Optional Offenheimer - Holcombe - Challenges of Implementing ZRBA 2003

Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly
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Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing a Rights-Based Approach to Development: An Oxfam

America Perspective
Raymond C. Offenheiser and Susan H. Holcombe
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 2003 32: 268
DOI: 10.1177/0899764003032002006
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Challenges and Opportunities
10.1177/0899764003251739
Offenheiser,
in Implementing
Holcombe
a Rights-Based Approach FORUM
FORUM
Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing

a Rights-Based Approach to Development:
An Oxfam America Perspective
Raymond C. Offenheiser
Oxfam America
Susan H. Holcombe
Brandeis University
Two practitioners/thinkers take old ideas about human rights and make a new case for an
economic and social rights-based approach to development. Our mid-20th century prede-
cessors recognized—in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms and in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights—that a secure world requires a social contract that assures
everyone access to basic economic and social rights. In today’s globalized world, the pri-
vate sector and civil society join the state in influencing the ability of the marginalized to
enjoy basic rights. Pursuing a rights-based approach is an end to business as usual for
international development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs will need to
move beyond supporting delivery of services to building the capacity of civil society to be
an organized and effective balance to the power of governments and of the private sector.
This transformation will have profound effects on the basic business plans, evaluation
systems, and staff competencies of international development NGOs.
Keywords: rights-based approach; human rights; economic and social rights; right to
development; civil society organizations; Oxfam; implementing rights;
social contract; the state and rights; justice; equity; globalization and
rights; legitimacy; rights
In the late 1990s, the members of the Oxfam International community under-
took a serious reexamination of their development programming, searching
for the common philosophical threads that united their development practice.
Our goal was to reach deep into our organizational cores and ask what we
believed was most important in the way development programs were being
Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 2, June 2003 268-306
DOI: 10.1177/0899764003251739
© 2003 Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action
268

Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing a Rights-Based Approach 269
conceived and implemented. Our hope was to find the essential elements for
forging a common project and building the trust and understanding among
our organizations, staff, and partners to carry it out.
This process of reflection and planning led us to conclude that the Oxfam
approach to development and humanitarian response was fundamentally
anchored in a rights-based perspective, with a particular focus on social, eco-
nomic, and cultural rights. At first glance, that was hardly surprising. Most
Oxfam staffs think that they have always supported human rights, and indeed
a cursory review of past programming would show a strong presence of
grants to partners representing the interests of marginal groups or arguing for
greater civil and political rights. Concern for rights has woven its way through
partner relations, probably throughout the history of most Oxfam affiliates.
Yet rights had never been articulated as the overarching framework for our
development practice. The funding portfolio of Oxfam field offices contained
a wide range of programs, from social service delivery to hard-edged human
rights work, but the concept that people have basic rights to livelihoods, social
services, security, voice, and protection from exclusion had not been fully
thought through and developed.
The conscious choice to center all programming on a rights-based approach
and to emphasize economic, social, and cultural rights represents a major shift
for all Oxfam affiliates (Oxfam International, 2000). It forces each organization
to reexamine its funding portfolio and to ask some tough questions about the
relevance of particular partner relations to a rights-based agenda within each
country. It compels a deeper examination of the state’s role as the guarantor of
rights, and of the means that individuals require to exercise those rights. It
requires us to look at civil society as an essential vehicle for citizens to amplify
their voice and counterbalance governmental and private-sector power in
shaping the social contract. It reframes the discussion about effect, evaluation,
and development practice. It suggests the need to examine the core of the
Oxfam business model and see if it really supports a rights-based approach. It
raises serious questions about staff competencies and the ability to envision
and support programs that are rooted in a rights perspective.
This article explores some of the rationales that have led Oxfam Amer-
ica—as a member of Oxfam International—to embrace a rights perspective, as
well as the conceptual constructs that support the new paradigm and the chal-
lenges to implementation it poses. The first section probes the historical cir-
cumstances that have marginalized economic and social rights and focused
international dialogue on political and civil rights. The second section ana-
lyzes the philosophical and conceptual foundation that supports implementa-
tion of a rights-based approach in development practice and humanitarian
response. The final sections explore the organizational and management chal-
lenges that flow from the use of the rights-based model as an organizing prin-
ciple for development practice.

270 Offenheiser, Holcombe
DEVELOPMENT MODELS AND

THE HISTORY OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Why has Oxfam America embraced a rights-based approach? What does it

offer that is essentially new and different? Why has it taken so long to decide
that this approach makes sense and can be incorporated into development
practice? Why does it appear to be so relevant now? Answering these ques-
tions begins with an understanding of the shortcomings of previous strategies
and their relationship to an evolving definition of human rights.
DISILLUSIONMENT WITH THE WELFARE MODEL
Most development programming is rooted in Western European and

American notions of the welfare state that emerged in the early years of the
20th century. This model defines poverty as the absence of some particular set
of public goods or body of technical knowledge. If the state or another mecha-
nism can deliver these public goods or services or introduce the missing tech-
nical know-how, it is assumed that poverty can be reduced and development
will occur.
Over the decades, dialogue within the development community has been
largely confined to the narrow orbit of welfarism, seldom questioning its core
precepts. Instead, debate has focused on three issues:
1. How are the public goods or technical knowledge delivered to the poor?
2. What is the missing input or catalyst—seeds, nutrition, or family planning
strategy—that will power development?
3. Which crucible—state-led infrastructure expansion and industrialization,
or the market—can most efficiently reduce poverty and spur development?
For 50 years, we tinkered with a welfarist approach. Development institutions

were created to manage the effort, and billions of dollars were poured into the
struggle. Despite some real achievements, the gap between rich and poor is
widening, the numbers of people in poverty are increasing in many parts of
the world, and hundreds of millions are trapped in conditions that pose
long-term dangers to the welfare of everyone. The World Development Report
2000/2001 (World Bank, 2000) notes the seriousness of deepening poverty and
widening inequity. Nearly one half the world’s people live on less than $2 per
day, and one fifth live on less than $1. Income disparities have widened within
countries—North and South—and the gap between the world’s 20 richest and
20 poorest countries has more than doubled from 1960 to 1995.
For 50 years we assumed that governments first, and then the market,
would provide for basic needs, but each has failed to address the deeper prob-
lems of social justice and transform the embedded systems that reproduce
poverty. It is not enough to assume that a rising tide will lift all ships because
evidence shows that for a given rate of growth, poverty falls faster in countries

where income distribution has grown more equal (World Bank, 2000). Despite
what seems to be a deliberate character to the sustained impoverishment in
some societies, we lack systems to hold governments and economic institu-
tions accountable for their actions or inaction. Government efforts to address
problems are half-hearted or underfunded, or promised funds are diverted
into the pockets of urban-based actors who make a profitable career as gate-
keepers of foreign-aid programs. The poor are treated as objects of charity
who must be satisfied with whatever crumbs drop their way.
RIGHTS-BASED DEVELOPMENT AS AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL
The rights-based approach envisions the poor as actors with the potential
to shape their own destiny and defines poverty as social exclusion that pre-
vents such action. Instead of focusing on creating an inventory of public goods
or services for distribution and then seeking to fill any deficit via foreign aid,
the rights-based approach seeks to identify the key systemic obstacles that
keep people from accessing opportunity and improving their own lives (Cen-
ter for Economic and Social Rights, 1995). From the very outset, the focus is on
structural barriers that impede communities from exercising rights, building
capabilities, and having the capacity to choose.
Viewed in this fashion, development is about assisting poor communities
to overcome obstacles rather than about never-ending pursuit of grants for
social goods. It assumes that poor people have dignity, aspirations, and ambi-
tion and that their initiative is being blocked and frustrated by persistent sys-
temic challenges, such as apartheid, biased lending policies, and
nonfunctioning state social service delivery systems. It assumes that those
who are most directly affected know firsthand what institutional obstacles
thwart their aspirations and who are essential actors in deciding what to do
about it. Rather than imposing cookie-cutter solutions, this strategy is
anchored in the reality of local context. A primary problem, indeed, has been
the inability of outside actors to imagine adequately the situation confronting
the poor. Some of that blindness, ironically enough, is a byproduct of the emer-
gence of a rights-based culture in the late 20th century whose progress in civil
and political rights came at the cost of ignoring economic and social rights
(Lauren, 1998). The opportunity for change today depends on understanding
how the definition of human rights narrowed and must now be broadened.
A UNIFIED VISION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The 1940s were a golden age for defining human rights, and economic and
social rights were integral to the dialogue. Franklin D. Roosevelt included
freedom from want as the third of the Four Freedoms established as an Ameri-
can objective in World War II. In 1944, Roosevelt called on Congress to find the
means to implement an “economic bill of rights” that focused on the right to a
livelihood and to social services. In 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human

