From poverty to power - Oxfam-Québec

2 POWER AND POLITICS I HAVE RIGHTS, THEREFORE I AM• Power with: collective power, through organisation, solidarity,and joint action.• Power within: personal self-confidence, often linked to culture,religion, or other aspects of collective identity, whichinfluence what thoughts and actions appear legitimate oracceptable.Power is real, but conceptually slippery. Any individual or group ofpeople has multiple relationships, in which they are more or lesspowerful. Nobody is entirely powerless: a mother has power over herchildren, but may be at the mercy of a violent male partner. Her childrenin turn have power over their younger siblings. Moreover, changingthe distribution of power is not always a ‘zero sum game’: one personacquiring power need not require another person to lose power inequal measure.A rights-based approach supports poor people to build up theirpower by addressing both their self-confidence – ‘power within’ – andtheir organisation – ‘power with’. Visits to Oxfam’s programmeson the ground reveal dozens of gripping personal stories of howcontact with outside agents – NGOs, activists, inspirational leaders,academics, or others – has helped to catalyse a process of personaltransformation in which, as with the Chiquitanos in Bolivia (see page31), the scales fell from people’s eyes and they became aware of theirrights. According to Chiquitano activist Miguel Rivera,‘A sense of ourrights came from outside, from political leaders and ILO Convention169 [on indigenous rights]. It was important, it made our indigenouspart wake up.’ 16Previously marginalised people and groups then have the ‘powerwithin’ to demand their rights by challenging elites with ‘power over’them, and assert their rights by acquiring the ‘power to’ do the thingsthey need to improve their lives. 17 Many of the best-known developmentinitiatives, such as India’s Self Employed Women’s Association(SEWA), have followed this ‘bottom up’ process.‘Power with’ is not always progressive, as a long tradition of‘uncivil society’, from the Russian pogroms to the genocide inRwanda, attests. More importantly,‘power over’ is not always malign.To achieve lasting improvements in people’s lives requires harnessingthe state’s ‘power over’, not doing away with it.29