, underlying debates on social relations and social and political change. In a Muslim context, responses lead people to confront sacrosanct certainties about human organisation and relations with authority. This is seen most vividly through gender relations, which are used both as a central expression, and a protector, of a particular construction of power. A formal, centralist treatment of RBA tends to reinforce existing relations through which rights are 'given' and 'received'. The thesis case study shows that, conversely, a pluralist, actor-oriented approach is more process-centred and places more emphasis on rights being 'made'. This, in itself, signals a change in actors' roles. It is argued that the energy of RBA lies in transformations in 6 actors and in development relationships, rather than in achievement of bounded development outputs. Significant impacts, amongst a minority of responses to RBA, grow out of actors seizing more active, politicised roles in development, despite depoliticised donor approaches. 7 lslamabad Faisalabad Ziarat Karachi IN Q I A t I r l n o.~ I l'l" !.I.A)iola S e o D IQO llJnt6tt 'n n r Map of Pakistan, with locations of trainings on a Rights-Based Approach (RBA) to development Chapter 1 : Introduction 1.1 Outline of the thesis This thesis explores the ways in which development actors respond to and interpret a Rights-Based Approach (RBA) to development. What RBA 'is', or becomes, depends upon how actors and organisations (or those actors who steer dominant perspectives within organisations) view social and political change and relations with authority. The thesis is concerned with the extent to which responses to and interpretations of RBA signal a transformation in the relationships and assumptions through which actors approach development, as well as the ways they view their roles within it. Methods and data are limited to the germinating and 'hybridisation' of ideas (Merry, 1997; Abu­ Lughod, 1998). They do not extend far into people's uses of RBA, or far beyond what they and their colleagues say they are doing, to what they are observed to do. The thesis is concerned with actors' interactions in 'invited spaces', and with their notions, rather than with their activities. The thesis is a case study which is centred on a capacity-building process in Pakistan, but which also draws on the wider organisational and social development context. Macro­ and micro-levels of a development context flow into the thesis from each of these layers. Chapter 4, for example, examines the 'enabling environment'. It illustrates a development model operating in national, policy-making processes and what is typically included and excluded in dominant approaches to development; separate from this model, and cut out from it, are social and power relations that significantly affect people's lives and development opportunities. Such relations and development approaches are mirrored in the following chapters, which explore responses to and interpretations of RBA in