Rights gave global recognition to economic and social rights. The framers of
the declaration, led by the first chairperson of the UN Commission on Human
Rights Eleanor Roosevelt (Glendon, 2001), were not fuzzyheaded idealists;
they understood how a failed social contract had contributed to the Great
Depression and two world wars. They saw the need for a new social contract
to prevent future war in an age of mass destruction.
Although the Covenant on Economic and Social Rights amplified the
meaning of these rights in 1966, the politics of the Cold War exerted constant
pressure that eventually focused the global human rights movement on politi-
cal and civil rights, relegating economic and social rights to the care of the mar-
ket.1 Generations of Americans have grown up believing that human rights
refer exclusively to civil and political rights. In the United States, the Cold War
increasingly was seen as a competition between economic systems—between
capitalism and markets on one hand, and socialism and state planning on the
other. In addition, from the perspective of the ultimate winners, this incorpo-
rated the struggle for human rights, which was depicted as a zero-sum battle
between freedom and the tyranny of an “evil empire,” between individual lib-
erty and the power of the state.
Attempts, chiefly from the South, to raise concerns about economic rights
(e.g., the New International Economic Order) were isolated by the
dichotomized mind-set of the Cold War. The end of the Cold War certified the
failure of the totalitarian socialist model, and accelerating globalization put
severe pressures on Western social democracies as well. Trade-led models of
economic growth combined with the internationalization of capital flows to
create a world economy modeled on an unregulated market economy
(McMurtry, 1998). The paradox is that economic globalization began leapfrog-
ging the frameworks of laws, norms, and civil societies that restricted excesses
and created domestic social stability within the very national economies
whose private-sector firms were now leading the way in world markets
(Korten, 2001). The absence of any clearly defined short-term threat to the
social order undermined the rationale for urgent assistance to reduce inequi-
ties during the 1990s, leaving globalization as the default development para-
digm. Globalization, to the world’s financial leaders, is about the integration
of markets. The solution to poverty was for third world countries to join the
bandwagon and reinvent themselves as emerging markets, dropping barriers
to imports and capital, cutting public budgets, and privatizing state assets to
create the conditions for optimal economic growth and profits. The assump-
tion is, as it has been for decades, that development is economic growth and
nothing more. If GNP is high, all is well with the world. This leaves political
and civil rights dominant in the human rights dialogue and in the discourse of
international affairs, giving free reign to imposition of market-based prescrip-
tions by multilateral financial institutions.
Meanwhile, civil society actors were left to confront not only the legacy of
failed social policies by the state but deep cuts in state spending. Globalization
offered no Midas touch for the problems of failed education systems,

collapsing health systems, inadequate water supplies, privatized commons,

and ethnic discrimination that defined the world of the poor. Serious
responses by the international community to these problems are few. Foreign
aid is dwindling. Sectarian conflicts proliferate, driving poverty. G-7 nations
must be dragged, guilt tripped by the Pope himself, to the altar to sign on to
debt relief. Understandably, civil society leaders are seeking a new language
and new approaches to deal with these harsh realities.
During the 1990s, the dialogue on rights began to shift. The UN sponsored a
major series of summits on economic and social rights that drew their legiti-
macy from the UN’s earlier work on the Human Rights Charter (Korey, 2001).
As a result of these meetings and exposure to the language of the Charter and
its endorsement of economic, social, and cultural rights, civil society organiza-
tions (CSOs)—like the women’s and the environmental movements before
them—began to see rights as a lever for change (Lauren, 1998; Eade, 1998).
Growing unease about the merits of globalization has fueled the drive to
reconnect civil and political with social, economic, and cultural rights. Many
of the disparate actors who gathered in Seattle to protest against the World
Trade Organization (WTO) found that the discourse on social and economic
rights was the glue that bound them together. Old adversaries, like U.S. labor
organizations and developing-world nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs), realized that they actually shared many core values and could work
together on a range of issues within the framework of economic and social
rights.
These new sociopolitical realities made it possible to rekindle the kind of
rights perspective that Franklin and then Eleanor Roosevelt brought to the
founding discussions of the Charter, without fear of being labeled a socialist or
communist. Yet traditional rights organizations did not rush to fill the space
that was opening to readdress economic and social rights. Before the 50th
anniversary celebration of the UN Charter in 1998, a number of people
approached the major human rights organizations (including Amnesty Inter-
national and Human Rights Watch) to sound out their willingness during the
ceremonies to call for social, economic, and cultural rights. It became clear that
these organizations feared that their supporters and donors might miscon-
strue such a call as a dilution of their core mission and vision. They also cited
the great work yet to be done in addressing critical challenges to civil and
political liberties in Asia and the former Soviet Union—consolidating work
that had built their reputations and given them a clearly identified institu-
tional niche. The unspoken irony in this understandable strategic choice was
how it perpetuated the Cold War dichotomy between civil and political and
social and economic rights in the public consciousness.
Oxfam leadership was surprised to find that the human rights organiza-
tions were leaving the area of social, economic, and cultural rights unat-
tended. Recognizing the need for a prominent global organization to cham-
pion social and economic rights, Oxfam decided to focus on implementing a
rights-based approach in the field and to become more active in their home

countries in putting these issues on the public policy agenda. With this in
mind, Oxfam leadership moved to reposition its brand in the public mind as
centered on social and economic justice and implemented through a
rights-based approach (Oxfam International, 2000).
A RIGHTS-BASED FOUNDATION
FOR DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE
Mainstreaming a rights-based approach into our organizations is a com-

plex transition. It cannot simply be decreed and implemented. If sound blue-
prints are to be drawn from this vision, an organization needs to deepen its
understanding of the philosophical principles involved and how they apply
on the ground in local development contexts. The underlying justifications for
new relationships and a rethinking of old ones must be aired if the public is to
understand the reasons for transformation and staff members are to follow the
lead and flesh out the shift in organizational culture with workable develop-
ment programs. This section outlines the Oxfam America perspective on the
soundness of a rights-based approach to development.
BROADENING OUR VISION OF HUMAN RIGHTS
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights served as the Magna Carta for
human rights activism over the past 50 years. Without question, the human
rights movement, using the Declaration as an international norm, has made
significant contributions to promoting civil and political liberties. Unfortu-
nately, it has failed to address issues of poverty and social injustice.
In his paper, “The Human Rights Challenge to Global Poverty,” Chris
Jochnick (1999) presented a major challenge to narrow traditional approaches
to human rights. He argued that we have entered a new era and that human
rights activists and development theorists need to think outside the box and
devise new and more compelling ways of utilizing the Human Rights Charter.
One reason the vision has remained narrow, Jochnick argued, particularly
in the United States and to a lesser degree in Western Europe, is the predomi-
nance of a state-centered view of human rights. Continuing this practice in an
era of globalization renders one powerless to prevent or remedy violations of
social and economic rights by nonstate actors from beyond national borders.
Moving human rights beyond its state-centric paradigm serves two pur-
poses. First, it challenges the reigning neo-liberal extremism that trivializes
much public discourse about development and poverty, providing a rhetoric
and a vision to emphasize that entrenched poverty is neither inevitable nor
acceptable. Second, it provides a legal framework with which to begin holding
the most influential nonstate actors—corporations, financial institutions, and
third-party states—more accountable for their role in creating and sustaining
poverty.

Jochnick (1999) reminded us that “the distinction between individuals as

the holders of rights and states as the holder of duties was premised on the
notion of the state as the ultimate guardian of the public’s welfare” (p. 3). In
essence, the state derives this authority and responsibility from the social con-
tract agreed to by its citizens. The Commission on Global Governance sug-
gested that we live in different times. When the UN system was created, the
nation-state was dominant and had few rivals, and there was strong faith in
the protective ability of governments. The world economy was not so inte-
grated. “The vast array of global firms and corporate alliances that has
emerged was just beginning to develop. The huge global capital market,
which today dwarfs even the largest national capital markets, was not fore-
seen” (p. 3).
Jochnick argued that the “narrow focus of human rights law on state
responsibility is not only out of step with current power relations but tends to
obscure them” (p. 3). It neglects the decreasing power of the nation-state and
perpetuates the belief that states are only accountable to their populations and
vice versa. Focusing on the state in a globalizing world may shield other actors
(the private sector and international institutions) from responsibility and
leave the poor and the human rights movement fighting for justice with both
hands tied behind their backs.
In encouraging the human rights movement to revisualize their work,
Jochnick said that “the real potential of human rights lies in its ability to
change the way people perceive themselves vis-à-vis the government and
other actors” (p. 3). By using the rhetoric of rights, “problems” can be exam-
ined as possible “violations,” that is, as discrimination or structures that block
people from exercising rights. Violations are not inevitable; therefore, they
need not be tolerated: “By demanding explanations and accountability,
human rights expose the hidden priorities and structures behind violations”
(p. 4). This broader view, providing both economic and social content and
applying accountability to nonstate actors, is a vital step toward addressing
the root causes of poverty and development.
The keystone of Jochnick’s presentation is his contention that the broader
view of human rights is closely connected to their original foundation in
human dignity. Noting that under international law, states either consent to
treaties or acquiesce to customary norms, he underlined a significant excep-
tion. “Human rights law,” he added, “has in large measure defied these nar-
row categories by suggesting an additional foundation—human dignity.
Human dignity makes certain claims on all actors, state and non-state, regard-
less of custom or consent” (p. 4). As supporting evidence, Jochnick empha-
sized that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the twin covenants
of 1966 not only recognize customary or agreed-to rights, but also those
derived “from the inherent dignity of the human person.”2 By extending
human rights beyond the narrowness of consent or custom, this allows for rec-
ognition of a variety of nonstate actors as human rights violators.

