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All rights reserved 0305-750X/$ - see front matter www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2007.02.006 Human Rights, the Millennium Development Goals, and the Future of Development Cooperation PAUL J. NELSON * University of Pittsburgh, USA Summary. — This paper examines the distinct approaches to poverty contained in the human rights movement and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). MDG advocates and many in the hu- man rights community assert that the goals are consistent with, and indeed a means of operation- alizing, human rights standards and principles. This paper finds fundamental differences in the two initiatives’ conceptual approaches to poverty reduction, in the policy recommendations they sup- port on key social policy issues, and in the social actors they have been able to mobilize. The re- search is based on documentary research, and on an examination of 40 development NGOs and social movements. Ó 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Key words — poverty, human rights, millennium development goals, accountability, social movements, NGOs 1. INTRODUCTION pledges, goals and benchmarks, multi-volume reports, and sophisticated monitoring by Uni- At the end of the 1990s, it seemed that social ted Nations agencies and other major donors. theory had done much to clarify the nature of At the same time, there is growing interest in extreme poverty, and the conditions under the implications of human rights—economic, which it could be effectively reduced. Sen social, and cultural (ESC) rights as well as civil (1999) had persuaded many that poverty and political rights—for development practice, should be understood as a multi-dimensional and a movement toward human rights-based condition, shaped by constraints on individu- or ‘‘rights-based’’ approaches (RBA) to devel- als’ freedoms and capabilities, and perpetuated opment cooperation. The RBA rests not on by discriminatory institutions and failed politi- the workings of markets and the generosity of cal systems. Social capital theory had per- donors, but on internationally recognized hu- suaded actors across the political spectrum of man rights standards and principles, to which the central roles of ‘‘norms and networks that governments and donors are obliged to adhere. enable people to act collectively’’ (Woolcock The MDGs and rights-based approaches & Narayan, 2000). both attempt in different ways to refocus and At the same time, two initiatives were in pro- perhaps reinvigorate the development enter- cess to refocus development cooperation, and prise. The MDGs are a careful restatement of these two map out two distinctly different paths poverty-related development challenges, in lan- and futures for development cooperation. The guage that avoids reference to rights; they are a Millennium Development Goals (MDG) pro- donor country interpretation of the key issues, pose to improve the health, nutrition, and for a donor-country audience. Rights-based well-being of some of the 1.2 billion humans who live on less than the equivalent of a dollar a day. Endorsed by 189 governments at the * For comments and insights on earlier versions of this Millennium Summit and supported by the paper, the author is grateful to participants in the Work- World Bank, United Nations, and all of the shop on Health, Inequality and Society, University of major donor governments, the MDGs mobilize Pittsburgh; to Dr. Ellen Dorsey; and to two anonymous the classic development sector tools: donor referees. Final revision accepted: February 1, 2007. 2041  Author's personal copy 2042 WORLD DEVELOPMENT approaches, by contrast, seek to link the devel- the MDGs emerges: human rights have been opment enterprise to social movements’ de- an important mobilizing resource and source mands for human rights and inclusion, and to of leverage for social movements and local cit- tie development to the rhetorical and legal izen organizations in demanding government power of internationally recognized human action to protect, respect, and fulfill their rights. rights; the MDGs have not proven to be a This article tests two widely held positions: motivating force or source of political leverage that the MDGs mirror and complement human for such citizen action. rights approaches to social policy; and that a The paper draws on research carried out in global initiative such as the MDGs can mobi- 2005, relying on documentary sources and a re- lize a united system of states, donors, NGOs, view of 40 NGO and social movement organi- and social movements. MDG advocates con- zations. Following the three sections outlined tend that human rights and the MDGs are above, a concluding section reflects on the sig- complimentary: human rights establish broad nificance of the MDG and human rights move- principles and standards, and the MDGs create ments for the global governance of economic operational goals, indicators, and benchmarks. and social relations, and for participants in Both are organized around aspects of well- international development cooperation. being (health, nutrition, education, etc.), and the Millennium Declaration that frames the MDGs emphasizes their ties to the Universal 2. MDGS, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND Declaration of Human Rights. But despite their DEVELOPMENT arrival at the same juncture in the development of development, the MDGs and human rights- (a) MDGs based approaches have less in common than appears at first glance. This paper asks how Building on social policy goals articulated in important the differences are, and what can be the 1980s and 1990s, the MDGs are written and done to reconcile them. After introducing the institutionalized to mobilize support from the MDGs and human rights approaches in Part donor countries and their citizens, to accom- One, I compare the two initiatives across three plish concrete and important tasks. The goals, dimensions: conceptual, policy, and mobiliza- summarized in Figure 1, are monitored by tion. many United Nations and other donor agen- First, there are important conceptual differ- cies, and focus largely on the symptoms of ences between the MDGs and human rights, underdevelopment: Goals 2 (education), 4 having to do with agency, accountability, the (child mortality), 5 (maternal mortality), and analysis of causes, and symptoms of poverty, 6 (access to safe drinking water) all propose including political and civic freedoms. The dif- to extend coverage of minimum social