UNIWERSYTET WROCŁAWSKI WYDZIAŁ NAUK SPOŁECZNYCH INSTYTUT STUDIÓW MIĘDZYNARODOWYCH Jie Deng Rights-Based Approach in New State-NGO Model --Case Study on the Implementation and Assessment of Rights-Based Approach PRACA MAGISTERSKA NAPISANA POD KIERUNKIEM Klaus Bachmann WROCŁAW 2010  Rights-Based Approach in New State-NGO Model --Case Study on the Implementation and Assessment of Rights-Based Approach Jie Deng Erasmus Mudus Global Study Programme Summary: The forces of globalization drive states and NGOs to resituate in a more complex model than twenty years ago in the field of development, and new approach was invented in response to the changes. Human rights-based approach emerged at the end of 20th century, calling for the cancellation of the historical dividing lines between human rights and development. By converging political rights and economic rights, re-defining duty bearers and rights holders, and building social networks, rights-based approach means to change the traditional ideas on development that humanitarian aids should be “value-free”. The thesis first analyzes the controversies in the original theory of rights-based approach, and then moves to the discussions on how the rights-based approach works in an inverted State-NGO model in practices. Two cases, ActionAid Brazil and Care Rwanda are examined. On which aspects did they succeed and on which aspects did they fail is argued the case study chapter. At last, conclusion is drawn on the role of inverted State-NGO model plays in the implementation of rights-based approach.  Content 1. Introduction 3 2. Chapter 1: Divergence and convergence of the two concepts in human 9 rights: natural rights and social contracts 2.1. The Emergence of the Two Basic Concepts 9 2.2. Civil and Political Rights & Social and Economic Rights 11 2.3. The Effort for Convergence: Rights-Based Approach to Development in 1990s 14 2.4. Conclusion 17 3. Chapter 2: From Government to Governance: An Inverted Model 18 for State-NGO Relationship in Rights-Base Approach 3.1. From “Anti-statism” to “Collaborative Activism” 19 3.2. Guidelines for Rights-based Approach 22 3.3. An Inverted Model: How Does It Work in Practice? 29 3.4. Conclusion 32 4. Chapter 3: Case Study for Rights-based Approach Implementation in Practice 34 4.1. Case 1: ActionAid Brazil 35 4.1.1. Background 35 4.1.2. The Five Stages of “Mutirao” in Fighting Children Malnutrition 37 4.1.3. Assessment on Mutirao 41 4.2 Case 2: CARE Rwanda 46 4.2.1. Background 46 4.2.2. CARE’s Causal Responsibility Analysis Project in Rwanda 48 4.2.3. Assessment on Causal Responsibility Analysis Project 52 5. Chapter 4: Conclusion 57 6. References 63 Introduction “In the 1990s, there was no human rights-based approach inside,” in my interview with the representative from CARE Austria in the summer of 2009, Ms. Kühhas, one of the forerunners for rights-based approach, described me the moment when CARE decided to adopt a new framework to its development projects at the end of 1990s, “It was around 1998 when it started to be an issue to change from the needs-based to the rights-based approach. Before there were more individual projects, to relieve the needs of the people and then it was a mind breaking thing, also for the staff members in the countries, that it is not just needs but it’s a real right of the person and society and group to participate.” (Interview 1, 56ff) Nevertheless, not all the NGOs view the new approach as accountable and practical. Take another international NGO that I interviewed as example—Caritas, insists on the same need-based approach. Mr. Preindl, the relief project conductor of Caritas Austria stressed the standpoint: “We think human rights are instruments to empower people, but it is also very tricky. If people go to the government to claim their rights, conflicts will be caused. That is the reason why human rights organizations have to leave some countries.” (Interview 2, 24ff) Thus Caritas tries to avoid conflicts with local government by cooperating only with the countries that have signed the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, reflecting the mainstream traditions of international humanitarian aids: international aids should be provided in accordance with the needs of target groups. The need-based approach aims at assuring the underprivileged groups with necessary aids on food, accommodation, education, etc. Thus being inherently political is not really appreciated by Caritas. Why did the new rights-based approach emerge at the end of 1990s? Was it a global movement consciously supported by certain international agencies, or an unconscious growth of human rights protection activities? Why did some NGOs embrace the new approach, such as the case of CARE; while some held conservative attitude towards it, as Caritas did? When interviewing NGOs in Vienna, my partner Rosalind Willi, a long-term internee in Austrian League for Human Rights, told me that NGOs of rights-based approach were severely criticized by other organizations for being too political and arbitrary. Since Austrian League for Human Rights serves as the communication platform for more than 50 NGOs in this country, the information is quite interesting. Why did the new approach receive keen criticism since adopted? Was it really too “political and arbitrary”? To whom or to what was it political and arbitrary? All these questions inspired me to continue researches in this field. Fortunately academic works on rights-based approach are, if not exaggerated, considerably fruitful, which should be ascribed to the Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen. (Matheson, 2000) In his influential book “Development as Freedom”, he argues freedom should be considered as the ultimate goal rather than the method to achieve development. (Sen, 1999) By drawing lessons from historical examples such as famines in China and India, Sen states democracy is more capable than authoritarian regime to deal with unequal food distribution and social crisis. In other words, what people can achieve is influenced by “economic opportunities, political liberties, social powers, and the enabling condition of good health, basic education, and the encouragement and cultivation of initiative.” Sen establishes the correlation between rights and development on theoretical ground. Although being criticized ideological and wordy, “Development as Freedom” does inspire other scholars and human rights activists. All the three books focused on RBA refer to Sen’s work as the milestone in the field of human rights and development. Paul Gready and Jonathan Ensor point out that Sen has significantly contributed to the solution of aid dilemma in international NGO activities, the trap called “busy on rescuing babies thrown into water without asking who is throwing the babies” (Gready; Ensor 2005). In “Reinventing Development”, the two editors address the great diversity of understandings of what constitutes a rights-based approach. Other authors, most of whom are directors or consultants of international organizations, attempt to identify what difference a rights-based approach makes in real practice. A considerable number of case studies on Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe are provided in the sequent volumes. It is worthwhile to note that “Reinventing Development” is the first book that tries to conclude a paradigm from those different understanding. However, similar to other academic analyse on RBA, “Reinventing Development” is shadowed by the limited period of RBA’s implementation and the lack of assessment on NGOs’ work in developing countries. Another book “New Rights Advocacy” is less ambitious. Nelson and Dorcey are mainly concerned with four questions: the quest for power by NGOs reflected in their strategic choices to adopt rights-based approach, the origins and significance of new rights claims, the changing relationship between international NGOs and states, and the challenge to orthodox development theory and practice (Nelson, Dorcey 2008). The two scholars argue for the necessity of changing paradigm in international humanitarian aid, and devote most of their efforts to exploring how the two fields—human rights and development—are challenging and changing each other. Hence the study on RBA by Nelson and Dorcey is highly methodological, devoid of any specific case studies. The focus on theories assures the well-organized format of this book, but more or less reduces its value on analysis of the impact of RBA. (Klinghoffer, 2008) The third book “Rights-Based Approaches to Development” goes even further. It extends research field to governmentality, citizenship, property rights and gender relations through a rights-based approach perspective. (Hickey and Mitlin, 2009) The book shows RBA is gradually spreading from international to domestic issues. What the most valuable in this book, from my personal view, is the discussion on the relations between individuals, agencies and NGOs with governments. Before, researchers mainly dealt with the interactions between international NGOs and the government of poor countries, and the inside of rich countries was greatly ignored. “Rights-Based Approaches to Development” fills the gap and push RBA forwards to social justice issues. Besides, a considerable amount of researches on rights-based approach in the last ten years have exploded. The Governance and Social Development Resource Centre (GSDRC) collects the most-cited articles and categorizes them into five volumes: 1. overview on RBA; 2. participation and accountability; 3. rights and citizenship; 4. rights-based approach tools and guidelines; 5. implications of RBA for development agencies. Piron, Nyamu-Musembi and Cornwall examine the overall features of RBA and the essential element of this new approach, and argue the necessity to change the relations between NGOs and donors (Piron 2004; Nyamu-Musembi 2004). When the question comes to equal distribution of rights, Brocklesby, Crawford and Aslop contribute their effort to the study on how to empower people and reduce poverty efficiently (Brockelsby and Crawford 2004, 2005; Aslop 2005). As a result of empowerment, the traditional concept of citizenship has to be challenged. Whether there exists a universal concept on citizenship is the major concern for Kabeer, who aims at exploring the meaning of “inclusive citizenship” under globalization context (Kabeer 2005). Lewis and Earle conduct case studies in Latin America, Peru and Brazil respectively, in search of the answers to the common understanding on citizenship (Lewis 2005; Earle 2008). Academic researches can never be completed without the first-hand information from practitioners. The former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) set up a checklist for rights-based approach to help NGOs evaluate their projects, while other international organizations also release their own working guidelines (SIDA, 2003; NORAD, 2001; Save the Children, 2002; CARE 2005). Consequently, the rapid expansion of rights-based approaches among donors and NGOs has led to considerable debate about whether the approaches can make rights a reality for poor and excluded people. Uvin, Foresti and Eyben demonstrate that in order to have an impact, a rights-based approach must focus on improving relationships and processes as well as outcomes. This involves respecting and responding to partners’ priorities, and being transparent and consistent about donor's own decision-making processes (Uvin, 2004; Foresti, Booth and O’Neill, 2006; Eyben 2004). On the other hand, Grugel and Piper argue RBA might not be the most appropriate way to achieve outcomes for some aspects of injustice, exclusion and marginalization. (Grugel and Piper, 2009) Generally speaking, researches on the impact of NGO activities are the weak point of the chain. Cingranelli and Richards see the problem as the result of limits on resources and lack of motivation. To measure the impact of humanitarian projects firstly requires liberal political environment and rigorous analytical skills. For most of the NGOs, to hire expects on analytical work is neither practical nor reasonable, for the evaluation might demoralize their workers. (Cingranelli and Richards, 2001) Therefore, the present researches on rights-based approach generally focus on the conceptualization of rights in development fields without effective analysis on the impact. The richness of literature on rights-based approach brings both inspirations and challenges. Being a new approach with close connection to human rights, the RBA is by no means value-free. All the researches that have been done show a strong value- added tendency of advocacy: the principles and guidelines of RBA are widely studied, while the effectiveness of implementation in real practices is relatively marginalized. I would like to go beyond the discourses and argue about the weak point of RBA and the key point to gain success. In the interview with CARE, it is indicated by Ms. Kühhas that rights-based approach might collide with local authorities and traditions, but NGO “has to adhere to its principles”, because there are some principles which “can never be negotiated and compromised”. The collision with local authorities, mainly the state, from my view, is the major barricade for RBA. Hence I would like to hypothesize two points from a State-NGO model perspective: 1. The changes of the model of State-NGO relations in 1990s provide the changes of development approach with essential conditions. 2. The effectiveness of implementation of rights-based approach is strongly influenced by the inverted State-NGO model. Several specific research questions will be discussed in the following parts: 1. What are the historical dynamics for the NGO-state dichotomy in human rights discourses? How do they generate the emergence of rights-based approach in legal framework? 2. How did the role of states change in the 1990s? How do the changes bring opportunities and challenges to rights-based approach? 