There are important lessons for development organizations like Oxfam to

take from Jochnick’s presentation.
• He challenged the traditional cleavage between development and rights

work, calling for a reexamination based on the philosophical underpin-
nings of international law and the stress globalization is placing on his-
toric conceptions of the state.
• He reintroduced the concept of human dignity as the foundation for
rights and showed us how human dignity is imbedded in human rights
concepts, providing development professionals with new ways of think-
ing about how to link their concerns. 3
• He showed us how a human rights framework can provide a more mor-
ally and ethically forceful tool for development professionals to use in
naming the inequalities in power relations, along with the structures
that sustain social inequity and injustice.
• He offered an approach that can begin with a concern for people and
their needs, one that acknowledges the role of the state but also recog-
nizes that violations of human dignity may have their origins with
nonstate actors.
• He demonstrated how a rights-based approach can challenge the fatal-
ism embedded in the very logic of the welfarist approach to poverty alle-
viation.
THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT
We next need to examine the implications Jochnick’s broader, integrated

definition of human rights has on development thinking. Approaching
human rights as inherent and indivisible and centering our development
work on the pursuit of social, economic, and cultural rights, we are in effect
arguing for development itself as a human right, and one, moreover, that is
integral to the social contract.
Arjun Sengupta’s (2000) excellent paper, “The Right to Development as a
Human Right,” provided insight on the implications of this argument.
Sengupta first reminded us of the intimate connection between human rights
and social contract theory. Social contract theory was, in effect, a secular ren-
dering of the ancient biblical concept of a contract between God and Abraham,
with the people choosing their governors rather than God. Natural rights the-
orists in the Western tradition—Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau—were propo-
nents of the contract concept (Barker, 1969). Locke claimed that certain rights,
such as life, liberty, and property, belonged to individuals and not to society as
a whole because these rights existed before entering civil society. Entering civil
society meant agreeing to a social contract, but this contract only surrendered
to the state the right to enforce these natural rights, not the rights themselves.
The French Revolution of 1789 was supported by natural rights theorists
under the premise that the sovereign had broken the terms of the social

contract by not securing these rights for his people. The French Declaration of
the Right of Man and Citizen stated that the rights of life, liberty, property,
security, and resistance to oppression were “natural, inalienable and sacred.”
Sengupta acknowledged that there are very few contemporary proponents
of natural rights but suggested a powerful argument for deriving economic,
social, and cultural rights from emerging global norms. The basic ideas behind
the social contract still exist and are codified within national constitutions
around the world. These legal documents provide the procedures and rules,
which national governments are expected to uphold, for protecting and pro-
moting individual and collective rights. The very existence of a regime of
rights is linked to the willingness of citizens to cede power and authority to the
state in exchange for certain protections of their human dignity under the
terms of a social contract.
For such social contracts, what is important is the acceptance by all parties
of a set of human rights that the state parties are obliged to fulfill. In the ulti-
mate analysis, human rights are those rights that are given by people to them-
selves. They are not granted by any authority, nor are they derived from some
overriding natural or divine principles. They are human rights because they
are recognized as such by a community of peoples, flowing from their own
conception of human dignity, in which these rights are supposed to be inher-
ent. Once they are accepted, through a process of consensus building, they
become binding at least on those who are party to that process of acceptance.
Taking this argument a step further, Sengupta reminded us that the interna-
tional community undertook just such a process of consensus building at the
Vienna Conference of 1993, which agreed that the right to development was a
human right. The Declaration of the Vienna Conference, as established in the
Declaration on the Right to Development, reaffirmed the right as universal,
inalienable, and an integral part of fundamental human rights.4 This declara-
tion, which was supported by the United States, stated that, “Human rights
and fundamental freedoms are the birthright of all human beings; their pro-
tection and promotion is the first responsibility of government” (Sengupta,
2000, pp. 1-2). It also committed the international community to the obligation
of cooperation in actualizing these rights. In the final analysis, development
emerged as a human right that reintegrated economic, social, and cultural
with civil and political rights in the manner envisaged at the beginning of the
post–World War II human rights movement. The world was returning to the
mainstream of human rights activism from which it had been deflected for so
many years by Cold War international politics.
Although the international community may have endorsed the right to
development through the Vienna declaration, debate and controversy still
surround the approval of this bold initiative (Katrougalos, N.D.). Moreover,
on a more practical level, one might note that because of the declaration’s
approval, the foreign aid budgets for most of the G-7 nations have seen a pre-
cipitous decline. The evidence suggests that the political leaderships of these
countries have invested little in selling this concept to their electorates and

instead have concentrated on managing their nations’ participation in global

markets.5
Sengupta (2000) identified three major challenges to the notion of develop-
ment as a human right. The first objection is that human rights adhere only to
individuals and therefore are based only on negative freedoms, such as the
freedom to life, liberty, and free speech, which the state must merely guaran-
tee. In contrast, economic and social rights are associated with positive free-
doms that the state must secure, protect, and finance through active promo-
tion. As such, they are not seen as natural rights, and they have budget
implications. A second objection posits that economic and social rights must
be coherent, that is, each right-holder must have some corresponding
duty-holder responsible for delivering the right. Finally, some argue that a
right exists only if it is enforceable through law and adjudication. Because eco-
nomic and social rights are not legally adjudicative, the argument continues,
they cannot be human rights. The next section responds by examining the role
civil society plays in negotiating terms of the social contract with government.
The third section amplifies that response in its discussion of rights-based pro-
gram implementation.
LINKING RIGHTS WITH FIELD-BASED REALITIES
Development professionals need a practical conceptual base to orient their

work in making the major shift to a rights-based approach. To translate the
essence of this new vision into a guide for practice, Oxfam America has devel-
oped a series of simple models to capture the most strategically critical dimen-
sions of the rights-based approach. These diagrams grossly oversimplify
many social and political complexities, but they have proved useful in assist-
ing staff to comprehend the core dynamics of this new approach.
Figure 1 illustrates the rights-based model at the national level. Its founda-
tion is civil society. The model presumes that in every nation, civil society is
the primordial soup that shapes social affairs, the state, and the economy. The
exact nature of civil society, its density and diversity, its inclusiveness, its
racial profile, its political cleavages, and its internal culture and dynamics, are
presumed to vary widely across national boundaries.
The next prominent feature of the model is the state’s relationship to the
economy, which can range across a gradient from central planning to an unfet-
tered private market. The diagram presumes that the particular shape and
scale of the relationship is determined based on a social contract established
between the citizens and civil society leaders of a country and its political lead-
ership. The social contract is not a written document, but rather the conferral
of public trust to those leaders who demonstrate their willingness to govern
under the rule of law. The social contract assumes rights and obligations on the
part of the ruler and the governed. The social contract is grounded in the
notion of legitimacy, the belief that government power ultimately rests not on

Social contract
Constitution
Debate on
rights and
how state
manages State Economy Exclusion of
public goods segments of
society
Civil/Political Environmental Social/Econ
Civil Society
Civil society actors
Figure 1. Rights-Based Development Model (National Level)
force but on the consent of the governed. This unwritten understanding is the
glue that holds a society and a nation together.
Our diagram presumes that the social contract defines the relationship
between the state and the economy. Figure 1 shows a somewhat limited inter-
section, depicting a state that retains regulatory control over some important
functions of the market and its various actors. One can also imagine other pat-
terns, for example, a socialist state in which the overlap or intersection
between state and economy would be almost complete (see Figure 1A). At the
other extreme, the free market model might push the economy apart from
state control toward minimal or no regulation. It might also shrink the power
of the state, so one could imagine a diagram in which the economy dwarfs the
state in terms of resources, power, and extraterritorial relationships.
Each nation is theoretically capable of setting the terms of this state/economy
relationship based on the nature of its political process and the substance of its
social contract. In reality, there are both external and internal constraints. Pres-
sures to abandon traditional social-service functions to reduce budget deficits
can come externally from multilateral financial institutions and capital mar-
kets or internally from export promotion or privatization policies. Even basic
public services like health and education may be affected. A national

