From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

FROM POVERTY TO POWERThe worlds of human rights and development feel very different.Put crudely, lawyers and scholars dominate the former, and economistsand engineers the latter. While this can lead to communicationproblems between two sets of mutually impenetrable jargon, bothsides have much to learn from one another. According to the UN:The tradition of human rights brings legal tools and institutions –laws, the judiciary, and the process of litigation – as means tosecure freedoms and human development. Rights also lend morallegitimacy and the principle of social justice to the objectives ofhuman development. The rights perspective helps shift the priorityto the most deprived and excluded. It also directs attention to theneed for information and political voice for all people as a developmentissue – and to civil and political rights as integral parts of thedevelopment process.Human development, in turn, brings a dynamic long-termperspective to the fulfilment of rights. It directs attention to thesocio-economic context in which rights can be realised – orthreatened. Human development thus contributes to building along-run strategy for the realisation of rights. In short, humandevelopment is essential for realising human rights, and humanrights are essential for full human development. 10Sometimes making use of the international human rights system,citizens in many countries have successfully pressed governments topass laws protecting rights. One of the leaders in this field has beenIndia, which in recent years has seen several groundbreaking initiativeson the rights to food and information. 11 Numerous countries nowhave ombudsmen to whom citizens can appeal if they believe theirrights have been violated. Most countries now also recognise therights of children. Such laws, often introduced in response to UNconventions, exert a permanent ‘drip-drip’ impact on attitudes andpractices. These subterranean shifts in notions of rights occasionallyexplode into the political daylight when groups of citizens seek politicalredress, as witnessed by events in recent decades in La Paz, Kiev,Berlin, Tehran, and Manila, where mass demonstrations of peopledemanding their rights overthrew governments and ushered in eras ofrapid change.26