3. How does the new State-NGO model work in real practices? In chapter 1, the legal framework of rights-based approach is discussed. When analyzing the approach rooted in human rights laws and discourses, it is necessary to see how RBA gains legitimacy in historical context. However, the inner contradiction of two basic concepts, the natural rights and social contracts, leaves traces of controversy in nowadays rights-based approach. Should rights be preserved on the birth of an individual, or should they be authorized by social agreements? The questions on duty bearer and rights holder are originated from this contradiction, and rights-based approach tries to merge the boundaries of the two concepts by pushing different societies to fulfill their roles in human rights protection. These efforts, consequently, influence the relations between NGOs and states. Chapter 2 continues to explore the State-NGO dichotomy in rights-based approach, with main focus on the changes of states’ role in the 1990s. “From Government to Governance”, the popular terminological phrase shows the new operational environment for rights-based approach. Good governance, as a matter of fact, is the essential condition and the goal of RBA. In the checklist provided by UNDP, several standards are the major concerns for NGOs adopting rights-based approach: the inclusiveness of vulnerable groups, the participation of stakeholders, and the overall environment for human rights are stressed. (Human Rights-Based Approach Checklist for Program Stuff, UNDP) To promote good governance, rights-based approach needs to adopt a new model of State-NGO relations, which is discussed in this chapter. To what extent has it changed the traditional model? How does it affect NGOs’ programming? Arguments on the application of this new model in practices require prudent researches on cases. Chapter 3 deepens the discussion on state-NGO dichotomy in case studies. Two cases will be carefully examined under the context of rights-based approach: ActionAid Brazil’ campaign against child malnutrition in Sao Joao de Meriti, Brazil, and CARE Rwanda’s causal responsibility project in Gikongoro Province, Rwanda. This chapter explores the ways that ActionAid and CARE implemented rights-based approach in practice and discusses how the inverted State-NGO model worked in project design and conduct: Why did the two NGOs succeeded on some points, but failed on some other points? What are the advantages of rights-based approach, and what are the setbacks? Most importantly, what kind of role did state play in the implementation of rights-based approach? Analysis will be based on the inverted State-NGO model, and focus on each country’s own condition. Last, Chapter 4 concludes the key issue for rights-based approach is to balance the relations among state, NGO and other sectors in the new model. Also, the outlook of RBA is discussed: does it indicate the trend of universalizing human rights under the context of “good governance”? How can this new approach respond to the challenges from cultural relativism? When some international agencies gradually withdraw from the new approach, will the international organizations alliance of advocating RBA change in the future? Those questions, generated from the state-NGO model and its inverted mode, are open for future researches. Chapter 1: Divergence and convergence of the two concepts in human rights: natural rights and social contracts Human rights, being the referring framework for rights-based approach, have been emerged far long before the idea of modern development. However, not until the end of 1990s did the filed of development meet the field of human rights. While some NGOs decided to step forwards to embrace human rights in their development projects, other NGOs kept reservation on the embracement. What are the historical dynamics in human rights discourses that make the encounter of the two fields possible? Why is the convergence of the two fields, questioned by some organizations and scholars, controversial? I would like to analyze it from the ankle of two basic concepts in human rights discourses: natural laws, or also namely natural rights, and social contracts. The Emergence of the Two Basic Concepts Human rights in modern sense were first developed in the era of Enlightenment with the two documents—namely the US Declaration of Independency (1776) and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789)—as milestones. Both of the declarations are revolutionary “in a sense that that they sought a radical transformation of the accepted principles of social organization, rather than a mere seizure of power within the existing order.”(Evans 2001) By claiming that we were born free and equal, that we share the same rights in society, human rights were used as an ideological and also political weapon to crush the inner structure of feudalism and aristocracy. There existed two fundamental concepts in the declarations, which still exert enduring and contradictory influences in current human rights discourses. All the human beings are bestowed rights by their “natures”—the concept “natural rights” or “natural laws” lays an unarguably significant foundation in the two documents. To confirm individuals naturally have rights neither because of their races nor their class origins, but because of their common humanity and shared characteristics, “natural rights” provided a highly provocative and subversive concept during the revolutionary period. Nevertheless, tough questions have always threatened the theoretical foundation of natural rights: which rights are natural? Who decides？ How can disagreements over these issues and changing views over time and across cultures? What are the implications of the chasm between ideal and reality? (Ensor, Gready 2005) The answers are controversial and disputable. However, despite the philosophical challenges that it has faced so far, natural rights still occupies an important position in nowadays human right discourses. As Sen states, Rights are not, and cannot only be, seen “in post-institutional terms as instruments”, but must also be understood as “a prior ethical entitlement”. (Sen 1999) Another fundamental concept in the two documents is “social contract”— Rights are not divine or absolute, but, on the contrary, the consensus of the whole society. The theory was based on the belief that human beings are vulnerable in the state of nature; hence they sacrifice some unconditional freedom in trade of essential security from the state. Hence only when the state rules over the individuals with respect to human rights, will the state retain its legitimacy. Both of the US and French Declaration confirm the right to rebellion when human rights are severely violated by the state. Although the concept of social contract moves beyond rights as an article of faith or morality and provide them with a social and political-contractual grounding, (Rachel 1993) criticisms are challenging the foundation of social contract: what do the powerful, the rich and those with superior knowledge gain from such rules? Given power imbalances, is there any guarantee that the rules will be fair? How can the social contract be extended beyond the state, or the international community of states, as its basic units？Again, the concept of social contract is trapped by the dilemma of cultural relativism. Since different societies may have totally different definitions on social contracts, transnational or so-called global rights will be, without any doubts, full of disputes. Civil and Political Rights & Social and Economic Rights The US and French declaration paved the way for human rights to become the common rules of one society. Only when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 was drafted were the two basic concepts, either natural rights or social contracts, recognized on a transnational level. Human rights, no longer moral fictions constrained by national boundaries, but internationally recognized common rules, were considered the guidelines for the member states and non-governmental organizations. The Universal Declaration contains a long catalogue of human rights which include what have become known as civil and political rights on one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. For example, Article 19 confirms that “everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion”, including the right to change his or her “religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in a community with others and, in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance” (UDHR, Art. 19). The rights to speech and religion, which are part of political and civil rights, are listed as the basic principle of human rights. In the following articles, Article 25 confirms the rights to “a standard of living adequate for the health and the well-being”, while Article 27 recognizes the right to “participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancements and its benefits” (UDHR, Art. 25, 27). Those articles also confirm economic, social and cultural rights in a legal form. After the drafting of UDHR, the terminology of “first” and “second” generation of human rights generally emerged, which applied to two categories of rights to signify the fact that civil and political rights are, by and large, concerned with freedom from state interference while economic, social and cultural rights requires the state to act positively to promote the well-being of its people (Davidson, 1993). Why did the two generations emerge after UDHR? It can be ascribed to two reasons. When the UDHR was adopted, it was envisaged that it would eventually be transformed from a non-binding resolution into a legally binding agreement. Firstly, the ideological disputes between the Western and Eastern Blocs over the priorities of the two sets of rights meant that agreement could not be reached over their inclusion in a single legally binding instrument. Secondly, the methods of implementing the two categories of rights were considered to be divergent. It was thought that civil and political rights could be implemented with some immediacy, whereas economic, social and cultural rights could only be implemented progressively and programmatically depending upon not only the resources available to the states, but also the development of civil society (Davidson, 2004). Therefore, the Convention of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights was adopted in 1966, as a semi-legal supplement to the Universal Declaration, also a divergence from the original declaration with the emphasis on one of the two aspects of human rights. Though criticized as the ideological dispute between two Blocs, the divergence of two generations of human rights reflects the inner contradiction of the two basic concepts. Natural rights emphasizes the compulsory aspect of human rights, which should be implemented without any condition; while social contract constrains rights within certain limits by claiming that rights are legitimated from the common agreement of society. Accordingly, advocators for political and civil rights tend to emphasize the entitlement of the rights to public affairs to citizens, such as the rights to vote, to speech and to form organizations. Those rights are “absolute” and “unquestionable”, and can be practically fulfilled with compulsory methods. On the other hand, economic, social and cultural rights are constrained by the resources that a state can mobilize and current “social conditions”, a relatively vague terminology frequently quoted by Third World countries. As a matter of fact, it can be observed during the Cold War era that international human rights organizations located in developed industrial countries were more favor of civil and political rights, and countries from socialist bloc and the Third World responded to the pressure by arguing the entitlement of political rights to all citizens should be based on necessary development of economic and social conditions. Thus the contrast between natural rights and social contract still resonates in the divergence of first and second generation of human rights. Despite the end of the ideological struggles, the divergence can still be detected in the NGOs from the North and the South in 1990s. According to a quantitative research conducted by three American scholars in 1998, the most substantial difference between Northern and Southern NGOs was that Southern NGOs were significantly more likely to report that they frequently worked to promote the right to development and to promote social, economic, and cultural rights. This pattern reflects understandable differences in priorities across regions, and it mirrors tensions within the international human rights movement. (Lopez, 1998) Another observation made by Nyamu-Musembi and Cornwall reveals the similar trend in international human rights movement. Not until mid-1990s did “mainstream Western-based human rights NGOs” began to work on social, economic and cultural rights. Before, they keep relatively aloof to issues of economic and social justice. For example, Amnesty International did not get into the language of “rights-based approach to development” until 2001/2002. (Nyamu-Musembi, Cornwall, 2004) The Effort for Convergence: Rights-Based Approach to Development in 1990s In the 1980s, an enormous rise of NGOs in number had already been witnessed, no matter in developed or developing countries. The major phenomenon which made some scholars speak of “associational revolution” (Salamon 1994), continued to expend in all over the world in the 1990s, with more and more NGOs stepping onto the international stage and playing more dimensional roles. There is no doubt that the end of Cold War significantly boosted the development of NGOs on a global scale. Although the assertion that “the century that began full of self-confidence in the ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy seems at its close to be returning full circle to where it started” (Fukuyama 1989), is highly disputable, the expansion of economic and political liberalism did exert profound influences on the emergence of new NGOs. As the ideological struggles on socialism and capitalism were ended by the collapse of Soviet Union, states started to withdraw from social life. Nation-states are resituated in post-Cold War age, both in terms of its dominance as a political actor and in terms of its interference into the market as an economic agent. Under the background of tremendous growth of NGOs and resituated role of nation-states, rights-based approach emerged as the calling for implementing human rights framework to development. Yet what are the differences between the new approach and traditional development approach? Some commentators would concede that what rights-based approach brings is not strikingly different to what a number of those working in development have been doing all along—such as advocacy and empowerment to build political capabilities and consciousness. However, the changes happen in terms of legitimization. As the advocator of rights-based approach CARE argues, the urge to adopt RBA is driven by the needs to “change the legal system of one country”. (Interview 1, 66ff) In other words, rights-based approach is the effort to converge political