Economy
State
State Economy
1. Socialist model 2. Free market model
Economy
State
3. Economy dwarfs state power model
Figure 1A. Relationships Between the State and the National Economy
government may also feel constrained by the wishes of other states or by

nonstate actors with their own agendas and the power to challenge the state’s
authority and even its sovereignty. Internally, a state may lack the capacity to
deliver on its social contract obligations to citizens, or its ability may be com-
promised by corruption. Although some reorganization of state functions is
often needed for greater efficiency, the elimination of social investments in
education and health has had dire consequences for millions of children in
Africa and Asia. Several generations of young people have grown up lacking a
basic education. In addition, their governments have been powerless to
deliver on a social contract for basic social rights.
Ideally, the voice of citizens and civil society actors finds expression in a
nation’s constitution. The constitution can be a living document that spells out
the basic terms of an evolving social contract, capturing the social aspirations
of a society as well as the terms for the relations between citizens and the state.
Most important, the constitution establishes the rights of citizens. Citizens
and the civil society institutions that represent their interests negotiate with
the state on the exact nature and quality of rights. For explanatory purposes in
Figure 1, we single out distinct bodies of rights. Although the UN Charter of
Human Rights treats civil, political, social, economic, and cultural rights as

indivisible, in practice civil and political rights are usually enshrined in a

national constitution and highlighted in a bill of rights—as is the case with the
U.S. Constitution. Meanwhile, social, economic, and cultural rights must be
fought for politically and either added to a bill of rights or legitimated through
legislation, administrative law, judicial action, or changes in the informal con-
sensus underlying the social contract.
It is precisely at the interface between the state and economy where civil
society plays its most crucial role. This interface occurs in the legislative pro-
cess where laws are passed and budgets approved and where the state’s man-
agement of public goods should be debated. It is also found in the executive
process where policies are formulated and leadership can be exercised. In this
crucible, civil society organizations hold the state accountable for delivering
on the promised social contract. Viewed in this fashion, development might be
seen as a process of deal making between a government and its citizenry over
how state resources, revenues, and services are shared among citizens and
how the national economy will or will not be required to serve the public
good.
The final element of the national model shows the barrier or barriers that
exclude certain people or civil society organizations from full participation in
the negotiating process to allocate state resources and set criteria for economic
performance. These barriers may exclude based on race, ethnicity, religion,
caste, gender, or class. They may be obvious and harsh like apartheid, or sub-
tle like voter registration procedures or standards of creditworthiness. They
might curtail the simple exercise of one’s civil and political rights or be arcane
protocols in assembling certain public-sector budgets. An ostensibly demo-
cratic nation should show high degrees of inclusion. The United States has
made significant progress in advancing civil rights for all citizens at the
national level. However, at the local and regional levels, institutional, eco-
nomic, and social racism still maintains a strong hold. The key to advancing a
rights-based agenda is identifying the precise nature of local as well as
national barriers.
In thinking about its role within this universe, Oxfam America intends to
focus its scarce resources on programs that support partners in negotiating
this interface with the state on social and economic rights. It is conceding that
the mainstream human rights organizations should lead the way in the pur-
suit of civil and political rights and environmental groups should continue to
provide leadership in the pursuit of environmental rights. Oxfam America
aspires to play the kind of leadership role for economic and social rights in the
United States and in its overseas relations with partners that these other rights
organizations have played in their arenas of concern.
The model in Figure 1 has proved flexible enough for staff to adapt it to
national contexts and manipulate its internal elements to fit a particular social
and political reality. The model can also be adapted to analyze a regional, or
even the global, level.

Figure 2 offers a rudimentary diagram for the emerging system of global

governance. In this configuration, we see three institutional actors with inter-
locking mandates: the UN, international financial institutions (IFIs), and the
World Trade Organization (WTO). Beyond this triad is a fourth element—the
global economy—which is relatively loosely linked to the governing agents, is
still evolving, and is gathering force that makes it critical to future global secu-
rity. In theory, a state negotiates the interests (rights) of its citizens in the global
institutions. In practice, states that represent powerful actors in the global
economy tend to have the largest voice, whereas those that do not are rela-
tively powerless.
Nonetheless, a countervailing force has begun to emerge. The model por-
trays a small, but growing number of transnational civil society actors who
seek to shape and influence these global institutions. Not surprising, barriers
limit the access of transnational civil society actors to the process of agenda
setting and decision making by global institutions. Representatives of private
capital generally enjoy unfettered access to the decision-making table, for
example in WTO deliberations on the terms of global trade. Few mechanisms
allow the voices of civil society to be heard.
This diagram seeks to capture the essential problem of global governance,
which the Seattle protests spotlighted by calling into question the authority of
the WTO, the IFIs, and their patrons. Because there is no clear social contract
giving them a mandate, these global institutions lack the legitimacy of
national governments. This sense of disparity has been growing. Although
national governments participate in the governance of these institutions, their
representation reflects GDP more than population; and because globalization
has extended the reach and mission of these institutions, their decisions
increasingly affect citizens around the world. There are differences in vision
and ideology among leaders within these institutions, but by and large, the
globalized market model of development is shared and shapes the way devel-
opment goals are framed and policies implemented. This obviously has enor-
mous effect on the developing world, but it affects everyone. Decisions taken
by these global institutions are seen increasingly as undermining, if not abro-
gating, the social contracts between citizens and states. The perceptible shift in
power from the national to the global is experienced as disenfranchisement
because at the global level citizens have little direct voice and reliable repre-
sentation. Meanwhile, private capital, which has been the big winner in the
globalization sweepstakes, is well represented through a variety of institu-
tional connections, corporate-sponsored events, consultancies, policy analy-
sis, and lobbying.6
This gives rise to the kind of challenges to the legitimacy and accountability
of private capital suggested in Figure 3. With no social contract to guide global
governance, diverse sectors compete for voice and influence in shaping the
global agenda. States represented in these institutions express their national
interests. Corporations and business alliances promote their interests directly

Social Contract?
Exclusion of
segments of
IFI’s UN WTO society
System
Civil Society
Transnational Civil Society actors
Figure 2. The Emerging System of Global Governance
at the global level, and indirectly through their influence on state representa-
tives. The media aggressively promote their agendas. Finally, global networks
of national and international NGOs struggle even to get a seat at the table.
To translate many of the underlying assumptions of this model into a sim-
ple planning tool for staff, the Oxfams agreed to adopt a set of five basic pro-
gram aims (Oxfam International, 2000):
• the right to a sustainable livelihood

• the right to basic social services
• the right to life and security
• the right to be heard (social and political citizenship)
• the right to an identity (gender and diversity)
Each Oxfam has taken these core aims, which reflect the core elements of the
UN Human Rights Charter, and attempted to incorporate them into its institu-
tional strategy. In essence, the idea is to turn the right to development into a set
of succinct planning goals.

Global Governance
system
Civil
States Society
Non-state Media
actors Other civil
Elected society groups
officials
Private Sector Public monitor
Figure 3. Legitimacy, Accountability, and the Challenge of Global Governance
Staff are asked to work with colleagues from their sister Oxfams to develop
regional and country plans that benefit one, two, perhaps even three of these
aims. For each aim, staff is expected to develop context-specific strategic
change objectives and outcome indicators to guide programming. Effective-
ness is to be measured by the effect of programs on specific policy and practice
changes that address critical barriers to opportunity.
Meanwhile, on a global level, staff working on policy and public education
is expected to use these same aims to plan global advocacy that aligns their
strategic choices with critical priorities of partners at the regional level. For
instance, concerns about the effect of the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic on
grassroots communities in and the health budgets of many African nations in
which we work has led Oxfam to the forefront of the global campaign for fairly
pricing pharmaceuticals to treat the disease. During the last 4 years, the
Oxfams have also carried out a campaign focusing on basic education. A
major strategic feature of this campaign has been its success at linking local
realities to global debates. The foundation for this campaign has been the
assertion that education is a basic human right, intrinsically linked to the UN
Charter, the provisions on social and economic rights, and a variety of subse-
quent UN summit documents. Now, broad concerns about the effect of trade

rules on the livelihoods of low-income farmers has convinced Oxfam to align

program efforts of staff from 12 affiliates, working in over 100 countries, and
launch a major campaign in 2003 to reform the rules.
The campaigns on HIV/AIDS pharmaceuticals and education have taught
us how useful the social and economic rights construct can be in putting local
faces on global issues to inform the media, the public, and their representa-
tives of what is at stake. It has also proved to be a powerful tool to help us align
our work across multiple program levels and across regions. It has proved
equally powerful in providing an ethical basis for challenging the overly sim-
plistic logic of the champions of the globalization paradigm. It enables Oxfam
to provide powerfully incisive normative critiques that cut through the turgid
language and technocratic rationales of the major global power brokers and
their minions, and show the human costs. This has proved to be surprisingly
appealing to the global media who often report on the downsides of globaliza-
tion from the field but find little in the way of persuasive counterarguments to
link the evidence to the big picture highlighting who is responsible and how
the damage can be repaired and further damage avoided.
Previously, development work was most often seen as disconnected inter-
ventions in very specific local and national contexts. The human rights focus
of our work today is unifying these diverse experiences, enabling us to see
from multiple perspectives much more clearly the kinds of power relations
that drive and the systemic impediments that perpetuate poverty. Our early
experience has shown the power of this conceptual framework. Now we face
the challenges of implementing it as an operational reality.
CONFRONTING THE CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTATION
In addition to Oxfam, many Northern NGOs—Save the Children, World