services, ferences, analyzed in Part Two, have important a task that aid agencies have often financed implications for the strategies and policies they effectively. embrace. Second, the two tend to be associated The goals can be traced to the 1995 World with contrasting sets of preferred policies. The Summit on Social Development (WSSD), differences over health and water policies ana- which enjoys great legitimacy among NGO lyzed in Part Three are among the most heated and activists from much of the world, thanks debates in contemporary development policy, to the broad involvement of governmental and they suggest that the consensus around a and NGO participants in the WSSD prepara- ‘‘new poverty agenda’’ is much less solid than tions and negotiations (Bissio, 2003). But un- it sometimes appears. like the 1995 WSSD, the 1996 ‘‘Shaping the Finally, human rights and the MDGs have 21st Century’’ document that became a founda- provoked distinctly different responses from tion for the MDGs emerged from the OECD’s international organizations (NGOs and inter- Development Assistance Committee (DAC), governmental), on the one hand, and from so- involving little such input. Former DAC Direc- cial movements and NGOs based in the poor tor James Michel argues that the MDGs were countries, on the other. The ability of domestic ‘‘based largely on the formulation recom- constituencies to hold government accountable mended in Shaping the 21st Century and in to anti-poverty commitments is key to rapid the World Bank/IMF 2000 paper ‘‘A Better and sustained reductions in poverty, and here World for All,’’ a fact that took the MDGs a final difference between human rights and ‘‘from being disparate findings in various Uni-  Author's personal copy HUMAN RIGHTS, THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2043 Goal 1 Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger Target 1: Halve (1990 to 2015) the proportion of people whose income is less than one dollar/day Target 2: Halve (1990 to 2015) the proportion of people who suffer from hunger Goal 2 Achieve universal primary education Target 3: Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling Goal 3 Promote gender equality and empower women Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and in all levels of education no later than 2015 Goal 4 Reduce child mortality Target 5: Reduce by two thirds (1990 to 2015) the under-five mortality rate Goal 5 Improve maternal health Target 6: Reduce by three quarters (1990 to 2015) the maternal mortality ratio Goal 6 Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases Target 7: Halt by 2015 and have begun to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS Target 8: Halt by 2015 and have begun to reverse the incidence of malaria, other major diseases Goal 7 Ensure environmental sustainability Target 9: Integrate the principles of sustainable development into country policies and programs and reverse the loss of environmental resources Target 10: Halve, by 2015, the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation Target 11: By 2020 achieve significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 mn slum dwellers Goal 8 Develop a global partnership for development Target 12: open, rule-based, predictable, non-discriminatory trading and financial system. Target 13: Address needs of least developed countries: tariff and quota-free access for exports; enhanced debt relief; more generous ODA for countries committed to poverty reduction Target 14: …needs of landlocked developing countries and small island states Target 15: …measures in order to make debt sustainable in the long term Target 16: …implement strategies for decent and productive work for youth Target 17: …provide access to affordable essential drugs… Target 18: …make available the benefits of new [information and communication] technologies Figure 1. Millennium development goals and targets. (Source: United Nations Statistics Division. Millennium indicators database.) (http://millenniumindicators.un.org). ted Nations conferences to becoming a unified tional community. . .’’ (Michel, 2005). For this set of DAC recommendations to the interna- reason, many NGO activists see the MDGs as  Author's personal copy 2044 WORLD DEVELOPMENT a product of the OECD governments and the Proponents see human rights as a new devel- international financial institutions (Bissio, opment framework that can ‘‘lend moral legiti- 2003; Tomlinson, 2005), a perception that com- macy and the principle of social justice’’ to promises the MDGs’ ability to mobilize social human development (UNDP, 2000, p. 3). At and political actors. Oxfam-America, a rights-based approach ad- Scholars and practitioners have raised con- dresses discontent with ‘‘welfare-based’’ models cerns about the MDGs. Critics see them as of development, unifies diverse development insufficiently attentive to past development fail- initiatives, and ‘‘has proven appealing to the ures (Sanderson, 2004; Saith, 2006) and unli- global media. . .’’ (Offenheiser & Holcombe, kely to be met (Clemens, Kenny, & Moss, 2003, pp. 4, 18). 2007), particularly in Africa (Sahn & Stifel, Human rights approaches, however, are also 2003). Pogge (2004) argues that back-dating subject to criticism. Like the MDGs, human the poverty goal to a base year of 1990, which rights are a potential source of legitimacy for permitted the MDGs to work from the same aid donors, which are eager to occupy the ‘‘high baseline as had other goals declared during moral ground’’ (Uvin, 2002, pp. 1–2). Uvin, the 1990s, also meant that the rapid poverty who is skeptical of the intentions behind devel- reduction in China in the early 1990s made only opment donors’ rhetoric, argues that ‘‘incorpo- an additional 19% real reduction in the inci- rating human rights terminology into dence of extreme poverty was required to meet development discourse’’ is a rhetorical gesture the global goal. Clemens et al. (2007), on the that need not change how policies are adopted other hand, argue that the goals are too ambi- and promoted or projects identified, financed, tious, and that they encourage the illusion that or evaluated. their targets and objectives could be met simply The difficulty of enforcing state compliance by mobilizing enough additional aid. with ESC rights has limited their use to shape social policy (Gauri, 2004), although enforcing (b) Human rights-based approaches these obligations through international human rights mechanisms is not central to most devel- Practitioners in human rights and