and civil rights and economic, social and cultural rights under legal frameworks. Drinan concludes the core characteristics of human right NGOs before implementing RBA as the “mobilization of shame” methodology （Drinan 2001）.To be precise, to mobilize shame means to articulate their agendas and missions in terms of strengthening international human rights norms and protecting and implementing recognized human rights. Most traditional human rights NGOs have focused on civil and political rights, and largely on the conduct of government. They associate with UN and governmental human rights agencies and offices and with other NGOs and they receive much of their funding from private donors and foundations. Although their methodologies vary, the core activities of human rights advocacy are promotion of standards, investigation and documentation of violations, advocacy, and litigation (Welch 2001). On the other hand, those NGOs which focus on development, namely “development NGOs”, have a different normative base and methodology. Their agendas seldom make reference to any fixed standards, but refer to meeting human needs and promoting self-sufficiency, community development, or justice. Their dominant activity has been the delivery of material goods or services (roads, immunizations, organizational capacity building) in poor societies, although policy advocacy is now increasingly important to their agendas, they interact with development and are funded largely by private donors and governmental aid agencies (Lindenberg and Bryant 2001). What rights-based approach brings to the two different fields, Nelson and Dorsey argue, are the changes in their methods to respond to the effects of economic globalization. To implement RBA, the two kinds of NGOs need to collaborate in advocacy campaigns, to adopt and adapt each others’ strategies. RBA pushes those NGOs to cross the “historic dividing lines”: human rights advocacy for development and environmental NGOs and an expanded spectrum of human rights advocacy for traditional human rights groups (Nelson, Dorsey 2008). Hence the emergence of rights-based approach can be understood as the effort to diminish the dividing lines, making traditional mainstream human right NGOs to extend their working field into economic and social issues, such as the case of Amnesty International; or development NGOs to work with the political and legal issues of target countries, such as the case of CARE. From the point of first second generation of human rights, RBA makes effort to converge the two generations in the field of development. Nevertheless, the key changes of the convergence of two generations of human rights not only occur in the reoriented approach of certain NGOs, but also in the resituated roles of nation-states and NGOs in development. For pragmatic reasons, to implement rights-based approach is for ensuring accountability on the part of recipient states. Ferguson talks about RBA as in itself a “vehicle for increasing the accountability of government organizations to their citizens and consequently increasing the likelihood that policy measures will be implemented in practice.” (Ferguson 1999) But how does RBA increase the accountability of states in human rights protection? Besides the aspect of providing specific legal guidelines to development works, another more important aspect is the changes of state-NGO dichotomy. It is generally conceded in traditional human rights theory that nation-states are the major duty bearer, being responsible for either human rights protection or violation. Yet rights-based approach, as claims in the Draft of Guidelines for a Human Rights Approach to Poverty Reduction Strategies, seeks to give meanings to rights beyond the accepted boundaries of state accountability. Thus the language of RBA includes non-state actors such as local organizations, donor communities, intergovernmental organizations into development context, so as to expand the notion of accountability for rights to more duty bearers. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights expresses this broader notion of accountability as follows: Perhaps the most important source of added value in the human rights approach is the emphasis it places on the accountability of policymakers and other actors whose actions have an impact on the rights of people. Rights imply duties, and duties demand accountability. (UN OHCHR 2002: paragraph 23) On the trend of converting rights holders to more particularly duty bearers, Jonsson notes: “There is a need to extend the claim-duty relationships to include all relevant subjects and objects at sub-national, community, and household levels.” The system of claim-duty relationships is called the “pattern of rights”, with each understood as roles individuals/actors may perform, rather than immutable labels. Individuals/actors often occupy both roles simultaneously in relation to other individuals/actors at different level of society. Building on this conceptualization, pattern or role analysis—the identification of key claim—duty relationships for specific rights—can become an important component of programming (Jonsson, 2005) Within such an expanded human rights terrain, NGOs, IGOs and others seek to build the capacities of rights holders to claim rights and of duty bearer to meet their responsibilities. In short, the traditional vertical state-NGO model is complemented by a consideration of horizontal relationships. Conclusion Drawing historical lines from human rights discourses, the newly-emerged rights-based approach reflects the inner contradiction of two basic concepts natural rights and social contract, and the divergence of two generations of human rights. As the response to the changed international environment for development work—the end of cold war and growing globalization, RBA makes effort to converge the two generations in the field of development by pushing both traditional human right NGOs and development NGOs to cross dividing lines in history: mainstream human right NGOs step into economic, social and cultural issues, while development NGOs try to change the political environment and legal system of target countries. However, those efforts involved significant changes in power relations. The traditional state-NGO model needs to be modified, with the role of nation-states resituated in a more dimensional network: inter-governmental organizations, local communities, households, even individuals as duty bearers instead of rights holders. Nonetheless, the role of nation-states in development, though implemented with other actors, will not be diminished to unimportance by the emergence of rights-based approach. The “new rights advocacy”, named by Nelson and Dorsey, is closely related to the interactions between NGOs and states. It is argued that whether the new rights advocacy succeeds or not depends how to resituate nation-states in a new state-NGO model, to mobilize the states and to balance their powers. The following chapter will discuss the new state-NGO models under the context of good governance in rights-based approach. Chapter 2: From Government to Governance: An Inverted Model for State-NGO Relationship in Rights-Base Approach Globalisation in 1990s brought significant shifts in the fields of both human rights development and their re-constructed correlations; and more precisely, changes happen in power from the classic state centric model towards one with multiple economic and social movement actors interacting with states and influencing international system dynamics. What remains to be systematically explored is how traditional State-NGO model change affects NGO sectors’ strategies. The strategy of NGOs acting in a field such as human rights or development is, in a loose sense, analogous to state policy in that in involves calculated responses to systems changes that can pose threats and opportunities. What is at stake is not whether individual NGOs make new strategic choices in the face of systems change. The question is whether there is evidence that the entire field is being reoriented, undergoing what could be called a paradigmatic change. The questions require us to think systemically about NGOs’ operational environment under the context of a changed international system. During the last twenty years, international system has changed dramatically, the end of the cold war, creation of new international trade and finance regimes and rules, increased capital mobility and influence for international corporations, growth of new and diffuse threats to human security, and the growing trans-national organization of social movements and NGO campaigns are among the most significant changes and trends. International NGOs struggle to maintain their independence, credibility, and stability; and local NGOs in both fields also search for ways to gain greater leverage in their relations with states and international organizations. Changes in international systems with corresponding changes in power relations, affect NGOs’ operating environment decisively. Hence the success or failure of rights-based approach as well as the surviving or growth of RBA-oriented NGOs, I would like to hypothesize, is strongly influenced by the systemic changes to power relations on both state level and international level. From “Anti-statism” to “Collaborative Activism” Falk argues in his essay “Human Rights and Global Civil Society” that the characteristic of NGOs’ work before 1990s was characterized as “anti-statism”, because a major amount of NGOs had distinctive objectives and principles from located countries’ government (Falk 2004). They were struggling to shape their own images different from the non-flexible and bureaucratic governmental organizations, in order to compete for the space of humanitarian aids on grass-root level. Thus the relations between government and NGOS were formed as adversarial. According to the traditional definition of sovereignty—though controversially debated through history—holder of sovereignty has “supreme authority over certain territory”, and authority is rather what philosopher R.P. Wolff proposed: “the right to command and correlatively the right to be obeyed.” (Wolff 1990) Hence the adversarial relations between NGOs and government greatly challenge the concept of “right to command and to be obeyed”, particularly in the 1960s and 70s when newly independent nation states emerged on international stage. Local NGOs and governments usually played a zero-sum game in the field of development. Wapner finds NGOs’ development work conflicted with government on two levels: empowering grassroots communities that will weaken the control from central government; and financing their own development projects of different objectives and principles from government’s projects. (Wapner, 1995) On the other hand, “anti-statism” was not only reflected by the competition between NGOs and government for space of humanitarian aids on local level, but also on the level of international aids. Politicization, the problem has kept on haunting international humanitarian aids since the Cold War. Deeply influenced by the ideological struggle between two Blocs, mainstream international human rights NGOs worked with strong values of democracy and market liberalism. As has discussed before, mainstream human rights NGOs emphasize the absoluteness of natural rights which should be fulfilled under any political or economic conditions; on the contrary, newly-independent nation states were incline to emphasized social contracts which are constrained by political, economic and social development. Motivated by the belief on natural law (either manipulated by Western countries or not), international NGOs tried to force target countries to accept their preconditions of humanitarian aids; and the latter usually took objection or negotiated for some revises. The politicization of humanitarian aids generated resentment on international NGOs from receipt side and limited their working space in target countries. Some NGOs choice not to negotiate with human rights principles, thus they had to bypass the government and struggle for implementing aid projects without cooperation from central authority; others choice to compromise, and had to face the aid dilemma “rescuing babies thrown into river without asking who are throwing the babies” . Where the donation had gone always remained a question when NGOs cooperated with non-democratic governments. In brief, politicization was always a question for international human rights NGOs during the Cold War. Even though human rights are no longer categorized into either one Bloc or another Bloc’s ideology in 1990s, the problem of politicization became even more complex, because the relations between state and NGOs are complicated by a new model of net-work cooperation in global age. Joseph Nye claims with the optimism of a neo-liberal institutionalist that globalization forces at the national level can reduce state controls over the economy, increase pressure for democratic accountability, or raise questions about state efficiency. These developments can create political space for civil society organizations as alternative sources of services once provided by the state, watchdogs over and advocates for government policy formulation and implementation, policy entrepreneurs or implementers with state partners, and social innovators to guide improved services. When globalization expands political space, civil society actors may emerge to respond to the concerns of impoverished and marginalized groups that remained voiceless under prior regimes (Nye 2002). However，Nye also warns that it is not immediately obvious that political, cultural, and economic facets of globalization will necessarily covary or reinforce one another. Globalization will not simultaneously highlight the importance of core cultural values or open more political space for civil society initiatives or create economic consequences that exacerbate poverty. Governments may open doors to international markets while trying to control the political implications of globalization or vice versa. They may also close their boundaries to cultural impacts in general. However, the more open the country is to globalization, the more one would expect civil society organizations to become important national actors. This is a function of three factors: globalization has impacts on consciousness that are likely to be expressed through civil society organizations; globalization is likely to place enhanced emphasis on the political ideologies of individualism, freedom, and equal rights for which NGOs are both a product and an