Vision, and CARE, for example—are moving toward a rights-based frame-
work for building a global movement for development and change. This
framework reunites economic and social with political and civil rights, pre-
paring the way for a comprehensive vision of a new, just, and viable social con-
tract. Yet few Northern development NGOs have deep experience with the
new paradigm, making implementation of it a learning challenge.
Effective implementation answers Sengupta’s (2000) three critiques of the
notion of development as a human right. As noted earlier, Sengupta argued
first that human rights adhere only to individuals and therefore are based only
on negative freedoms, such as freedom to life, liberty, and free speech. The
state has the role of guarantor. Because economic rights are positive freedoms
that the state must promote and finance, they are not considered natural
rights. Second, to be coherent, economic and social rights require that some
duty-holder be responsible for delivering those rights to individual
rights-holders. Third, if rights exist only when they are enforceable through
law, economic and social rights cannot be human rights because they are not

legally adjudicative. As the next paragraphs suggest, these objections rein-

force a welfarist perspective. By drawing narrow boundaries where only
states grant rights, they imply a paternalistic, top-down perspective. We take a
broader view of the actors and visualize the enjoyment of rights as a spiraling
rather than a linear process. People give meaning to rights by exercising them.
The exercise of rights—economic, social, and political and civil—is synergis-
tic. It creates capacity to protect and extend rights.
Jochnick (1999) addressed the question of boundary drawing and trans-
gression, suggesting that one must look beyond the duties and prerogatives of
the state to resolve systemic violations of human rights, particularly in the eco-
nomic and social spheres. States, as we have seen, have been woefully inade-
quate in redressing inequalities. This is not just a question of resources but of
responsibility. Nonstate entities—corporations, financial institutions, and
global institutions—may act in ways that help create or sustain poverty. They
may impinge on rights (cash out the commons, if you will) without taking
responsibility for assuring rights (investing to sustain the commons).
A broader view of human rights looks beyond state responsibilities and a
legalistic approach and grounds itself in the concept of human dignity. Indi-
viduals are seen as actors with knowledge, skills, and the capacity to organize.
Citizens and their civil society organizations, operating at the interface
between the state and the economy, become key to making the rights-based
model work.
A rights-based approach to development bridges theoretical gaps between
political, civil, social, and economic rights by understanding how they are
interconnected in practice. During the past half-century, specialized civil soci-
ety organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have
effectively spotlighted violations of political and civil rights, using the “stick”
of adverse publicity to halt violations, case by case. Civil society has yet to
focus on the “carrots” needed to build social, cultural, and institutional capac-
ity and to create a positive environment that makes honoring rights our new
norm. To take a preventive rather than a corrective approach to violations of
political and civil rights, development organizations also need to focus on
building the economic and social rights that enable people to effectively exer-
cise and defend their citizenship.
NGOs taking on this challenge must create their own road maps. More than
20 international agreements on universal human rights were reached during
the 20th century. Establishment of fundamental principles and standards was
a necessary first step, but these conventions provided no guidelines for navi-
gating local realities and few provisions for reporting compliance, much less
enforcing it. Furthermore, this approach has been essentially top-down, based
on an unstated assumption that rights can be “given” to individuals and
groups. This unidirectional focus is fundamentally flawed because it fails to
recognize that rights originate with the people who exercise them.

Working to empower marginalized citizens within states and to build a

global civil society to rein in transnational institutions, Northern NGOs are
positioned to play a pivotal role, but the new opportunities are fraught with
hazards. Becoming an active CSO in a rights-based framework exposes poten-
tial contradictions in legitimacy and accountability. Symptoms of this can be
seen in the tensions that arise with Southern partners as a result of economic
and other inequalities. This problem is not new, but it was easier to ignore
when welfarism was the dominant ethos. Another problem, however, is new.
How does one achieve conceptual clarity to heighten public perception of a
new social contract whose terms are not prewritten but must evolve through
ongoing civic engagement?
THE ROLE OF NORTHERN NGOS IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION
Conceptual clarity requires moving beyond abstract declarations to gain an

operational understanding of the circumstances under which rights can be
freely exercised. If international conventions have set benchmarks for the
state’s role in human rights, there is no consensus yet about the responsibili-
ties of nonstate actors. Citizens and the groups they form need to be able to
hold states and nonstate actors accountable for respecting rights.
Rights-based Northern CSOs thus face a dual task. They seek to play a
bottom-up role supporting marginalized groups in their efforts to attain and
exercise their rights within nations, while also fostering nascent global move-
ments to promote accountability across national borders. Operating at multi-
ple levels to link local with national and global concerns requires nimbleness
and a fundamental change in traditional operating assumptions. If
marginalized groups are to have the capability to exercise rights, they must
have independence and agency. They can no longer be viewed as passive
recipients of welfarist support from Northern NGOs but must be seen as
actors in their own destinies and partners in our common destiny. Most
Northern NGOs (and even government and multilateral aid agencies) now
routinely talk of partnership with organizations and people in the South.
Northern CSOs need to be honest and recognize that funding inequities have
too often reduced partnership to a patron-client relationship. A rights-based
partnership assumes that actors in the South bring irreplaceable assets to the
effort to secure economic and social justice. The funding, information, and
links that Northern agencies bring are essential but not sufficient. Putting
these assumptions about real partnership into action challenges Northern
agencies to rethink their agenda setting, funding, and accountability pro-
cesses. Previously the donor set the agenda and sometimes changed it fre-
quently without consulting beneficiaries about the effect. Donors measured
project and program effectiveness by quantifiable short-term outcomes. The
new model requires negotiating a shared agenda. It may mean providing
funding for the longer term and asking the Southern partner to be accountable

for process-oriented as well as concrete results. Because lasting success

depends on organization building, Northern NGOs need the courage to stick
with Southern partners who show the ability to learn from failure and cope
with reverses. Because Northern CSOs do not operate in a vacuum, they have
to engage their own donors in a dialogue about the changing priorities and
demands of these new relationships.
Rights-based CSOs in the North and South need to rethink the meaning of
program and implementation to encompass activities once thought of as
peripheral or overhead. The new model requires more activities like research,
advocacy, evaluation, public education, and organizational development.
Because resources are limited, some funding will likely be shifted from direct
services to the poor toward efforts that target the underlying causes of pov-
erty. This shift complicates accountability and relationships with key stake-
holders, raising questions of legitimacy.
BUILDING LEGITIMACY THROUGH A CHAIN OF VALUE
As Northern rights-based agencies seek genuinely new partnerships to

develop new models of implementing change, questions of legitimacy arise.
Playing a service delivery role gives clarity to what an agency does, and legiti-
macy is derived from the competence of the work. Agencies negotiating for
economic and social change or pressing for policy change have long-term
agendas that are not easy to quantify. They are accountable to multiple constit-
uencies, including donors, boards, and partner organizations in the South and
the excluded groups with whom they work.
Legitimacy in this model is dynamic and is created when a Northern CSO
connects a range of stakeholders—North and South—seeking to expand the
opportunity and ability to exercise economic and social rights. Legitimacy
comes from the value chain linking donors, publics, the board, and staff with
Southern CSOs and excluded people in a common agenda.
Connecting the stakeholders in Tambogrande, Peru. Around the world, the eco-
nomic and social rights of poor people are often overridden where wealth is
found in their natural resources. The only lasting remedy is to empower local
communities to assert their rights and acquire influence over important deci-
sions affecting their lives.
In Tambogrande, Peru, a Canadian mining company acquired a license
from the Peruvian government to establish a massive surface mine that would
displace one half the town’s population. It would probably severely damage
the water and air quality essential to their health and traditional farming
culture.
For years, Oxfam America has supported an indigenous rights group in
Peru called Coordinara Nacional de Comunidades Afectadas por la Mineria
(CONACAMI). This group helps communities to organize, conduct research
on environmental effects, and inform and mobilize local citizens about the