develop- opment agency strategies. The imprecision of ment have led a resurgence of interest in the some standards, bemoaned by some human linkages between human rights and develop- rights practitioners (Fidler, 1999), is a limiting ment practice since the mid-1990s. Amnesty factor in applying ESC rights; development International and Human Rights Watch, whose practice has a stronger record of devising mea- work has come to define human rights, have be- surable targets and monitoring systems. gun to expand their focus from traditional Human rights-based approaches have been advocacy on civil and political rights to include an undercurrent throughout the history of ESC rights. A new global network on ESC development, largely within UN agencies and rights links NGOs working on economic and committees. But the present interest is more social human rights worldwide (ESCR-net.org). widespread, applied, and specific, and often Among major development donors, UNDP, linked to social movement campaigns in the UNICEF, and other United Nations agencies, poor countries, giving the human rights ap- Swedish Sida, Norwegian Norad, British proach a second, political dimension. NGOs DFID, and the Australian aid agency have and social movements, for example, advocate adopted rights-based (in Sida’s case, human for broader access to essential medicines, partic- rights and democracy) approaches. The UN ularly for those affected by HIV/AIDS. Advo- agencies’ experience is analyzed in Darrow cacy for the right to HIV/AIDS treatment has and Tomas (2005), and recent studies including involved close cooperation with poor-country Plipat (2005) document bilateral and NGO governments, and appeals to ESC rights stan- experiences. UNDP and UNICEF have played dards as a counterweight to corporate power central roles in framing human rights-based ap- and to liberal trade rules (Nelson & Dorsey, proaches, and specialized NGOs such as the 2007). Friedman and Mottiar’s (2005) study of Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions the Treatment Action Campaign’s (TAC) mobi- (COHRE), Food Information and Action Net- lization strategies in South Africa demonstrate work (FIAN), Center for Economic and Social the ability of rights-based advocacy strategies Rights (CESR), and the International Women’s to motivate major changes in social policy. Health Coalition (IWHC) have taken the lead To understand the differences between these on many issues Nelson and Dorsey (2003). parallel and contemporaneous movements, I  Author's personal copy HUMAN RIGHTS, THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2045 now turn to three conceptual differences that time of famine, by virtue of their dignity as a separate them. human being, is a meaningful statement in the abstract: human dignity calls for freedom from hunger. But the statement has meaning for pol- 3. GOALS, PLEDGES, AND RIGHTS: THE icy because it is associated with duties and obli- CONCEPTUAL GAPS gations, and the definition of those duties is among the most difficult and politically charged Goals and rights are associated with distinct challenges for human rights. In this case, the traditions in ethics and political philosophy. duty to respond to acute malnutrition clearly Goals are distinctly utilitarian, calculated to extends, under Article two of the ICESCR, to maximize welfare gains. Rights make a norma- states and international agencies that are in a tive claim, that human dignity entitles each per- position to provide assistance, although the son to certain kinds of treatment, and to government continues to hold the principal protection from others. For development, three responsibility to assure that resources are mar- sharp conceptual differences are those related shaled to protect its people. to agency (to whom do the rights/goals be- long?); the nature of accountability; and the (b) Accountability: pledges, goals, and rights attention given to root causes of poverty. MDG advocates refer to the goals’ capacity (a) Whose goals and whose rights? to strengthen accountability, but the meaning of that accountability is rarely clear. Fukuda- Goals and rights differ in theory, and these Parr (2004) argues that because the MDGs differences are fundamental to understanding ‘‘can be monitored,’’ they create a ‘‘framework the politics of the MDGs and human rights. for accountability,’’ empowered by bench- The differences reviewed here relate to two marks, and a ‘‘systematic procedure for global characteristics: agency and the ‘‘possession’’ monitoring and support’’ maintained by the of rights and goals; and the nature of the obli- United Nations. According to Fukuda-Parr, gations or duties associated with them. data collected by the UNDP makes monitoring Human rights in some cases designate and possible at the ‘‘international, national and lo- adhere to groups (children, women, and indige- cal levels’’ (p. 397). Indeed, the MDGs have nous people), but the broad range of human spawned ‘‘an industry of costing, planning, rights contained in the UDHR, and in the and campaigning in the UN system, among do- International Covenants on ESC Rights nor governments, the IFIs and many CSOs’’ (ICESCR) and on Civil and Political Rights (Tomlinson, 2005). (ICCPR), are rights of individuals. Goals, on But monitoring does not equal accountabil- the other hand, belong to states and the inter- ity, and accountability ‘‘outward’’ to a donor national organizations in which they are nego- agency is rarely enough to promote the kind tiated. They refer to the people who suffer the of social change envisioned in the MDGs. Such indignities of poverty, but those individuals change requires local and national institutions are the objects of the goals, not their agents. and practices that make governments account- The facts that governments adopt as a goal able to organized citizens, and to an electorate the halving of the number of people living in as a whole. extreme poverty does not give any particular The logic and politics of the MDGs have destitute person a right or a claim on her gov- much more in common with donor pledging ernment. (The Millennium Development Cam- than with human rights. One of the principal paign hopes to build ownership of the goals features of development assistance since the among civil societies, but there is an important 1970s has been a series of international commit- difference between this metaphorical use of ments to soft goals and objectives. In 1974 par- ‘‘ownership’’ and the literal possession of hu- ticipants in the World