exemplar; and globalization invites in international actors (INGOs, international agencies, etc.) that actively promote and strengthen the emergence of national civil societies. (Brown, Khagram, Moore and Frumkin, 2000) The function of three factors causes the transformation from “government” to “governance”, which can be seen as the pattern or structure that emerges in a socio-political system as “common” result or outcome of the interacting intervention efforts of all involved actors (Kooiman 2003). In other words, policy outcomes are not the product of actions by central government. The centre may pass a law but subsequently it interacts with local government, health authorities, the voluntary sector, the private sector and, in turn they interact with one another. Kooiman distinguishes between the process of governing (or goal-directed interventions) and governance which .is the result (or the total effects) of social-political-administrative interventions and interactions. There is order in the policy area but it is not imposed from on high; it emerges from the negotiations of the several affected parties. Also, these interactions are based on the recognition of inter dependencies. No single actor, public or private, has all knowledge and information required to solve complex, dynamic and diversified problems; no actors has sufficient overview to make the application of needed instruments effective; no single actor has sufficient action potential to dominate unilaterally in a particular governing model. (Kooiman 2003) As a result, the particular governing model has greatly changed the relations between nation-state and NGO. Both of the two actors are reset in a broader network involving local communities, households, international donor governments, etc. Thus Falk calls the new state-NGO relation as “collaborative activism”. Guidelines for Rights-based Approach Before discussing about how the “collaborative activism” model of government-NGO cooperation works in rights-based approach, it would be useful to take a look at the RBA checklist for programme staff provided by UNDP: 1. Country Context and UNDP Programme A. What are the 3 top priorities for human development in the country today? B. What is the environment in the country for promoting human rights? C. Which rights have yet to be fulfilled for the population as a whole, and what are the structural causes for this? D. What treaty standards and comments of rights bodies are relevant in this context? E. How does the UNDP Programme support the realization of human rights? F. Do programme staff have the capacity to integrate human rights in their work, and a sound grasp of the UN Charter, human rights instruments, and the country constitution? G. How do other international partners support the realization of human rights? How do partners coordinate their work? What gaps remain? 2. Excluded and Vulnerable Groups A. Which groups are the most disadvantaged? How does UNDP define vulnerability and poverty in the country? B. Are tools and indicators to identify excluded groups sufficiently disaggregated? C. How does the overall Country Programme address exclusion and disadvantage? How do specific projects do so? D. How do other partners do so? How do partners coordinate? What gaps remain? E. Does the UNDP Country Office adequately reflect the diversity of the country? 3. Stakeholder Capacity A. Who are the Country Programme or project stakeholders and how were they identified? B. Which are duty bearers and what obligations are they supposed to meet? Do they have the capacity to meet obligations (including responsibility, authority, data, and resources)? C. Which are claim holders and do they have the capacity to claim their rights (including ability to access information, organize, advocate policy change, and obtain redress)? 4. Country Programme and Project Process (Conduct) A. Does project design and implementation incorporate human rights standards as set out in international and regional conventions? Does the Country Programme? B. Does project design and implementation incorporate principles of universality, indivisibility, inter-dependence, equality, participation, and accountability? Does the overall Country Programme? C. Do both duty bearers and claim holders participate in project design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation? What about in the overall Country Programme preparation? 5. Country Programme and Project Outcome (Results) A. How has the overall Country Programme built capacities to realize human rights in the country? Do these address the structural causes for non-realization of human rights? Which human rights will be further realized? B. How does the project build the capacities of duty bearers to meet obligations and claim holders to claim human rights? Which human rights will be further realized? How is this monitored and evaluated? C. Do indicators capture perceptions on the enjoyment of human rights and other qualitative aspects, such as accountability of public authorities? From the checklist written by the official “UN language”, we can still detect three efforts that rights-based approach tries to make in practice: 1. to find out the structural causes for the non-realization of human rights in receipt states; 2. to make sure the design and implementation of development projects are under the legal framework of human rights laws, conventions, or other legal bindings; 3. to include more groups into the conduct of projects and increase their accountability by redefining duty bearer and duty holder. In sum, implementing rights-based approach means to change the root for poverty and inequality by involving more groups to take responsibility in the change. The most notable point in the checklist is from No.3 “Stakeholder Capacity”. Before, those questions such as “Who are duty bearers? Who are rights holders?” were seldom asked, since state was generally considered as the duty bearers and “vulnerable groups” the opposite side. By asking who are really responsible for human rights protection and who are justified to claim their rights, RBA changes the duty-rights/state-individual dichotomy and brings development projects into a broader network, in which diverse actors fulfill their roles in “multiple managements” under imperative and clear common rules. Hence the central role of state is weakened by the redefinition of duty and rights. Such hypothetically decentralized and diverse network is described by Rhodes as and ideal “self-organizing governance”: network members continuously interacted with each other, which caused by the needs to exchange resources and negotiating shared purposes; networks are not account to the state, though state can indirectly and imperfectly steer the networks (Rhodes 1996). The working guidelines provided by UNDP indicate that rights-based approach advocators are explicitly linking human rights protection with good governance. Why is good governance at stake for the design and implementation of RBA? UNHCR gives more specific answers: “Good governance and human rights are mutually reinforcing. Human rights principles provide a set of values to guide the work of Governments and other political and social actors. They also provide a set of performance standards against which these actors can be held accountable. Moreover, human rights principles inform the content of good governance efforts: they may inform the development of legislative frameworks, policies, programmes, budgetary allocations and other measures. However, without good governance, human rights cannot be respected and protected in a sustainable manner. The implementation of human rights relies on a conducive and enabling environment. This includes appropriate legal frameworks and institutions as well as political, managerial and administrative processes responsible for responding to the rights and needs of the population.” (UNHCR 2007) Compared with UN institutes, another rights-based approach advocator emphasizes the importance of good governance in a more practical way. In the handbook for projects design and conduct, CARE requires its staff to incorporate RBA into “holistic appraisal” by broadening analytical framework to include all human rights and analyzing more deeply underlying and basic causes of poverty and insecurity. It is stated that even while CARE focuses on livelihood security conditions (i.e. food, water and sanitation, nutrition, health, education, and economic opportunity), staff have to consider other conditions affecting livelihood security and, more broadly, life with dignity (i.e. the enjoyment or lack of additional human rights, such as personal security, freedom of movement, and participation in public affairs). Such conditions are all interdependent. To link political conditions with the social and economic conditions shows CARE is searching for a more holistic way to implement its project. Thus it is necessary to analyze the “underlying and basic causes”, which are similar to what UNDP defines as “structural causes”. CARE’s handbook points out the fact that its staff are accustomed to undertaking causal analysis of why households behave the way they do, but less accustomed to analyzing the political, economic, and socio-cultural systems and relations at all levels that powerfully influence household-level conditions (CARE 2002). By re-considering the goals for development projects and re-defining the causes of human rights violations, CARE incorporates its new approach into a broader network in which political, economic and social factors continuously interact with each other. The nuanced difference between UN institutes and CARE lies in the views on “governance”. For the former, to promote good governance means to strengthen the connection between central authority and other factors; for the latter, it means to extend development work on grassroots level to higher level. Nevertheless, both of them share similar goal to construct broader network. Those changes require us to rethink the relations between duty bearers and rights holders, and their overlapping roles in development. Thus the model for power relations is inverted from traditional “state (duty bearer) –NGOs (either local or international) –vulnerable groups (rights holder)” to a more complex model, as shown by figure 1 and 2. Figure 1: the State-NGO model in Cold War era Figure 2: the inverted State-NGO model in global age By comparing the two models, we can see the changes of international system in global age bring the shrink of state’s role, the expansion of NGOs’ working field, and the increase of interactions among state and other actors. The relation between state and NGOs has significantly changed from adversarial to cooperative, though tensions and frictions still exist. Also, International community was able to exert more influence on state in human rights and development issues. On the other hand, in the inverted model, NGOs redefine their target groups as duty bearers and rights holders. The effort to mobilize different groups on grass-root level to commit their responsibility or claim their rights indicates the changes of NGOs’ strategy and behaviour, which are influenced by both external and internal factors, as shown in figure 3 below: Figure 3: the changes of NGOs’ strategy and behaviour An Inverted Model: How Does It Work in Practice? The emergence of rights-based approach in mid 1990s is considered as the response to the changed international environment and resituated role of state in an inverted State-NGO model. However, being the approach aiming at converging political and civil rights and economic, social and cultural rights, redefining duty-rights dichotomy on local level, and most importantly, adopting human rights as legal framework to development, rights-based approach is by no means a flawless adjustment to the new model. As discussed before, the endeavour to merge historical dividing lines between political and economic factors in development field may cause controversies on what state should do and what NGOs should do. State sovereignty, though weakened by globalization, still exerts its significant influences on social life. Gready calls the linking of state and individual as the “central spine” of human rights, without which humanitarian aids can hardly be effective (Gready 2008). Rights-based approach searches new ways to re-center state in the field of development, such as “to shape ‘vibrant, strong, interventionist states with high legitimacy and authority but also with genuine accountability’” (Mander 2005), or “to re-imagine state as a field of disputes, with local, state, and national tiers and the party in power at any tier subject to periodic change” (Antunes, Romano 2005). Thus it is crucial for NGOs to “institutionalize” the participatory spaces and clearly define the power of state, in other words, to “consolidate the policies as government practices, in order not to depend on politically favourable governments” (Antunes, Romano 2005). The urge for institutionalization of government policies requires stronger interventions on political and legal issues, leading to disputes on the “politicization” of NGO work. For a long time, “de-politicization” is assumed as a necessity in the field of development, and this principle is still held by a large amount of NGOs, such as the case of Caritas. They prefer conducting projects according to the needs of target groups rather than orienting project by human rights framework. For them, rights-based approach might become the impediment for real understanding of human rights since it focuses too much on discourses rather than actions. If cross the line of state sovereignty, projects might be hampered by the intervention from state, or even stopped. Involvement into “sensitive” political issues should be avoided by NGOs; otherwise their goals can not be reached, UN officer Shahryar M. Khan, the special representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Assistance Mission of Rwanda (UNAMIR) argues (Khan 1997). Therefore, questions remain in rights-based approach: is RBA a new form of politicization under the guise of legal framework? When forcing governments to change their policies or even political and legal system, are the NGOs adopting rights-based approach trapped by the same dilemma in Cold War era? On the other hand, rights-based approach calls for duty bearers to resume responsibilities and rights holders to claim their rights on grass-root level. Yet the effort to break traditional links between state and individuals and transfer responsibilities for protection to other actors brings another problem: the