dangerous and negative effects of mining. In Tambogrande, CONACAMI

helped local leaders organize a referendum that rejected establishing the
mine. Oxfam America brought further pressure to bear on the mining com-
pany through an online alert that brought 5,000 emails to the president of the
company urging him to honor the results of this referendum. The government
is now for the first time negotiating with Oxfam and community leaders.
From the local to international levels, Oxfam has supported the efforts of
this small rural community to strengthen their voices in demanding their
rights to control the environment in which they live. With scientific informa-
tion, community organization, media effect, and the use of technology to
enlist public support, Oxfam has helped this community finally command the
attention of the government.
In helping to forge this chain, a Northern CSO’s accountability begins with
the need for clarity in adding value. Its area of comparative advantage may
rest in advocacy for policy and practice changes in Northern-based institu-
tions. It may, for example, be more valuable and more legitimate to pressure
the World Bank or IMF to change structural adjustment policies that exacer-
bate poverty and starve domestic education budgets than to fund a sprinkling
of new village schools. As a shift to advocacy and policy work grows, the real-
ity and perception of what the Northern CSO is and does may blur. To main-
tain legitimacy in its value chain, Northern CSOs will need to find better ways
of explaining to donors and publics why advocacy may have greater effect
than traditional contributions of “pigs and shovels.”
Northern CSOs will also need to respect boundaries and not engage in
advocacy in the primary political space of Southern partners. This is practical
and an issue of principle. Just as Northern CSOs have a comparative advan-
tage in advocacy with their own governments, so their partners are better
placed to exploit the opportunities and avoid the dangers of advocacy in their
own arenas. More fundamental, a rights-based agenda will be meaningless if
Southern partners and marginalized communities cannot speak in their own
voice and act in their own behalf.
Amplifying and respecting partners’ voices in Zimbabwe. The legitimacy chal-
lenge is constant and requires skilled political analysis, sensitivity, and judg-
ment. For example, Oxfam America funded women’s organizations in Zimba-
bwe to conduct a national education campaign on how proposed
constitutional changes would give primacy to traditional law that awards a
dead husband’s property to his brother, not his wife. It also supported
women’s organizations in educating women voters, particularly in rural
areas, on the issues at stake in a parliamentary election. In doing so, Oxfam
had to carefully analyze the environment and tactfully avoid moving into
Zimbabwean political space so as not to endanger its partners and its staff.
This kind of judgment requires investment by Oxfam in sensitive leadership
on the ground.

STRENGTHENING LEGITIMACY
THROUGH TRANSPARENCY
Public transparency to hold powerbrokers accountable for their actions has

been a rallying cry for CSOs. The outcry has forced public officials and
nonstate institutions to be more accountable to citizens, but these successes
have led governments and others to turn the spotlight around and scrutinize
the operations of CSOs. Some governments and publics once assumed that
CSOs were efficient because they worked close to the problems being tackled.
Now the honeymoon is over.
More than ever, CSOs are being challenged to be more transparent about
their own operations, and be accountable to performance standards measur-
ing their effectiveness. Some challenges come from donor governments
demanding better evidence of the value of their diminishing foreign aid; oth-
ers come from recipient governments eager to undermine donor support to
Northern CSOs; and still others come from an increasingly skeptical citizenry
that wants to know more about how their donations will directly benefit poor
people.
The challenge faces all NGOs but is greatest for rights-based CSOs because
their efforts to change structures and systems by redistributing power to allow
greater equity in accessing a decent livelihood, basic social services, security,
and other economic and social rights is much harder to measure. The outputs
of service delivery agencies are concrete; it is easier to quantify the efficiency
of their work. Indeed much of the international language for measuring per-
formance, including development assistance committee (DAC) indicators or
those of the International Standards Organization (ISO), is designed to cap-
ture tangible results (such as numerical increases in schools or children’s vac-
cinations) within specific intervals.7 The critical work of economic and social
rights-based organizations is often missed by using these short-term indica-
tors. Is an advocacy effort a failure because it did not transform a policy over-
night? How does one measure the pay-offs from capacity building? That is,
when and how do advocacy and investments in organizational capacity make
a difference in the lives of poor people?
Donor pressures for evaluation systems based on narrow indicators of
accountability can be counterproductive. They may force CSOs back into the
role of being state subcontractors for service delivery, leading them to aban-
don their core missions of advocating and instituting economic and social
change. Short-term quantitative indicators devalue the long-term contribu-
tion CSOs make in policy formulation and program development. This does
not mean that rights-based Northern NGOs should not be held accountable. It
means that more accurate standards need to be developed.
CSOs can contribute by investing resources in defining their work and set-
ting benchmarks of progress toward systemic changes that can be communi-
cated to stakeholders. This is easier said than done. First, the mission is

political and therefore likely to spark controversy. By asserting rights for live-
lihoods, basic services, security, and participation, a commitment is made to
changing the rules of the game, thus creating a new balance of power or social
contract. This process is Burkian rather than revolutionary. It seeks to trans-
form rather than overturn the system, to support incremental reforms that
may yield mixed results over the short and medium terms, but create an irre-
sistible momentum for long-term democratic change.
Keeping a steady course will not be easy because rights-based CSOs have
multiple stakeholders with overlapping, but not always convergent, interests.
Unlike private-sector firms accountable to boards and stockholders for return
on investment, or welfare/service delivery organizations accountable to
donors and recipients for efficient provision of services, economic and social
rights CSOs are accountable to donors, partner organizations, and allies for
results that may be differently perceived in the short run and that are not easily
described much less quantified. Donors understandably want to see concrete
results in the lives of poor people now. Investing to change the rules of the
game may appear quixotic or even radical to citizens and governments in the
North that view the struggle for economic and social rights through the Cold
War prism of the New International Economic Order or the now defunct
socialist model. Engaging private and public donors in the dialogue about a
new social contract is therefore essential to the transformative mission and
vision of an economic and social rights organization.
Dealing with tensions among diverse stakeholders requires careful listen-
ing to identify within the noise the area where interests converge and bringing
that to the fore. There is an essential synergy between the ability to communi-
cate the common purpose and the ability of strategic leadership to build
cross-functional focus on specific outcomes that fit into a rights-based vision.
Specific changes in rules, structures, and systems must be linked to an evolv-
ing social contract and demonstrably generate sustainable improvements in
people’s lives. One must also show that such changes are not a zero-sum
game, but cumulatively beneficial for all segments of global society. For exam-
ple, tariff protections for fledgling industries, real land reform, or protections
and living wages for workers in Mexico and Central America might be a better
long-term investment for North Americans than fortifying the Mexico-U.S.
border.
Communicating complexities requires more than the nanoseconds of
sound bites available in today’s world. Expanding the audience and its atten-
tion span starts with an investment in staff who combine communication
skills with a sophisticated understanding of the issues and players. Accessible
digests must be developed to show how long-term structural changes or
adjustments to the social contract result in win-win benefits. Benchmark indi-
cators and stories that make them personal must be captured at the local,
national, and global levels to show how changes have affected or failed to
affect the lives of individuals and communities. Will donors be willing to

support the shift in budget allocations required to pay for improved advo-
cacy? They will if they understand how the new priorities are not designed to
replace good fieldwork but extend it.
BUILDING CREDIBILITY TO SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER
Rights-based Northern CSOs may be small compared to the task before

them and relatively powerless compared to government and the private sec-
tor in defining terms of the social contract, but when they are able to articulate
their message skillfully their voice can resonate powerfully. This power stems
from their credibility. The recent, effective campaign for World Bank debt for-
giveness demonstrates its effectiveness.
The credibility of Northern CSOs is grounded in their connections to
marginalized peoples and communities, giving them a front-row view of
what causes poverty and what sustains it. Northern CSOs documenting how
debt repayment burdens constrict government funding of basic education in
Mozambique or Uganda have persuaded members and committees of the U.S.
Congress and other legislative bodies to sit up and take notice. By bringing
representatives of Southern CSOs to talk to World Bank governors, Northern
CSOs shrink the distance between statistics and conscience, providing a face
and a story and bearing witness to the human costs of heavy indebtedness that
are missing from official reports. The credibility of the Northern CSO derives
from its relationship with Southern partners. The need for a new global policy
agenda was not dreamed up in an office building in Europe or the United
States. It arose in response to the very real damage being done to the people
with whom Oxfam works in the field. This agenda is not intended to replace
the economic development efforts of our partners but to remove institutional
barriers blocking their way. Inputs from leaders of partner organizations
around the world not only help us identify the barriers but also help us keep
our work in perspective. Although debt forgiveness and rules changes that
further economic and social rights are important, they say, development work
in the field begins with sound small enterprise, credit, or training programs
that help the poor keep their heads above water. Once they begin to do that,
the structural issues holding them down become apparent.
Credibility with the World Bank and those who make the rules, however,
depends on more than an honest brokerage with the voices of the deprived. It
derives from the capacity of Northern CSOs to do sound research and to pro-
pose practical policy alternatives. One must identify the way out of problems,
such as heavy indebtedness, and suggest how to keep them from recurring.
This implies investment up front in research, analysis, and policy formation,
which obviously puts pressure on CSO budgets that are already stretched
thin.