Food Conference man rights.) The MDGs are not any individual pledged their countries’ support for a global ef- citizen’s goals in the same sense that the right to fort to eradicate hunger in ten years’ time. Fol- food or to information is that individual’s right. lowing numerous global meetings and other Rights, unlike goals, inherently create duties, pledges in the 1980s, the UN-sponsored global and these duties give them their political signif- conferences of the 1990s again captured signif- icance. The claim, for example, that every per- icant public attention Jolly (2004). Among son has the right to adequate food, even in these global conferences and the agendas they  Author's personal copy 2046 WORLD DEVELOPMENT set, the goals of the 1995 Copenhagen World when ‘‘everyone from a politician here in Berlin Social Summit are linked most directly to the to a farmer in Bangladesh or a shop-keeper in MDGs. Many other meetings have also pro- Burkina Faso can understand and push for fur- duced resolutions and pledges, but the MDGs ther action by their own governments. . ..’’ The are the best articulated, widest ranging, and campaign, he continues, depends on national most sustained campaign, with a broad UN and global organizing to ‘‘build on the success commitment and a Millennium Development of global campaigns like the debt relief and Campaign designed to promote them. land mines movements. . .’’ (p. 6). Pledging processes for emergency response, In the absence of meaningful international international special initiatives, and global con- authority and sanctions, Malloch Brown is cor- ference agendas rarely feature any meaningful rect: if the MDGs are to stimulate change in accountability mechanisms, and the MDGs policies, institutions and spending priorities in are no exception. Mild, informal ‘‘shaming’’ the poor countries, they must be able to mobi- among donors for failures to deliver on pledged lize community organizations, social move- resources has been generally ineffective, and a ments, local NGOs, and others to generate review of the record of payment on humanitar- accountability within national political systems. ian pledges is ‘‘anything but reassuring’’ We return to this issue in Part four. (Walker, Wisner, Leaning, & Minear, 2005). After Hurricane Mitch devastated parts of (c) Quick impact versus root causes three Central American countries in 1998, $9 billion was pledged; five years later, $4.5 billion Human rights-based approaches tend to call had been delivered. The 2003 earthquake that for attention to the causes and multiple dimen- destroyed the ancient city of Bam, Iran, sions of poverty, and to the linkages between provoked $1 billion in pledges, but $130 million poverty and civil and political freedoms; the had been paid in June 2005 (Patrick, 1998; MDGs are output indicators that aim primarily Walker et al., 2005). for progress in some of the worst symptoms of In theory, human rights standards establish poverty. Both in principle and in the practice much stronger accountability, through periodic of many agencies, human rights approaches to self-reporting by governments to UN commit- social and economic policy have involved trac- tees, which have (limited) authority to mount ing the social, economic, political, and other investigations and publicize reports that ‘‘name causes of rights deprivation. In theory, this is and shame’’ violators. But in practice, neither true because human rights principles call for ESC rights nor the MDGs has an effective attention to patterns of discrimination in law, means of holding donors or governments institutions, and policy, because they emphasize accountable to their pledges or policies. ESC the interrelatedness of political and civil free- rights and states’ obligations theoretically have doms with economic and social rights, and be- the same legal authority as civil and political cause they emphasize the need to establish human rights, but suffer from the weakness of effective legal and institutional protections for the institutions that monitor them within the groups that are subject to discriminatory treat- United Nations (Felice, 1999). Much of the ment (Nowak, 2005, esp. pp. 28–29). oversight of economic and social rights depends In practice, while agencies’ implementation on the effectiveness of individual special rap- of RBA is uneven, prominent agencies such as porteurs and experts designated by the human CARE, Sida, and ActionAid, among others, af- rights committee, and on reporting by a hand- firm that one of the principal advantages of a ful of NGOs that specialize in ESC rights. human rights framework is a structured means The MDGs, on the other hand, call for great- of tracing the often multiple causes of poverty, er generosity by the rich countries and commit- and social exclusion. While for ActionAid this ment by the poor countries, but they introduce emphasis on causal analysis is largely tied to no mechanism for accountability by either. policy, other agencies stress the applications Domestic, internal mechanisms in the poor of human rights principles to understanding countries, then, are the key to effective political causes of poverty in program and project iden- leverage in support of either the MDGs or ESC tification and design. In Sida, this practice re- rights. UNDP Administrator Mark Malloch fers largely to the country-level analysis of Brown (2002) argues that while the MDG’s poverty and its causes (Sida, 2001). Some ‘‘unique global authority’’ comes from their CARE programs ground their situation analy- endorsement by 189 states, progress will come sis and monitoring in human rights principles  Author's personal copy HUMAN RIGHTS, THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2047 and standards. A country study of CARE-Bur- pact’’ initiatives that can yield ‘‘breathtaking undi shows how national staff analyzed pat- results within three or fewer years. . .’’ and terns of discrimination against the Batwa ‘‘start countries on the path to the Goals’’ (p. minority, and their ‘‘systematic marginaliza- 25). These measures include, for example, mos- tion,’’ in devising community development ini- quito bed nets for malaria protection, MDG tiatives (Rand, 2002, pp. 30–37). The lesson model villages, immunizations, school meals, for program planning, according to CARE, is and water purification devices. Such invest- that ‘‘the key was to keep asking why [emphasis ments have two kinds of payoff: they begin to in original]. Once staff got the knack of captur- drive down key indicators for the goals, and ing the trail of logic, [and] learned to ask why they offer the prospect of quick impact that certain people had no land or what had hap- can mobilize donors’ aid funds. Most of them pened to the land they previously had, local involve not systemic change but delivering indi- politics and power relations began to surface’’ vidual health and education benefits. These (Rand, 2002). Similarly, CARE has developed ‘‘quick win’’ strategies are not the sole ap- methodologies such as a ‘‘rights-based moni- proach of the UN agencies, but the UN Millen- toring tool’’ produced for CARE Malawi, nium Project (2005) has made them central to which relies on an analysis of discrimination its campaign, and to its call for ‘‘scaled-up’’ in legal, political, and social institutions and investment in development assistance. Because practices to understand what restricts rural they are attractive to donor agencies and their households’ access to land, credit, and agricul- domestic constituencies, they attract aid funds tural inputs (Picard, 2004). and therefore the attention of poor country The MDGs and human rights approaches governments. differ in their attention to structural and so- Pragmatically, this feature can be seen as a cio-political factors that cause and perpetuate strength of the MDGs: the goals establish poverty. The only attention given in the MDGs benchmarks with attainable levels of progress, to discrimination or uneven coverage is in the and they rely on interventions that can be call for eliminating gender disparities in school accomplished without even attempting to ad- enrollment rates (Goal 2, Target 3). Of the dress the thorny social and political causes of structural factors underlying poverty and inequality and deprivation. Accomplishing the wealth in poor countries—access to land, labor, goals would mean real improvement in quality wages, credit, and (some would add) entrepre- of life for some of the world’s poor. But these neurial opportunity—none is mentioned by incentives also imply a quiet retreat from the MDGs. This diversion of attention from important trends in recent development cooper- difficult, structural features of poverty and ation toward greater recognition of the right of inequality should be added to the concerns people affected by development policies to par- raised by Maxwell (2001) about the perverse ticipate influentially in shaping them, and the impacts of targets on decision-making by do- need to guarantee political freedoms in order nors and governments. to make poverty reduction politically sustain- The MDGs’ proponents argue that because able. the goals are output measures, not strategies, These differences appear at first to be matters they do not exclude strategies that expand of strategy, but upon closer examination, the opportunities and access to productive re- MDG and human rights-based approaches dif- sources (Malloch Brown, 2003), and critics of fer more fundamentally. This is true because the MDGs have called for just this kind of most MDG strategies are neither societal nor broader effort to address the causes of poverty systematic: the strategy invests in measures that (Social Watch, 2005). But embracing this strat- benefit individuals and households, for the egy for a global anti-poverty initiative does most part, without creating social or institu- mean that other possible strategies are omitted tional changes that give reason to hope for fol- or de-emphasized. low-on benefits for those not reached. Second, The MDGs create incentives for donors and because the MDGs do not call for an analysis governments to favor quick impact over of the causes of poverty and its manifestations, addressing complex social systems. This ten- they generally do not directly address the struc- dency appears most clearly in the ‘‘quick wins’’ tural factors that human rights analysis points strategy outlined in the 2005 UN report on to as root causes, nor do they incorporate work investing to advance the MDGs, which calls toward political and civil freedoms. Third, the for funding for ‘‘high potential, short-term im- MDG campaign has not produced coherent  Author's personal copy 2048 WORLD DEVELOPMENT aid and trade policy among the donors, and is these two dynamics among the organizations associated with positions and strategies on sev- and actors being mobilized by the human rights eral economic and social policy issues that are and MDG efforts. inimical to the ESC rights agenda. I now turn 1 to these substantive policy clashes. (a) Water MDG advocates call for donors to step up 4. POLICY AND POLITICS: THE DIVIDE their assistance for water and sanitation, and BETWEEN MDGS AND HUMAN RIGHTS the major donors have complied. New re- sources for potable water are being invested If, despite these conceptual differences be- through country programs that generally de- tween the MDGs and human rights ap- emphasize project funding, instead providing proaches, they promoted a consistent global system-wide support to improve and expand set of humane policy initiatives, the differences water systems. Donor aid from the World Bank might be primarily of theoretical interest. Some and bilateral donors, including British DFID, human rights and development agencies take USAID, and EU agencies, emphasizes a shift this position: Oxfam, Action Aid, Christian to private sector provision, through contracts, Aid, Misereor, and many UN agencies have franchises, or outright ownership of formerly aligned themselves with rights-based ap- public water utilities. The 2005 Commission proaches, and advocate the MDGs as a step to- on Financing Water for All, headed by Michel ward the broader realization of these rights. Camdessus, argued that the way to finance Shetty (2005) articulates this view on behalf of ‘‘water for all’’ is to expand and facilitate cor- the UN-sponsored Millennium Development porate management of water and sanitation Campaign, calling the MDGs the link between systems (Winpenny, 2005). Although reports human rights and ‘‘mainstream economic deci- of the UN Task Force on the MDG water tar- sions-making processes’’ of the international get carefully avoids taking a position on the financial institutions. Philip Alston, Advisor question of privatization (UN Millennium Pro- to the High Commissioner on Human Rights, ject Taskforce on Water and Sanitation, 2005), also emphasizes the potential for harmoniza- the Camdessus report and the advocates of tion and coordination, even as his analytic privatization rely heavily on the MDG