accountability. How can NGOs make sure their partners are accountable in development projects, if those partners are much weaker and less organized than official institutes? How can NGOs mobilize more actors such as local communities, local forces and religious groups on grass-root level, when the resources and capacities of NGOs are relatively limited? Moreover, the empowerment of rights holders does not simply mean the teaching of human rights principles to local people, but requires the changes of ideas on traditional social relations as well as the formation of the concept of citizenship. Such task can not be accomplished without “holistic” approach, confirmed by Ms. Kühhas from CARE Austria. Rieff keenly criticizes the effort to conduct “holistic” projects for humanitarian aids. He argues that humanitarianism invested in the idea of itself as a force for social transformation, a force to build new societies. This has led humanitarians to look beyond relief to human rights, but also to intersections with development, peace building, conflict resolution, democracy and good governance. He condemns “holistic” humanitarianism as “anything but everything”, “a serious, wonderful and limited idea has become a catchall for the thwarted aspirations of our age” (Rieff 2002). It is true that to what extent can rights-based approach mobilize duty bearers and rights holders remain questionable in practices. One of the RBA advocator Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) reports the challenge that it encountered when implementing rights-based training in Uganda: “It is difficult to get people to congregate and listen to messages on human rights because people do not gather unless they are assured of money for their transport or lunch. It is particularly challenging for the respondents who are keen to share the knowledge they acquired, and yet they do not have any funding for such costs.” (Okille 2004) Limited by human resources, funding, and the culture of working environment, NGOs have to struggle to integrate duty bearers and rights holders for constructing a “broadening” network, which for Chandler, is trapped by the “overreach” problem (Chandler 2002). How do NGOs adopting rights-based approach respond to the overreach dilemma? Some NGOs seek support of international institutes (UN, donor governments, etc.) and central authorities, as ActionAid Brazil did in the project for improving public health service and fighting children malnutrition in urban area; some transform their personal structure and empower native workers with more authorities to cope with the challenges from indigenous cultures, as CARE Rwanda did after 2001. However, whether the strategies work and to what extent they work need to be analyzed prudently. Both of the two cases will be discusses in Chapter 3. Conclusion Global forces bring significant changes to the power relations among international system, state and NGOs. The end of ideological struggle between two blocs, as well as the expansion of global market liberalism, causes the shift of NGO work in the field of development, which is described by Falk as “from anti-statism to collaborative activism”. Thus state is re-situated in a broadening network where international actors, domestic authorities, NGOs, local groups interact with each other. The inverted State-NGO model influences the design and implementation of rights-based approach. For UN institutes, rights-based approach aims at strengthening the connections between state and civil society, and enabling marginalized groups to participate into public affairs. For NGOs such as CARE, rights-based approach means empowering local groups in social affairs, and changing social, economic and cultural environment from the grassroots level. Both of the understandings on rights-based approach are based on the identification of duty bearers and rights holders. Nonetheless, problems remain in the implementation of right-based approach in real practices. How to incorporate rights-based approach into an inverted model of State-NGO relations? When interacting with more actors in the model, what kind of problems will NGOs encounter? It is argued that rights-based approach may be trapped by the politicization dilemma under the context of institutionalization and legitimization of development projects. Also, to identify duty bearers and rights holders means to mobilize more actors in system, so the task is difficult to accomplish for NGOs due to the limitation of resources. Can NGOs adopting rights-based approach overcome those difficulties in real practices? Further discussions will be provided in the next chapter. Chapter 3: Case Study for Rights-based Approach Implementation in Practice After discussing the historical dynamics of rights-based approach and its implications in a new state-NGO model, it is necessary to deepen the discussion on cases. How do NGOs respond to the challenges from the changed role of state and the participation of other actors in the system? How do they solve the politicization and overreach problems of rights-based approach? On what aspect do they succeed, and on what aspect do they fail? This chapter will analyze two cases in detail, the project for right to food and sustainable nutrition conducted by ActionAid Brazil and other non-governmental organizations in Sao Joao de Meriti from 2001, and the causal responsibility analysis project conducted by CARE Rwanda in Gikongoro province in 2003. There are two reasons for choosing the projects: first, both of ActionAid and CARE are the forerunners of rights-based approach in the field of development. Being development NGOs adopting human rights framework in practice, they design and conduct their project by including economic, social and political factors during providing humanitarian aids, but with nuanced differences. When talking about political factors, ActionAid means to mobilize the governments on local, state and national level to fulfil their responsibility in public health service; CARE aims at promoting public participant in society so as to increase the representativeness and effectiveness of central government. Second, either in Rwanda or Brazil, the role of state (central and local authorities) is facing challenges from within and without. On the devastated land after genocide, the newly established Rwandan government tries to resume its sovereignty responsibility by tightening the control over development issues, but with interventions from international institutes and reluctantly cooperated local communities. Compared with Rwanda, Brazil turns out different: the power of central authority is weak or even absent in urban slums, where international and local NGOs compete with local forces for building citizenship on grassroots level. Thus it is necessary to construct social network including diverse actors when implementing rights-based approach in both of the two countries. How ActionAid and CARE conducted projects would provide useful references to the discussion on the new model of State-NGO relations. Case 1 ActionAid Brazil From 2001 to 2003, ActionAid Brazil, the branch of ActionAid International, together with the Centre for Artistic and Cultural Training (Casa da Cultura), the Association for Educational and Social Assistance (FASE) and the Council of Community Organizations of Sao Joao de Meriti (ABM) launched a campaign to fight child malnutrition in the urban municipality of city Sao Joao de Meriti, the Southwest of Brazil. This joint effort is called “Mutirao” in Portuguese. Mutirao aimed at dealing with the denial of rights to food in urban slums, and mainly delivered the aids to children under five years old. Being the NGO which had adopted rights-based approach before “Mutirao”, ActionAid Brazil emphasized the importance of building citizenship on local level, constructing networks among NGOs and local religious groups, and most importantly, mobilizing the power of higher authorities in Brazil. Also, as the branch of international organization, it sought support of international institutes and used the “mobilization of shame” on Brazilian government. Antunes and Romano from ActionAid Brazil report the process of design and conduct of Mutirao. In this section, analysis will be mostly based on the report from ActionAid, yet the evaluation on the effectiveness of rights-based approach will be re-examined. Background When “Mutirao” was launched by ActionAid Brazil and other organizations, Brazil was going through reforms in food distribution system and public health care sector. As UN special rappoteur Jean Ziegler observes, Brazil made important advances in the conceptual understanding of the right to food, largely as the result of the work of Brazil’s vibrant and effective civil society. (Ziegler 2003). However, the rapporteur argues though Brazil has initiated innovative programmes to combat poverty and hunger, problems remain in the implementation of these programmes, including elite resistance and lack of sufficient resources. According to the Government, 22 million people in Brazil live below the extreme poverty line, which means that they cannot afford to buy a food basket that meets a minimum calorie intake for one individual per day. According to the PT (the Worker’s Party), 44 million Brazilians suffer from hunger and malnutrition. According to Dom Mauro Morelli, an important Catholic bishop who has dedicated his life to the poor in Brazil, there are 53 million hungry people in Brazil. Malnutrition and deficiencies in micronutrients, such as vitamin A, iron and iodine, continue to have severe consequences on the growth and potential of Brazil’s children, women and men (Ziegler 2003). Josué de Castro, the world renowned Brazilian physician wrote 50 years ago: “Brazil is a country with relatively abundant resources, yet has a higher level of poverty and malnourishment than other countries with a similar level of development.” (Castro 1950) Thus question of hunger and malnutrition in Brazil is not a question of the availability of food, but rather a question of access to food. In urban area, the hungry and malnourished are the street children, the homeless and millions of Brazilians who live in the slums of the mega-cities, particularly women and children. According to WHO, 4.5 percent of children under 5 years old suffered from underweight and 13.5 percent suffered stunted growth in 1996. From 2002 to 2003, the percentage of underweighted and stunted children had decreased to 3.7 and 10.5 respectively, yet the ratio is still high compared with the development level of Brazil. (There is no data available on the ratio of stunted growth in 2002 on WHO website. Thus the stunted growth percentage for 2002 is from Ziegler’s report.) However, due to the vast disparities between regions, some regions faced more severe challenges from hunger and malnutrition, such as Sao Joao de Meriti. (Ziegler 2003). The hunger and malnutrition problem is rooted in the uneven distribution of foods and health care on grassroots level, which is shaped by the social system in urban slums. Central government can hardly reach the poorest groups since the domination of local forces is strong enough to deny the intervention from state. Elites, populists and conservatives take control of public services like social security, education, health care, employment, and even housing, which are offered to the poor in exchange for their loyalty and votes. Hence the “patron-client” relationship is formed in urban slums, and ironically, becomes the most important form of public services there. Besides political patrons, there also exist illegal patrons like the head of drug traffickers. They often play the role as public goods suppliers and “justice” in urban slums. If seek protection from those patrons, the poor will take the risk of involving into drug consumption or illegal trades (Antunes, Romano 2005). These two types of patron-client relationships are the impediment for building equal food distribution system and public health care system. Thus what NGOs should do, on one hand, is to push the local forces to fulfill their responsibilities; on the other hand, to mobilize higher authorities to present stronger intervention in the marginalized groups and ensure effective implementation of public health policies. In sum, the common goal of social movement in Brazil is to construct citizenship in the marginalized area. The Five Stages of “Mutirao” in Fighting Children Malnutrition The same as other social organizations in Brazil, ActionAid Brazil defines its goal as citizenship building (Pereira 2003). Hence it adopts rights-based approach and empowerment approach in practices. ActionAid Brazil claims that its work with partners has three aims: 1. to foster the active participation of impoverished and marginalized populations at the grassroots level, encouraging them to form or join social movements; 2. to facilitate the horizontal connection of social movements by forming networks and coalitions at the local, national and international levels; 3. to promote social movements’ capacity to influence public policies, primarily through their autonomous participation in public and cultural resources, and expanding the spaces available for popular participation and social control. In brief, ActionAid’s working principles can be concluded to two points: building network in social movement and promoting the institutionalization of government policies. The five stages that Mutirao went through from 2001 to 2003 reflected the two basic principles as follow: The first stage of its action was to identify the most capable and active local organizations in Sao Joao de Meriti, and to mobilize them to join the campaign against child malnutrition. What Mutirao did in the beginning was instigating a public debate on the problem of children malnutrition. Once seized attention from the public, it established an administrative institutes for recruiting new organizations or groups. Similarly to other social movement, Mutirao firstly brought the issue on table, and then organized the social power in a structural way. After mobilizing local groups, Mutirao assigned its task to sub-organizations, named “community-based organizations” (CBOs) such as churches, neighborhood groups, cultural associations and community centers. A series of meetings were held to present Mutirao’s proposals and to recruit volunteers. At last there were around 400 volunteers recruited and organized into 54 sub-groups “mutiroes”. Mutirao provided trainings to the 400 volunteers, including the overview of malnutrition problem, the basic knowledge of health care, and most importantly, the