MANAGING TENSIONS FROM MULTIPLE ROLES
Rights-based Northern CSOs must learn to navigate the tensions that arise
in playing multiple roles. Contradictions need to be managed externally with
partners in the value chain, and internally with how work is compartmental-
ized and prioritized. An institution that funds, links, and learns to facilitate
the work of Southern CSOs is also an advocate in its own political space.
Because the competencies for being a facilitator and an actor differ—as do the
time frames for each kind of work—a Northern CSO must build internal
bridges between two skill sets and temporal perspectives to help everyone
pull together rather than pulling the value chain apart. Advocacy staff will
normally choose to focus on policy and practice changes that are achievable in
the medium term. Staff working with Southern partners are centered on
capacity building for the long haul and, in solidarity with their partners, may
demand advocacy that is long term, off the Northern CSO’s agenda, or un-
achievable. Special attention must be paid to shared political arenas, such as
advocacy with international institutions, where unequal financial and infor-
mation resources may keep the views of Southern partners from being fully
aired.
The differing demands of funding programs in the South and fund-raising
in the North can create separate cultures inside the organization, a problem
faced by all nonprofits but more acutely by Northern rights-based CSOs. As
resources move into capacity building and advocacy, results may become less
quantifiable and predictable. The grant-making staff, particularly those based
in the South, understand this. Knowing the realities that partner organizations
and their constituencies face, program staff is reluctant to commit to measur-
able short-term goals given the complexity of achieving socioeconomic
change. For example, if a country’s legislation creates barriers to savings and
credit services for small entrepreneurs, program staff may want to support
partners’ advocacy for legislative change rather than more microfinance, even
though the return on advocacy investment is unlikely to arrive for years.
Meanwhile fund-raisers in the CSO focus their efforts on donors—the life-
blood of any nonprofit. Professionally, they are accustomed to measuring per-
formance because fund-raising results are readily quantified periodically.
Their work also makes them impatient for results from the field because of the
need to explain to donors how money is “getting to the people who need it.”
This internal tension between grant makers and fund-raisers mirrors ten-
sions between Northern and Southern stakeholders over accountability. Man-
aging this tension thus becomes integral to the mission of creating a value
chain for real effect. Budgets are concrete expressions of agency priorities, and
they will reflect the new vision. Allocations for direct investment in grassroots
efforts that “get to the people who need it” will remain important because they
are the bedrock of institutional credibility. As more funds are funneled to
advocacy and to research, it will be the task of leadership and management to

make sure that the advocacy is achieving policy and practice changes that
make a difference at the local level.
Multiple roles bring reinforced results in Cambodia. Local laws that discrimi-
nate against particular groups of people generally bring wealth to others in
power. In Cambodia, Oxfam America has long worked with fishermen in poor
communities, supporting organizations that teach them how to protect their
environment and fishing resources.
However, the old parable about teaching a man to fish and he will eat for-
ever only works if the man has access to the pond. In Cambodia, laws entitle
powerful individuals to charge community members to fish in their tradi-
tional waters. Exhausted fish stocks, insufficient food for poor families, and a
climate of violence have been the result, and the situation is getting worse.
Real progress is impossible without a change in the law itself. As a result,
Oxfam supports local organizations working to reduce the power of the fish-
ing lot owners and to agitate for the enforcement of existing laws that protect
fishermen’s rights. This effort has seen some very tangible results, with new
rules that cut back on the acreage granted to fishing lot owners. Oxfam will
continue to spend funds to support work that is “getting to the people who
need it,” whether that work teaches how to fish (better) or makes the pond
available, stops its pollution, or protects it from other environmental hazards.
Fund-raising will also need to be revisited. Nonprofits have tried to hold
down fund-raising and purely administrative costs, usually below 25% of
budget outlays. Peter Frumkin and Mark Kim (2001) at the Kennedy School
have noted, however, that U.S. nonprofits “that spend more marketing them-
selves to the donating public do better at raising contributed income than
organizations focused on leaner, more efficient operations” (p. 192). The point
here is that “marketing the organization” means “getting the word out.” A
fund-raising campaign is not just a vehicle for raising resources; it is an oppor-
tunity to educate the public about the structural origins of poverty and the
new paradigm for remediating it.
TARGETING PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS ON WHAT NEEDS TO BE CHANGED
For most Northern CSOs, the shift in brand toward a more rights- or
justice-based identity involves a major revision in how the agency’s various
publics and stakeholders think of it. Oxfam America’s brand in the United
States, for example, has been identified very narrowly with seeds, tools, and
hunger relief. Oxfam America now faces the challenge of broadening its pub-
lic image beyond this welfare model and linking it more directly to concerns
about equity and justice.
Condensing the complexities of globalization and development into a con-
cise, compelling message that embodies the new brand identity is daunting.
Changing deeply rooted perceptions of traditional stakeholders takes time.
The key is making sure that communications outreach—even when it

concerns “seeds and tools”—addresses the nature and causes of poverty and
what the organization is doing about it. The message can be expected to
sharpen as the new paradigm is implemented in the field and results are
shared and digested within the organization.
The balance between rights campaigning and development practice is
dynamic; each ideally should feed the other. In an era of globalization, work
exclusively at the community level soon hits a glass ceiling. Yet action at the
community level must continue if the marginalized are to have a seat at the
table in negotiating a new social contract. This fundamental work organizes
the poor and informs the rest of us about what is happening to them and what
needs to be done to help them. Leveraging effective change requires us to see
the structural linkages between the local and global drivers of poverty and to
work with local and national partners to highlight and combat them. Such an
effort will not be sustainable unless stakeholders are persuaded that increased
investment of Oxfam staff and financial resources in issue-based advocacy is
essential for real and lasting effect on the lives and prospects of poor people.
MANAGING THE ORGANIZATION FOR CHANGE
Meeting the key challenges facing rights-based organizations as they

implement their vision requires moving leadership and management styles
beyond those found in a welfare or service delivery agency. Some differences
are matters of degree. Others represent new competencies.
ARTICULATING VISION DURING A PARADIGM SHIFT
Leadership in any organization must understand the landscape in which

the institution exists, find its bearings to set the right course forward, and steer
to keep efforts on track. All of these tasks are complicated by a fundamental
shift in landscape. Globalization has forced the leaders of CSOs to explain the
new circumstances in which they operate and to devise a new strategy for
moving forward. Because we are in the middle of a paradigm shift that is still
poorly understood, leaders of rights-based organizations need to invest sig-
nificant time and intellectual capital in articulating the rights vision and build-
ing consensus among staff, board, and other stakeholders about what must be
done and how to do it.
The ability to communicate enabled transformational leaders like Franklin
Roosevelt and Martin Luther King to overcome great odds in assembling
coalitions to restructure the American social contract around economic distri-
bution and race. Leaders of rights-based CSOs now need to develop similar
competencies in energizing deeper understanding of poverty and exclusion
on a global scale. Americans have instinctively and generously responded to
human privation and suffering abroad, from drought in Ethiopia in the 1980s
to recent hurricanes and earthquakes in Central America and floods in