target comments highlight the MDGs’ failures to to demonstrate the need for public measures emphasize their grounding in international hu- to facilitate, insure, and reward private invest- man rights (Alston, 2005). ment. Moreover, the report has been treated But the debates over water privatization and as an authoritative statement for financing the the provision of medicines for HIV treatment MDG target by the Asian Development Bank, reveal stark policy differences of two kinds. World Bank, European Union Water Initiative, First, the aid and trade policies associated with and other major donors (Asian Development the MDGs are themselves incoherent and con- Bank, 2006; Water Aid, 2005; World Bank, tradictory. Goal 8, which calls for creating a 2003). global partnership for development, envisions Human rights scholarships and activism ap- a coherent set of aid, trade and financial institu- proaches privatization in an entirely different tions and arrangements. (Goal 8 is also the one manner. Social movements of consumers and goal for which donor nations are primarily human rights activists favoring publicly man- responsible, and the one goal without bench- aged solutions call for human rights-based marks or deadlines.) Rather than a coherent resistance to privatization and commoditiza- package, however, while the MDGs focus on tion of water. Although water provision by pri- aid, rules and institutions on trade, intellectual vate firms is a longstanding arrangement in a property and finance are being dominated by few countries, the present rapid move toward the commercial and investment interests of the private provision has its origins in the late industrial country governments. 1980s. ‘‘By the end of 2000, at least 93 countries Second, the policy differences demonstrate had partially privatized water or wastewater the strong tendency of social actors affiliated services. . .but less than ten percent of all water with the MDG process and advocates of hu- is currently managed by the private sector’’ man rights approaches to square off on oppo- (Snitow & Kaufmann, 2004). site sides of these issues. This brief discussion Water provokes and inspires human rights of the water and HIV/AIDS debates illustrates claims directly and urgently: it is arguably a  Author's personal copy HUMAN RIGHTS, THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2049 fundamental right upon which other guarantees Nations Human Rights Committee’s finding depend. In addition to the fundamental ques- in November 2003 that clarify the legal basis tion of price and affordability for low-income for a human right to water. The New York- citizen-consumers, the issue that has produced based Committee on Economic and Social the deepest controversy is the corporate prefer- Rights (CESR, 2001), International Water ence for prepayment arrangements when ser- Working Group (2004), and the UK-based vice contracts include low-income or NGO Water Aid are among many agencies otherwise high-risk consumers. Profitability is employing a human rights approach to water the key to all the arguments for private sector policy advocacy (Water Aid, n.d.). Amnesty provision—efficiency, incentives to improve International (2003), the Centre on Housing infrastructure, and incentives to conserve— Rights and Evictions (COHRE) (2004), 2005, and companies have negotiated arrangements the World Health Organization (WHO) to ensure payment from a high percentage of (2000), WHO, COHRE and the American consumers, at relatively low transaction costs. Association for the Advancement of Science The favored approach has been meters that (2004), and several others have launched new operate on pre-paid cards or keys, a mechanism reports or initiatives on the human right to that has ignited strong human rights-based water since 2003. opposition, as in South Africa (Anti-Privatisa- This is not a difference only of emphasis or tion Forum, 2003; Marvin, Laurie, & Napier, strategy, it is a disagreement over ownership 2001; SAMWU, 2000). or control of water systems, and the fundamen- Across Asia, Africa, and famously in some tal principles and mechanisms on which water Latin American countries, social movements systems are to be based. led by consumers, human rights advocates, un- ions, and environmentalists have sought to (b) HIV/AIDS block or modify corporate contracts, invoking human rights. Conca’s (2005) survey of global The MDGs (Goal 6) and human rights advo- water advocacy confirms that human rights cates have made malaria and HIV/AIDS have become a dominant frame for social important priorities for action. Donor perfor- movement activism, and several cases illustrate mance on increasing and targeting aid to the this pattern of human rights-based opposition health sector, and to these diseases in particu- to privatization. In Ghana, the Coalition lar, has been mixed, and there is much debate against Privatization of Water in Ghana brings over the real amount and adequacy of some together consumers, trade unions, and NGOs governments’ new commitments to the Global and invokes international human rights (Ghana Fund (LaFraniere, 2004). But more fundamen- National Coalition Against the Privatisation of tally, the major donors and the trade rule-mak- Water, 2001). In South Africa, national guar- ing process at the WTO have again been at antees, contained in provisions of the 1996 con- odds with human rights-based prescriptions stitution that embraced many of the for improved response to the HIV/AIDS pan- internationally recognized human rights stan- demic. dards, have allowed a powerful domestic chal- The trade- and aid-related actions of the rich lenge to privatization efforts. countries are significant here because they are a The now-famous resistance to corporate measure of the MDGs’ capacity to mobilize not water contracts in several Bolivian cities, and only generous aid support for the AIDS pan- Argentina’s quieter disputes, are among many demic but also their seriousness about Goal 8, recent setbacks for the privatization movement whose ‘‘global partnership for development’’ (Picolotti, 2003). In India, human rights argu- is to include trade policy (targets 12 and 13) ments figure prominently in legal and political and debt (target 15). challenges to the National Water Policy of While donors declare their support for inno- 2002, which provided for private ownership vative support to patients with HIV, major aid and management of water systems (Pant, donors and WTO provisions have continued to 2003); and in opposition to