skills of social movements. On the second stage, Mutirao oriented its project in a political direction by training volunteers with political skills like public speech, lobbying, etc. Once the sub-groups “mutiroes” were formed, volunteers started to work in the field of public health services. The third stage was called “diagnosis” stage. Mutirao considered the official statistics were not reliable since the government tended to choose samples elaborately. Thus between December 2001 and January 2002, the mutiroes weighed 5,930 children under five years old. It was found that 19.6 percent were at nutritional risk and a further 6.6 percent had acute malnutrition (in need of immediate medical attention). This survey also found that the great majority of children at nutritional risk or cutely malnourished are from low-income families with no access to any kind of government assistance programme (Silva 2004). It is worthy to note that the “diagnosis” stage not only aimed at providing reliable statistics on children malnutrition, but also meant to arouse the public awareness on the issue. Government was criticized for covering the truth and denying the access for low-income families to public services. The fourth stage, based on the diagnosis, was to consolidate the government policies on public health care. Since the mutiroes found out poorest families were denied for access to public services, volunteers worked to push the government to elaborate the “City Plan” to combat mother-infant malnutrition. The “City Plan” comprises a number of propositions in the field of public policy—municipal, state and federal—and social mobilization that aims to eradicate malnutrition and to ensure the right to adequate food for thousands of children in the city. During the discussions on City Plan, volunteers played the role of lobbying group. They visited a number of city council offices including the mayor’s office, the public ministry and the children’s custody court, making effort to persuade officials to join the campaign against children malnutrition, or at least to exert influences on their decisions making process. The last stage, according to Mutirao, was to establish a group of experts in response to emergency problems. If children were found at serious nutritional risk, they would receive medical care from doctors, nutritionists and social assistants. Also, cases of severe malnourished children would be registered in ICCN—Incentive for the Combat of Nutritional Needs. Registered children could receive monthly supply of milk and oil, and their weights would be monitored by ICCN. Nonetheless, the process of project implementation was not without any difficulties. Antunes and Romano report the major obstacles were from the governments, yet the project also heavily depended on governments’ support. Hence they argue NGOs should change their strategies by considering governments as “the field of disputes” with several interactive and mutually restrained dimensions. In Brazil, political systems were divided into three levels: municipal, state and federal. Mutirao had to work on three levels to accomplish its task. As discussed before, elites take strict control of public affairs in urban slums. The poor have to exchange their votes and loyalty for the access to public services. The calling for equal opportunities to foods and health care, without any doubt, will challenge the local authority. Being a two-year-long project, Mutirao was not able to remove the foundation of local authority, but it tried to make the local forces to compromise on some policies For example, the municipal government promised to send a doctor to each community and monitor the nutritional condition monthly. Families which are recorded at nutritional risk will be provided with necessary aids from the government. On state level, Mutirao met another challenge, which was not from the strong local forces but from the unfavourable government. When the campaign against children malnutrition launched in 2001, it was under the Benedida da Silva’s government, under which the Programme Crescer was created in support of Mutirao’s activities. In less than six months, Programme Crescer weighed more than 33,000 children under 5, and more than 10,000 were given milk, oil and medical assistance. However, after Silva left power and Rosangela Mateus formed a more populist government, political environment for Programme Crescer changed radically. In 2003, a new programme “Citizen-Check” replaced Crescer. It introduced new criteria to public services: only the children from certain families will receive health care. Thus the Rosangela Mateus was able to exclude the families which were not their clients from the programme. Mutirao was frustrated by the reversions that the populist government made to Programme Crescer. Yet if look on the positive side, argue Antunes and Romano, Mutirao had achieved creating a reference model in health policies of the state. Even the new programme “Citizen-Check” was an inverted model of Crescer. Hence what should NGOs do in the future is to put pressure on the government to make it institutionalized and not based on the patron-client relationship. On federal level, there were also two different governments, first Fernando Henrique Cardoso (FHC) government and second Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula) government. Under the FHC government, social policies mainly focused on “income transfer” programmes, such as the supplies of school grant, food grant and gas ticket. Only when President Lula founded new federal government did the priority of social policies transformed to food security. During the transformation, the criticism from international institutes played an important role. After the visit to Brazil, UN special rapporteur Ziegler keenly criticized the effort that Brazilian government had made to secure the right to food: “The government of Brazil has not fully met the obligation to spend ‘the maximum available resources’ on the progressive realization of the right to food, and has not taken enough action to protect against violations of the right to food.” (Ziegler 2003) Since the “mobilization of shame” worked on the new government, President Lula announced the national priority is to fight against hunger. Programme “Zero-Hunger” was established to deal with both of emergency cases and long-term challenges, including food and nutritional education, school alimentation, support to family farmers and to the creation of cooperatives, food banks, food-cards and popular restaurants. With the support from Lula government, Mutirao worked for transforming the “Income Transfer” to “Zero-Hunger” on local level by ensuring the grants could be distributed to the families that need it mostly. In 2005, the two programmes were unified into “Family Grants” programme. So far, the “Family Grants” is the main part of “Family Health Strategy” which serves as the primary instrument for providing basic health care to the population. According to the report of WHO, the Family Health Strategy had covered 73 million people (40% of the Brazilian population) in 4,837 cities through 22,683 municipalities heath terms (WHO 2009). To conclude, Mutirao met challenges but also receive important support on the three levels of government. On local level, they exerted pressures on local authorities by lobbying and mobilizing local people to claim their rights; on state level, what Mutirao could do was quite limited due to Rosangela Mateus’ government’s “clientalism” policies; on federal level, Mutirao was able to rely on the support from international organizations and blame the government for not doing enough in food security issues. Nevertheless, what differences did ActionAid Brazil, one of the leaders of Mutirao make as rights-based approach advocate in the field of development? How to evaluate its work in fighting children malnutrition? How did Mutirao deal with the inverted model of State-NGO in practices? These questions will be discussed in the next section. Assessment on Mutirao Before assessing Mutirao, it would be useful to take a look at the statistics provided by WHO on child malnutrition in Brazil: Figure 4: Child malnutrition in Brazil Resources: http://apps.who.int/nutrition/landscape/report.aspx?iso=bra It is shown that during ten years the rate of underweight and stunting has significantly decreased in Brazil. WHO recognizes the progress that Brazilian government and NGOs made in the ten years in improving child nutrition. Mutirao, being the project implemented during this period, made its effort in the process, especially in terms of transforming the income-transfer programme to those families threatened by hunger and malnutrition. The “Family Grant” programme was based on the transformation, and it turned to one part of later “Family Health Strategy”, which is an important step in public health care reform (WHO 2009). Besides the promotion for new policy, Mutirao also devoted time and resources to the education of poor population, encouraging them to express their ideas in public and struggle for their right to food. Such effort, according to ActionAid Brazil, consisted of a major part of the campaign. To empower the rights holder on grassroots level is considered as the core principle of rights-based approach; however, the result of empowerment is difficult to evaluate. To what extent have local people been empowered? Have they understood their rights to food and public health care? Are they able to claim their rights and change the political environment? These questions are difficult to answer without effective tools of evaluation. Since Mutirao was constrained by its short-term design—being a project of two years, it could hardly remove the foundation of “patron-client” relationship on local level—education on poor people was also relatively limited. Generally speaking, Mutirao accomplished its goal in terms of decreasing child malnutrition rate and fighting for more favourable policies for the poor. It also tried to empower the poor by educating them with human rights knowledge, but the effectiveness of the empowerment remains to see in a longer term. Form the case of Mutirao, several questions should be proposed: what are the differences between a project based on rights-based approach and traditional development project? What are the advantages of rights-based approach and the drawbacks? What are the factors that influence the effectiveness of rights-based approach? First, the main differences lie in the political actions that Mutirao took in the campaign against child malnutrition. Compared with traditional development project in public health sector, Mutirao is far more political by organizing local groups under the banner of human rights, training volunteers with political skills, and exerting pressures on the three levels of governments: municipality, state and federal. As Antunes and Romano argue, the key issue of Mutirao is to consolidate the health policies and make sure they can be implemented regularly. Attention should be paid to the methodology that Mutirao used. It provided medical aids to malnourished children mainly by mobilizing the resources of the governments, but not by directly distributing international aids to receipt groups. Thus it is required to relate political rights to economic and social rights closely. The effort to converge political and economic aspects of development, as has discussed in Chapter 1, may cause controversies on the two basic concepts of human rights: natural rights and social contracts. Mutirao called for the equal access to food and health care for everyone, but the municipality and state government controlled the access by limiting those groups that were not their “clients”. Under the context of Brazilian political culture, rights are the “contract” between patrons and clients. To break the chain, politicization has to be introduced by Mutirao. Therefore, it can be concluded that the advantages and drawbacks are generated from the same characteristic of Mutirao: politicization. Although troubled by the reluctant corporation on municipality and state level, Mutirao was able to mobilize the federal government to focus on the issue of food security. Antunes and Romano ascribed the success to the visit of UN special rapporteur Jean Ziegler. After his visit, Ziegler blamed Brazil for not doing enough on protecting right to food on international media, and Brazilian society was “shocked” by the accusation. However, it is necessary to note that the success was gained under the special context of Brazilian society: 1. relatively weak central authority which managed to gain power on local level. That is the reason why federal government showed more willingness to cooperate with Mutirao. By implementing family grant programme in urban slums, the central authority may intervene into the public spaces of municipality and enlarge its influence zone; 2. diverse local groups which were capable of being organized to join the campaign. Mutirao itself is the association of international NGOs and Brazilian NGOs, and it successfully organized local groups such as religious groups, community centers and culture associations by constructing an administrative center. Those sub-groups worked on the front of the campaign, and to some extent solved the problems of limited resources; 3. the increasing concerns on food security and health care issues of Brazilian society. As international media uncovered the facts of hunger and inequality in Brazilian urban slums, the attention of the society was seized on the problem. Once hunger and malnutrition became the topic of public debates, it was easier for Mutirao to advocate for changes on public health policies. Working under such context, Mutirao implemented rights-based approach in a specific model of State-NGO relations, which is shown in Figure 5: Figure 5: the State-NGO model in Brazil To conclude, the implementation of rights-based approach in Brazil is influenced by the changed role of state: all of the three levels of governments were facing pressures from within and without. Local groups associating with international NGOs launched campaign to change the power relations in urban slums, while international institutes continued to put pressures on the governments. However, the role of state is far from being stable in Brazilian society, as Antunes and Romano argue. The effectiveness of rights-based approach was crucially influenced by the favourable government’s policy. State, the “central spine” of development, played a vibrant role during the process, moving from the “rights-favour” side to the other side. Hence