transnational insist on patent protections for commercial beverage bottlers’ use of water resources (India drugs that drive up the cost of treatment. AIDS Resource Center, 2005). activists’ partial victory in 2001, when the A growing set of UN agencies and interna- Ministerial Meeting at Doha affirmed that gov- tional NGO advocates are supporting these ernments’ right to act in a public health emer- movements, particularly since the United gency superseded trade-related intellectual  Author's personal copy 2050 WORLD DEVELOPMENT property rights (TRIPs), and made a temporary MDGs, lists some 840 civil society organiza- exception to the TRIPs rules for HIV/AIDS tions ‘‘already supporting the Global Call to drugs, opened a further debate over the mecha- Action’’ (2006). But although poor-country nisms by which poor country governments can NGOs answer ‘‘yes’’ when asked if they are act. For countries that cannot produce their working on the MDG goals—that is, doing own generic anti-retroviral drugs, a low-cost work on education, malaria prevention, child and efficient mechanism for trade in these gen- health, etc. (Foster & Wells, 2004)—the critical eric drugs is essential, and there is heated de- question is whether citizen organizations are bate over a temporary mechanism created in mobilizing to hold their governments account- August 2003 and adopted in December 2005 able to these objectives, and here the answer by the Ministerial Meeting in Hong Kong. Crit- is different. ics argue that the case-by-case approval ap- The position of Social Watch, the primary proach is a cumbersome mechanism that NGO effort to monitor the MDGs, is revealing. violates the spirit of the 2001 agreement. The Social Watch, whose secretariat is located in US- and EU-supported solution, one letter ar- the Third World Network in Montevideo, Uru- gues, locks in a ‘‘burdensome and unworkable’’ guay, emerged from NGO participation in the solution, in the interests of ensuring that no 1995 WSSD and has member organizations generic drugs find their way into industrial and affiliates in more than 60 countries. Social country markets (‘‘Joint Statement by NGOs’’ Watch’s comments on the MDGs are contained 2005). in a March 2005 ‘‘Benchmark’’ statement that The MDGs are not, of course, responsible for amounts to a systematic critique of the MDGs. the failings of TRIPs, nor of other WTO nego- It argues, in brief, that the goals should be ex- tiations. But when WTO rulings are evaluated tended from reducing the incidence of poverty against the MDG goal of producing a coherent to eradicating it, and deepened from their focus global development partnership, the MDGs ap- on symptoms to embrace the language of guar- pear to be an ineffective instrument for mobiliz- anteeing rights, diminishing inequality, reduc- ing and motivating change in the wealthy ing social exclusion, and promoting justice industrial countries’ positions. Trade issues, as (Social Watch, 2005). Social Watch engages Vandemootele, Malhotra, and Lim (2003) ar- with the MDGs, in other words, not by gue, are essential to accomplishing the MDGs, using the goals to leverage policy change, but yet the goals have not afforded any actors the by arguing that they be transformed into a power needed to insist on real concessions broader set of structural goals. and innovations needed to create the ‘‘develop- To make a broader assessment of the rele- ment partnerships’’ called for in Goal 8. vance of the MDGs to social movements and NGOs based in the poor countries, I have examined how and whether such organizations 5. MOBILIZATION: INTERNATIONAL make use of the MDGs and of human rights to AND DOMESTIC CONSTITUENCIES advance their work. An inspection of publica- tions, press releases, and website documents How significant are the MDGs to national of 40 NGOs provides some evidence of how rel- and local NGOs and social movements that evant the MDGs are to major social move- have the potential to mobilize political support? ments and development NGOs based in While the MDGs are coordinated and moni- Southern societies. 2 Twenty Southern-based tored by a range of inter-governmental agen- NGOs and social movement organizations cies, the political impetus for creating and 20 international NGOs based in the indus- enduring changes in priorities, policies, and trial countries were investigated. In each case, institutions largely depends on the mobilization five were selected from major national-level of domestic political support. This section re- NGOs involved in poverty, employment, and ports on a survey of international development health; five more were selected from smaller NGOs, social movements, and NGOs in the NGOs working in health-related fields; ten poor countries. more were chosen at random from the Global UN Millennium Campaign-sponsored sur- Call to Action against Poverty list of support- veys report that many poor-country civil soci- ing civil society organizations. ety organizations are on board the MDG The Southern NGOs and social movements campaign, and the Global Call to Action include large NGOs such as Bangladesh Rural Against Poverty, whose agenda is tied to the Action Committee (BRAC), the South African  Author's personal copy HUMAN RIGHTS, THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2051 Treatment Action Campaign, and the Self-Em- pledging aid or other forms of support for a ployed Women’s Association in India; as well variety of humanitarian, commercial and other as many smaller NGOs working in health, agri- foreign policy objectives. The coalition of culture, gender, and income generation. donors is broad: debates over neo-liberal strat- The results are summarized in Figure 2, egies, trade rules and other points of contention which reports, for 40 organizations, whether are secondary to the shared objectives of their publications and advocacy strategies refer donors from the World Bank to the most pro- to the MDGs, to human rights, to both, or to gressive of the international NGOs, to build neither. The contrast between international support for improvements in the human condi- NGOs and the Southern NGOs and social tion. movements is striking. While 18 of the 20 inter- The rights-based approach begins, like the national NGOs mention the MDGs promi- MDGs, from aspects of human well-being: nently, only four of the Southern NGOs make health, nutrition, education, and other desir- any reference at all. In some cases the MDG able conditions. For human rights-based prac- references are far from prominent: there is a