the future challenge for NGOs in Brazil, either local or international, is to push the government to the favourable side. Case 2 CARE Rwanda In 2003, CARE in Rwanda invested a special analytical framework for finding out the underlying causes of poverty and rights deprivation in Gikongoro Province. Similarly to ActionAid Brazil, CARE did not have confidence on the data collected by Rwandan government, which was limited mainly to quantitative information and simple community rankings of priority needs. In this project, CARE applied the causal-responsibility analysis (CRA) tool to analyzing the factors that might influence development and equal distribution, such as participation, access to information, credit and education, etc. The survey was conducted under the guidelines of rights-based approach and served as the basis of further projects. However, what were the consequent actions that CARE took and to what extent the result of this project could be applied in practices need to be examined carefully. This section is mainly based on the report from Andrew Jones, member of CARE Rwanda. Background “Devastated” is the most common word used for describing Rwanda after the genocide in 1994. Shahryar M. Khan, the special representative of the Secretary-General for the United Nations Assistance Mission of Rwanda (UNAMIR), recalls his working experiences in Rwanda at around 1995: “If you can imagine a completely bleak landscape, then you can understand the need to provide basic essentials…You could not rely on anything locally; there was no local administration, no local policemen. Everyone had run away; whatever was done was by the NGOs themselves.” (Khan 1997) In a country where authorities were absent, only international NGOs functioned in public services in the beginning, and gradually local NGOs came into joining their works. At that time, 90 percent of international donations went to NGOs and were distributed on their working areas. As a new Rwandan government came into being, conflicts were caused between the NGOs that had accustomed to total autonomy and the government that tried to resume its sovereign responsibilities. Khan reports the difficulties that he encountered in coordinating the new government and NGOs: “Those NGOs thought they were doing what was right and what was important. And it led to friction.” To regain sovereignty, the government firstly asked all the NGOs to register, then supervised their radio frequency, and then required them to corporate into the official restoration plan. Similarly to other governments, new Rwandan started exercising power in development field by generally limiting working space of NGOs, yet situations were complicated by the absence of authorities in the beginning of reconstruction. Having been functioning as the sole public service supplier after the genocide, most of the NGOs found it difficult to transfer part of their work and resources to the new authority. In response to this problem, UNHCR initiated the Coexistence Network through its “Imagine Coexistence Project”. Called “Imagine Coexistence,” the initiative was launched in the spring of 2000 and began its operation in the spring and summer of 2001. It is funded by a grant from the UN Trust Fund for Human Security, and supported and continued by the current High Commissioner, Mr. Ruud Lubbers. There are two major components of the Imagine Coexistence Initiative. The first is a field component, implemented in two countries (Bosnia and Rwanda) and in five regions (Drvar and Prijedor in Bosnia; Butare, Ruhengeri, and Umutara in Rwanda), and in partnership with three implementing partners (Genesis in Bosnia, Oxfam GB and Norwegian People’s Aid in Rwanda). The Initiative spawned 26 projects in Bosnia implemented by 19 NGOs, and 40 projects in Rwanda implemented by three NGOs and 20 local communities (Research team of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 2002). In the forum provided by Coexistence Network, national and international NGOs, government officials, donors and researchers working in the field of peace building and reconciliation were brought to exchange ideas and experiences. Though the progress to create better environment for “divergent opinions, a spirit of openness and the pursuit of mutual learning” was quite slow due to the unwillingness of Rwandan government to take criticisms and suggestions, it provides a platform for communications among different actors in development field (Jones 2001). To sum up, when CARE conducted its rights-based project in Gikongoro province, Rwanda was going through a transitional period when newly established government gradually tightened its control over NGO activities, and NGOs struggled to create a new political and social system to prevent future ethnical conflicts. Yet this country had not totally recovered from the disaster: distrust was still dominating different communities; silent and undemocratic political culture exerted negative influences on Rwandans’ participation into public affairs; government shows little tolerance to different political opinions. That’s why this project was designed in accordance to such condition. CARE’s Causal Responsibility Analysis Project in Rwanda Around two years after the “moment of breakthrough” in CARE International, CARE Rwanda adopted rights-based approach and developed a long-range strategic plan in late 2000 and early 2001. Andrew Jones states the motivation for developing such plan as the urge to “do what it could do, in partnership and alliance with others, to tackle the underlying causes of poverty and social injustice in Rwanda. Otherwise, the organization risked accomplishing little and, even worse, becoming part of the problem”. (Jones 2005) In December 2003, the final version of CARE Rwanda’s mission and programme goal was refined at the mid-term strategy review workshop: “CARE Rwanda’s mission is to work alongside communities to enable them to overcome underlying and specific causes of poverty, achieve positive lasting change and live with dignity. By the end of June 2006 (i.e. the end of the current 5-year strategic plan), poor and marginalized communities targeted by CARE programming will have identified and taken action to address specific and underlying cause of poverty and fulfill their rights in peaceful coexistence.” Also, in the workshop, the staff reached consensus on the core value of CARE’s development projects as to “identify rights”. When talking about rights, CARE talks about “respect for the dignity of all people, solidarity with communities and the promotion of social justice”. Guided by the core values, the Causal Responsibility Analysis Project was conducted in Ginkongoro Province, the Southeast of Rwanda, 2003. By linking the analysis of causes of poverty to a human rights framework, the project aimed at identifying the rights issues underlying poverty and exploring the associated responsibilities and capabilities of key duty bearers. The analysis uncovered factors that cause poverty in this province, including social discrimination and exclusion, limited educational and economic opportunities, and ineffective, unaccountable governance. It also aimed to find out the actors that do not fulfill their responsibilities, and the reasons why they do not address the underlying issues in poverty reduction. More importantly, it indicated the direction for future projects’ design: in response to the government issues, CARE has to promote the access to information and the transparency and accountability of public officials; for tackling problems on unequal economic opportunities, what CARE should do is to enhance agricultural production, facilitate better access to credits, and strengthen people’s ability to cope with environment; for education and discrimination issues, the project also provided relative suggestions. The result of the analysis is shown in Figure 6: Figure 6: Causal Responsibility Analysis in Gikongoro Province Resources: Jones, Andrew (2005): “The Case of CARE International in Rwanda”, from Gready and Ensor (eds.): “Reinventing Development? Translating rights-based approaches from theory into practice”, London, New York: Zed Book Ltd. Interestingly, the list of highly politicized goals serves as the basic analysis for CARE’s HIV/AIDS aid projects in Gikongoro Province. None of the results are directly related to people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) and AIDS widows and orphans, but Jones argues the causal responsibility analysis will greatly help CARE to “maintain a broader focus on social and political factors that prevent PLWHA and AIDS widows and orphans from improving their conditions and frustrate their efforts to live with dignity and self-worth.” To extend its working field from HIV/AIDS aids to political empowerment and social movement, CARE had to face challenges from local communities, central authority and international donor. Jones admits that Rwandan society is still divided by distrust among people and dominated by the culture of silence. To improve the transparency and accountability of government, to mobilize people to participate into public affairs, and to promote the equal access to resources, means to fight against the traditional culture in public sphere. Such goals can not be accomplished within short-term projects. Longer term of investment is needed for changing the mind-set of Rwandan society. However, CARE’s HIV/AIDS programmes were funded by international donors who concentrated on short-term, technical intervention such as strengthening the health care system, providing access to voluntary counseling, testing and anti-retroviral therapy for those PLWHA and providing care to AIDS widows and orphans. The causal responsibility analysis project, according to Jones, is the response to the short-term funds—if socio-political factors are ignored, PLWHA, AIDS widows and orphans will not have equal opportunities in society. To fight against HIV/AIDS, it is necessary to create a more equal social system. Yet Jones has to admit that to extend the aid programme is by no means an easy task. When implementing political projects, CARE had to squeeze its budget by community mapping, action planning, and the use of popular theatre and radio. The funding crisis remains a great trouble to CARE’s development projects in Rwanda, and how to respond to such challenge is CARE Rwanda’s goal in the next step. Assessment on Causal Responsibility Analysis Project Compared with ActionAid Brazil, CARE Rwanda went further on the way to politicization in aid receipt country not only by increasing the accountability of government in policy implementation, but also by “building democracy” in Rwandan society. Nevertheless, the building of democracy requires long-term and holistic projects. The causal responsibility analysis project itself is only a reference for other projects in Rwanda. Thus to what extent it works in practices needs to be analyzed under a broader context. First, CARE Rwanda underwent internal structural transformation from being “international” to “local”. The key change in the structure of this organization happens in the status of local leadership. The members who originally come from Rwanda will be taken into consideration firstly in project design and implementation; also, support will be provided to the emerging leaders from among the Rwandan staff. When talking about “emerging leaders”, CARE means those members who showed the most interest in learning more about rights-based approach and contributing to its integration within CARE Rwanda. Jones reports that a corps of change agents (called “ambassadors”) who are themselves driving the process of humanitarian aids in Rwanda has been formed now. He also argues those “ambassadors” were not merely following the orders from international headquarter or working to gain favour from senior management; they were able to challenge CARE’s internal policies and push for them to be better aligned with human rights principles, which is a relatively confrontational and risky business (Jones 2005). With the local leadership, CARE Rwanda expects to construct closer relationships with local communities and to exert its influences on democracy building of Rwandan society. Second, CARE Rwanda implemented a series of projects on national level in recent years, including Strengthening New Communities (SNC), Civil Society Support Programme, Civil Society Strengthening Project, Rights Awareness and Action Project (RAAP), etc. Under the national-wide projects, CARE develops politically-oriented HIV/AIDS project in Gikongoro Province. From the “Core HIV/AIDS” project, we can see its design is based on the result of causal responsibility analysis project. Being a complement to hospital-based interventions, the project aims at supporting community-driven responses to reduce the incidence and impact of HIV/AIDS on poor, marginalized people. The objectives are as follow: 1. Empower vulnerable women, orphans and other vulnerable children/youth (OVCY), and people living with AIDS (PLWA) to participate fully in HIV/AIDS situation analysis and response; 2. Enhance community solidarity for inclusion, care and support to vulnerable women, OVCY and PLWA; 3. Increase vulnerable women, OVCY and PLWA access to quality HIV/AIDS prevention and care and support services (CARE 2010) The inner structural changes of CARE Rwanda, as well as the implementation of a series of projects on civil society strengthening, indicate that CARE is moving forward to a more politicized direction, either on national level or on local level. During the process, the result of causal responsibility analysis project is reflected on the design of “Core HIV/AIDS” project by emphasizing the participation of people affected by HIV/AIDS into public affairs, and the access for them to health care and social assistance. However, the effectiveness of these projects is questionable due to the lack of credible evaluation, the relatively limited time for project implementation, and the Rwandan government which is trying to regain power in the field of development. As many NGOs do, CARE rarely provides specific evaluation on the impact of its rights-based projects. According to Smillie, NGOs avoid self-evaluation due to complexity (intangibles such as empowerment and capacity building do not lend themselves to measurement), inappropriateness (attempts to evaluate could demobilize workers), time and cost (Smillie 1997). Hence most NGOs only verify whether the project’s outputs have been delivered or not, resulting in difficulties on the assessment of their development projects. Here I have to borrow the general