titioners, however, these are in turn grounded single reference to the MDG in AMREF docu- in internationally agreed standards, contained ments, in an interview with the foundation’s in human rights covenants and treaties. The malaria program director. Only the Latin first difference, then, is philosophical: the American Llamado Nacional makes reference human rights standards are not indicators or to the MDGs as a source of policy leverage. goals but legally binding statements about Compared to the MDGs, Southern NGOs refer rights to which humans are entitled by virtue to human rights more frequently (11 of 20), of their humanity. international NGOs somewhat less (10 of 20). These statements are also broader in their These results suggest that while the United coverage, and this difference is significant, not Nations and MDG organizers have had some because the human rights agreements include success in reaching the interested and con- a longer ‘‘list’’ of rights (they do), but because cerned population in the United States and of the nature of those rights, which include Europe, the MDGs have not become salient the right to be free from discrimination, and ci- to major organizations and networks based in vil and political rights such as the right to infor- poor countries. This divide may be a matter mation and to freedom of expression, that have of concern for observers of NGOs; for current proven to be preconditions of success for pro- purposes, it demonstrates the limitations of poor movements. The rights-based approach such goals as tools for internal political lever- is more conflictive, mobilizing, and providing age over government policies. support to social movements that assert and claim international human rights. There is considerable evidence that human 6. CONCLUSIONS: DIRECTIONS FOR rights are a more effective means of mobilizing DEVELOPMENT COOPERATION the organized electorate than are donor-sup- ported goals. The MDGs, on the other hand, The MDGs and human rights approaches to have other advantages, including the targets, development are divided in theory, in the policy benchmarks, and monitoring systems familiar approaches they promote for reducing poverty, to development donors. There would seem to and in the social actors they mobilize. These be good reason, based both in social theory differences are often obscured, rhetorically, by and in recent experience, to integrate the MDGs development practitioners, but when the more deeply with human rights guarantees. MDG campaign and the human rights-based Although the MDGs are framed to avoid the approaches are considered as ideal types, it is obligations associated with economic and social difficult to avoid the conclusion that these two rights, individual donors could readily tie their trends are being embraced by actors with diver- work on specific goals much more explicitly to gent visions of development, and are becoming the relevant human rights guarantees. normative sources of support for two conflict- A starting point for any effort to make this ing development agendas. link would be for donors to take seriously the The MDG variant envisions a future driven 2002 Draft Guidelines for the application of hu- by output goals and challenges to address the man rights to poverty reduction strategies. The symptoms of extreme poverty. Donors are guidelines, developed by the UN High Commis- mobilized by the challenge to meet these goals, sioner for Human Rights, designate nine rights  Author's personal copy 2052 WORLD DEVELOPMENT NGO’s name and country Refers to Refers to Refers to MDG HR neither Ashwinikumar Medical Relief Society (India) x Asian Pacific Network on Food Sovereignty x African Medical and Research Foundation (Kenya) x BRAC Bangladesh x Children in Need India (CINI) x Cambodian Human Rights Association x Center for Science and the Environment (India) x CONADES (Peru) x Feminist Dalit Organisation (Nepal) x Greenbelt Movement (Kenya) x Forum for Forest Workers (India) x Llamado Nacional a la Accion Contra Pobreza (Peru) x MST (Brazil) x Rwanda Women’s Network x People’s Health Movement (Bangladesh) x Philippines Rural Reconstruction Movement x Self-Employed Women’s Association (India) x Social Watch x Treatment Action Campaign (South Africa) x Uganda Coalition for Sustainable Development x Southern NGOs and Social Movements 4 11 5 Accion International (US) x Action Aid (South Africa/UK) x x CARE (US) x Caritas (Italy) x Catholic Relief Services (US) x CIDSE x Doctors Without Borders x x Global Campaign for Education x x Halifax Initiative (Canada) x x Healthlink Worldwide x International Women’s Health Coalition (US) x x Lutheran World Federation (Switzerland) x x Mercy Corps (US) x Oxfam (UK) x x Physicians for Human Rights (US) x x Project Hope (US) x Save the Children (US) x x Tearfund (Ireland) x Water Aid (UK) x x World Vision (US) x Northern NGOs 18 10 2 Figure 2. International and Southern NGOs: links to human rights and MDGs. Sources: Organizations’ annual reports and websites.  Author's personal copy HUMAN RIGHTS, THE MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS 2053 as central to poverty reduction strategies, and vices. The MDGs’ ‘‘quick-win’’ strategies outline a framework for their application to could be part of an effort to move as rapidly the process of developing, implementing, and as possible toward state, voluntary and market monitoring national poverty reduction strate- mechanisms that effectively guarantee citizens gies (UN Draft Guidelines, 2002). access to the minimum levels of services and MDG-inspired effort to finance education, well-being guaranteed in the ICESCR. But pre- and post-natal care and improved housing quick-win strategies without an informed and for slum dwellers (to take three examples) could organized public, able to assert its rights, may be coupled with equally determined efforts to well mean that gains in the MDGs’ indicators encourage legislation and institutions that al- last only as long as the UN-sponsored cam- low citizens to assert their rights to these ser- paign keeps donor funds flowing. NOTES 1. Portions of the analysis of water and of HIV/AIDS tional processes. For each organization, the website’s have been reported in Nelson and Dorsey (2007). internal search engine was first used to search for pages and documents with the keywords ‘‘millennium’’ and 2. The investigation was based on the NGOs’ world- ‘‘millennium development goals.’’ Next, links to ‘‘pub- wide web pages. 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