evaluation from the Netherlands Institute of International Relations (“Clingendael Institute”) on the effectiveness of democracy building in Rwanda. By using the analytical tools of “Stability Assessment Framework” and “Strategic Governance and Corruption Assessment Framework”, the conflict research unit of Clingendael reaches conclusion that although international assistance has proven instrumental for the short-term political stabilization and socio-economic recovery of post-conflict countries, the long-term impact of aid on the development of domestic institutions is rather limited (CSCP). To build democracy in a post-conflict society, as some scholars argue, is by no means a neat list of human rights activists assume. Some criticize that too much has been promised in democracy building and the model has therefore become too unrealistic (Ottaway 2003). There are also studies that argue the strategy of strengthening civil society ignores the political power struggle in many countries the backsliding of many countries towards semi-authoritarianism (Zeeuw 2005). The former critics point out the factors that affect CARE’s project implementation: overreach. As discussed before, the effort to merge the lines between political rights and economic rights might be hindered by the “overreach” problem. Even though CARE is the biggest international NGO presenting in Rwanda after 1994, it works with a modest country budget of 180,000 dollars (Kron 2009). Constrained by the funding, CARE Rwanda meets difficulties in implementing its political projects. Most of the projects are of two or three years, making it almost impossible to change the social structure of Rwanda. NGOs may argue that democracy building is always long-term effort, and that is the reason why CARE Rwanda developed a long range of strategic plan in late 2001. It is believed that as long as NGOs can play the leading role in the field of development, such effort will be paid off. However, questions remain on how long NGOs can exercise their power on public affairs as they did shortly after 1994, and if they can, to what extent they can use the power. Here arguments come back to the role of state in Rwanda. In the beginning of transitional period, “the NGO community was almost ruling the country. They displaced the government. All the best-paid jobs were with NGOs, leaving a vacuum of qualified public stuff.” Minister Musoni describes the condition when the new Rwandan government was established (Kron 2009). In 1996, Rwanda drafted and signed an agreed-upon draft report on collaboration between the government and NGOs in rebuilding the country. The 41-page report, bringing together government, donor agencies, and 34 NGOs, set out clear guidelines and recommendations for how each party would operate within the country and with each other. One such recommendation cited the need for field visits by local government to “assess the status and progress of and problems with NGO’s work”. The report also called for financial audits, joint execution of projects, and “external evaluations”, as well as a united development community aligned with government desires and priorities. Minister Musoni calls the report “brings every thing back to 1994”, since before the draft of the report Rwandan government had severe contentions with NGOs due to the official requirement on 38 NGOs to close their doors and cease operating in this country. Rwanda received many criticisms from international community and had to sign the report for guaranteeing the operational spaces of NGOs. However, the friction between government and NGOs never stopped. In August 2006, cabinet ministers drafted and endorsed the Rwanda Aid Policy, a more comprehensive, though more succinct version of the 1996 report. Of specific importance, the policy explicitly calls for a “gradual reduction of dependence on external aid”. (Kron 2009) Minister Musoni explains the importance of reducing dependence on external aid to Kron: “Ownership by the government of the country’s development is vital.” The endorsement of new aid policy in Rwanda, proposes a question on CARE, as well as other NGOs working on human rights promotion: Once this country attains “sustainable” development, shall all the NGOs pack up and go home? So far, the design of CARE’s rights-based projects seldom mobilize the power and resources of Rwandan government, and the implementation was mainly done by staff members of CARE Rwanda or CARE International. State, the emerging actor, also the transitional power in a devastated society, may affect its projects greatly in the future. The inverted State-NGO model that CARE Rwanda works with is shown in Figure 7: Figure 7: The State-NGO Model in Rwanda The grey zone of CARE Rwanda means the emerging local leaders in this organization. They work with local community which is still divided by distrust and ethnical conflicts, and also challenge the basic principles CARE in practices. The Rwandan government is increasing its pressures on NGOs; that is why the arrows from government to NGOs are darker than the arrows from NGOs to government. To conclude, being the major advocate for rights-based approach, CARE goes further in terms of relating political rights to economic rights than ActionAid by transforming its internal structures, redefining the goals of development projects, and implementing political projects on both national level and provincial level; yet it faces the problem of overreach in real practices. Also, the changed role of Rwandan state will challenge the leading position of NGOs in the post-conflict society. To respond to the challenge will be a tough task for CARE Rwanda in the future. Chapter 4: Conclusion “Who are throwing babies into river?” The emergence of human rights-based approach, according to Ensor and Gready, is due to the effort to find out the answer to this question—the underlying causes of poverty and inequality. To provide what the target groups need is no longer considered as most effective method of humanitarian aids, but the changes on the social structure and legal system in aid receipt country are what NGOs should work for. By adopting human rights framework, advocates of rights-based approach expect the legalized form of humanitarian aids will break of vicious circle of “politicization” in Cold War Era; by redefining duty-bearers and rights-holders, rights-based approach search to distribute responsibilities to more actors in the humanitarian aid network, in order to tackle the problem of limited resources of human right NGOs. Therefore, NGOs, together with some enthusiastic human rights researchers, make the endeavour to erase the historical lines between political rights and economic rights by pushing the field of development to merge with the field of human rights. Certain standards for rights-based approach were provided by leading institutes in the movement, such as the inclusiveness of vulnerable groups, the participation of stakeholders, and the overall environment for human rights project implementation. Aiming at guiding NGOs adopting rights-based approach to the track, UN set up five standards by relating rights-based approach to good governance. Also, CARE specifies the methods of rights-based approach implementation by broadening the networks in a “holistic” way. If apply for these standards, NGOs need to re-consider the relationships with the state and other actors in the humanitarian aid system, and adopt a new model in practices. In the inverted model, the role of state has shrunk because of the global forces, yet state’s status of “central spine” in humanitarian aids can not be changed. Thus NGOs have to search for new ways to cooperate with the state, and re-define the relations with local groups. In the cases of ActionAid Brazil and CARE Rwanda, how the inverted model works in practices is shown by the interactions among NGOs, government and local communities. For ActionAid Brazil, the effectiveness of rights-based project is determined by the capacity of mobilizing local groups to join the campaign against child malnutrition and the consolidation of governments’ policies on public health sector; for CARE, the success of its politically-oriented projects is influenced by the organization’s resources, the cooperation of local communities, and also the tightening control of Rwandan government on international humanitarian aids. In the first case, ActionAid Brazil encountered the problems of municipality government exercising its power based on patron-client relations, and state and federal governments vibrating between favourable policies and unfavourable policies. In the second case, CARE met troubles in project implementation due to the limitation of resources on democracy building, as well as the pressures from both government and divided communities. Compared with ActionAid Brazil who defines its goal as social movement on health care reform, CARE stresses its goal is to build up new democracy in a devastated country. Thus the effectiveness of its projects is more questionable. In one word, the two cases show that rights-based approach in the field of development is characterized by its strong political intention in humanitarian aids, so it will still encounter the problems of “politicization” and “overreach” that rights-based approach advocates tried to avoid. The key point to the success of RBA does not simply come from the human rights discourses under the context of legitimization, but mostly from the inverted State-NGO model. Whether RBA can be implemented in a country, and to what extent it can be implemented, depends upon how the inverted State-NGO model works in this country, where NGOs interact with other actors to form a humanitarian aid networks. There are two more examples showing the importance of State-NGO model in the implementation of rights-based approach. In North Korea, where the state’s power overwhelms civil society and strictly controls all the activities of international NGOs, a dilemma is haunting NGOs for a long period: if provide humanitarian aids to this country, it can’t be sure that aids will go the groups who need them most; if not, millions of people will be threatened by hunger and malnutrition. Schloms calls such situation in North Korea as the “timeless dilemma of aid” (Shloms 2004). Under such circumstance, rights-based approach is needed, but without any possibility to be implemented. The State-NGO model in North Korea is shown in Figure 8: Figure 8: State-NGO model in North Korea From the figure we can see that North Korean government restricts the working area of NGOs on local level, and puts all the activities of NGOs under its supervision. The pressure from international community is either ignored or partly received, making it difficult to push to government to change political or legal system. Another example is from Afghanistan after 2001. In this country where newly-established government is too weak to control local forces and to prevent the military intervention from other countries, NGO work is greatly hindered by the frequent turbulences in the post-conflict society, as well as the military intervene of the United States. Paul O’Brien reports the threats that NGO workers faced after the end of Afghanistan war: murdering, kidnapping, blackmailing, politically-motivated attacks, etc. Most of those atrocities were committed by local groups of hatred on foreign interventions in Afghanistan. To make it worse, the United States proposed to strengthen the US-led aid programmes by co-locating NGOs’ development projects into US plan. Also, US required the NGOs to be guarded by US military forces (O’Brien 2005). Here NGOs were trapped by another dilemma: if guarded by US military forces, the hatred of local communities will not be stopped, and the implementation of humanitarian aids will become almost impossible; if not, the lives of NGO workers are under serious threats. The State-NGO model in Afghanistan is shown in Figure 9: Figure 9: State-NGO model in Afghanistan In the figure we can see the strong presence of international forces in the humanitarian aid system, resulting in the weak control of Afghanistan government on local communities. NGOs are threatened by the hatred from local people, and under the pressure from US military intervention. Although O’Brien calls for the implementation of rights-based approach in Afghanistan to tackle the problem, none of the NGOs made the step yet. In sum, whether human rights-based approach can be implemented and whether it is successful or not mainly depends on the State-NGO model. Only when the relations among state, NGOs, and other actors are balanced, can NGOs realize any innovative ideas in the field of development. Nevertheless, some questions are open for answers when we close to the end of our discussion. Being a new approach in the field of development, rights-based approach finds legitimacy in human rights. By “legalizing” its political actions under the context of human rights laws, RBA shows the intention to “universalize” human rights in the field of development, which is criticized heavily by cultural relativists. Each society has its own culture and its own way to organize public issues, so the strong intervene of NGOs adopting RBA may cause tensions between international institutes and local groups. Such tensions, as Mr. Preindl from Caritas argues, will not facilitate humanitarian aids in receipt states. Cultural relativism, the tangible issue that has troubled numerous NGOs, again haunts the implementation of rights-based approach. Moreover, the emergence of rights-based approach is not a spontaneous phenomenon. It was advocated by certain influential international institutes like UN, Amnesty International, Oxfam, CARE, etc. Those organizations formed alliance in promoting rights-based approach from late 20th century, yet the effort has been slightly changed since some organizations started to withdraw from the campaign. In the last two years, the UN reports showed less emphasis on rights-based approach, and some non-governmental organizations claimed to drop rights-based approach in the mid-term. The withdrawing of alliance members might cause the direction of rights-based approach to change, but the result still needs to wait and see. In general, the existence of rights-based approach is quite short (merely ten years). Challenges and crisis may probably affect it and change it into another form. Anyway, to dream of changing the world thoroughly is quite ambitious but respectable. That is the reason why I get interested in the topic of rights-based approach. 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