Mozambique. Private donors, small and large, also contribute to development

beyond disaster relief, seeking to end the suffering and poverty in the lives of
individual people.
Helen Epstein’s (2001) recent review of health, published in the New York
Review of Books, begins to capture what leaders need to communicate about a
new kind of disaster that endangers all of the progress so many communities
and individuals have worked so hard for years to make. She cited evidence of
growing inequities in health care and the real decline in health status among
populations increasingly marginalized by and from the global economy. She
sees a breakdown of the “collective conscience” that should regulate human
affairs: “The powerful institutions that increasingly govern all our lives have
thrown the lives of the poor into flux, and nothing has emerged that might
soften the blows of the economic, social and personal crises which these insti-
tutions themselves increasingly cause.” One could blame, as she noted, the
Western neo-liberal politicians, corporate CEOs, IMF, and World Bank econo-
mists or corrupt government leaders. However, finding easy scapegoats, she
seemed to say, is not the answer. We need to look at how the values of our cur-
rent social contract give greater priority to protecting Western creditors than
to assuring people’s right to a sustainable livelihood, security, voice, and basic
health and education.
Part of the problem is that our understanding of human rights has been fil-
tered by legal discourse during the past half-century (Steiner & Alston, 2000).
That is understandable given the legacy of the Human Rights Charter and
efforts to incorporate its principles into national constitutions and law codes.
Although activists with limited legal training have acted as shock troops for
the human rights crusade, lawyers have remained its high priests. Even
though the literature on political and civil rights and the constitutional and
other institutional means to guarantee them is highly developed, our under-
standing of social and economic rights is not. Development organizations try-
ing to apply human rights to their practice have found little precedent or
research to guide them; the really innovative thinking has just begun. What
seems clear at the outset is that the universalistic approach characterized by
traditional human rights activism is too simplistic for the current challenge.
CSOs making the transition to a rights-based approach need to take a prag-
matic approach to progress on the ground while working with academics and
human rights specialists to identify key conceptual challenges and develop
imaginative responses that sacrifice neither the quality of the work nor the
seriousness of the Human Rights Charter. The challenge is particularly acute
in developing appropriate yardsticks at the national level, with targets for
improvement, so that governments abrogating social contracts can be held
accountable by their citizens and the international community in the same
way they have been for abusing civil and political rights.
Articulating this vision is a tall order for leaders of rights-based CSOs. In
fact, the goal is to make the CSO itself a leader in the emerging global move-
ment for a new social contract. That leadership begins with transforming the

focus and skill sets of the agency’s board and staff. Leadership needs a broad
strategy for mobilizing board and staff around the rights framework, and a
management plan to tightly focus attention on specific policy and practice
changes.
ENVISIONING BOARDS AS LEADERS
Boards of economic and social rights organizations face specific challenges.

The bottom-line fiduciary responsibility of CSO boards goes beyond assuring
the financial integrity of the organization. They are also responsible for assur-
ing that funds raised are spent for the purposes intended. Moreover, because
board members are increasingly asked to take on fund-raising responsibili-
ties, they need to be able to articulate what the organization is doing and what
is being achieved. Board members can be effective ambassadors for spreading
word about the need for structural and political changes that need to be and
are being made. To do that, the board must be well informed. It needs to be
supported by staff able to articulate the rights, change agenda, and to set and
monitor organization-wide performance indicators.
Boards may also need to be more deeply involved in the substance of
agency work, without getting mired in micromanagement decisions. Formal
board meetings with set agendas, limited time frames, and closed to staff
input are a poor recipe for board involvement in advancing the agency’s mis-
sion. Boards are voluntary, so there are limits to what members can be asked to
contribute in time and effort. To maximize their contributions and effective-
ness, boards can schedule meetings in the field to see results and meet partners
firsthand; board members can visit the field individually or in groups to
explore specific areas of interest; and periodic roundtables and briefings can
be held with staff members about developing and analyzing key results and
performance indicators. Some of these proposals cost money, but they offer
dividends beyond enhanced fiduciary oversight. Boards, with their diverse
membership, may well be a microcosm of the agency’s multiple stakeholders.
Some board members may represent organizations of the poor and excluded
in countries from the South; others may come from the private sector, repre-
senting business leaders concerned about the consequences of economic and
social inequities and who understand the need to find win-win situations out
of enlightened self-interest. Representative boards can provide critical leader-
ship to building a chain of value among the stakeholders of the CSO and to
forming broader alliances in the global society beyond.
STAFFING A RIGHTS-BASED CSO
A strong board is necessary to make a rights-based CSO highly effective. A

strong staff is fundamental to any organizational success. To improve the odds
of success, leadership needs to shape management practices. Recruitment,
orientation, and staff development can all play a part in supporting alignment

around a rights-based vision. Senior managers can strive to build a

boundaryless organization, in which core values are shared across functional
units so that diverse skill sets mesh rather than clash. Recruitment and devel-
opment of staff with cross-functional capacities can play a catalytic
role—along with induction, training, and reward systems—to create a culture
of aligned work. The new challenges of the rights-based approach lie in net-
working, in the complex layering of problems and solutions, in the variety of
stakeholders and allies, and in the ability to think outside and inside the box to
cope with the speed of change and the ambitious and transformative nature of
the work. For a rights-based organization with practical aspirations to effect
change, the task is to recruit and develop staff adept at devising strategies for
sharing power that eliminate inequities, and also, in the long run, make all or
nearly all parties into winners. In practical terms this means, for example,
working for trade rules that allow producers in poor countries to increase their
incomes through greater access to developed markets, whereas richer econo-
mies will benefit from reciprocal opportunities generated by the expanded
purchasing power in newly developing markets for imported goods.
The following organizational competencies are required for effective
rights-based work and offer a guide to staff recruitment, development, and
goals:
• ability to find, process, and route the right information rapidly;

• agility in recognizing and applying the potential of information
technologies;
• capacity for rapid analysis, decision making, and action;
• substantive technical expertise in areas related to carrying out core
work;
• ability to stay on focus for medium- and long-term strategies, to decline
most work outside the focus, and to know when to make strategic excep-
tions;
• seamless synergy among functional units in the organization, making
the connections between global and local, and among the different types
of work;
• an internal culture that rewards innovation, within the focus;
• broad-based ability to communicate the rationale for the rights-based
approach, the core work, and institutional performance to a wide range
of audiences;
• communication skills to market the rights-based mission, harnessing
seamless synergies between program work and fund-raising and out-
reach to create and extend the value chain between stakeholders and ex-
cluded communities;
• diverse funding sources and a reliable income stream to enable the orga-
nization to take positions that may be controversial to some stake-
holders.

GOING BACK INTO THE FUTURE
This article has looked at why some development organizations are mov-
ing toward a rights-based perspective and the challenges inherent in making
that course correction. The decade following the Cold War left us with a for-
eign policy bereft of focus and direction. The inability to imagine a better
world has left development to the whims of markets and to those who control
and prosper from the movement of capital, goods, and investment. Leaders
and citizens no longer saw how support for international development mean-
ingfully contributed to their own national interest or security.
Yet like Alice’s wonderland, ours is a world of paradox. A cornucopia of
wealth has been created by markets linking the world in unprecedented ways
while further disenfranchising the unconnected. Although the global commu-
nity is growing more compact and intimate, the inequalities and inequities in
wealth are growing ever more significant. Despite the obvious instability
being brewed by this explosive mix of intimacy and inequity, the world’s lead-
ers have been bewitched by complacency, naively assuming (as has been their
wont) that in time the market will right all wrongs, correct all disequilibria,
and resolve all disruptions to its smooth and efficient functioning.
The romance of globalization that markets are self-perfecting and function
without distortion in the best interest of people is, unfortunately, unfounded.
Those willing to look will find the truth that markets are grossly imperfect in
much of the world, where benefits have been siphoned, diverted, and privat-
ized to enrich a small minority. Even where markets work as intended, the sad
truth is that they are morally neutral and are designed purposefully to opti-
mize profit and value, not to equitably distribute public goods, protect work-
ers or the environment, nurture the diversity of our cultural heritage, or safe-
guard the commonweal.
In a world in which development is synonymous with markets and little
else, it is increasingly imperative that development organizations formulate
strong normative positions on a wide range of issues. The only antidote to the
dark side of globalization is for CSOs to morally and ethically intervene on
behalf of members and partners whose daily lives never let them forget the
downside risks about which economists hypothesize.
A rights-based approach to development offers a unique new approach to
addressing the kinds of poverty issues that confront us in the new millennium.
It takes us beyond the charity and welfare models that have dominated our
discourse for the past 70 years and puts the questions we ask into sharper
focus. It transforms needs into rights, capabilities, and responsibilities. It puts
the state’s responsibility to its citizens under a microscope to examine what, in
fact, is the national social contract.
We attempted to realistically portray the strategic and organizational chal-
lenges facing development organizations that want to make a transition
towards a rights-based methodology. The challenges are many and varied:

conceptual, organizational, and tactical. Despite the risk, however, the new
approach may leverage benefits for the poor far beyond what social welfarism
has delivered.
Perhaps the most significant advantage of the paradigm shift is to anchor
the debate about equity and justice in international principles already
endorsed by the international community and that have some legitimacy in
international law. In an era when nations are subject to a multiplicity of exter-
nal forces affecting the state’s capacity to address the needs of its citizens, we
must begin to think boldly about how to discuss justice on a global scale. One
can already glimpse the emergence of global civil society actors who question
the legitimacy of pretender institutions that would appropriate for them-
selves substantial power over the distribution of the world’s economic assets,
shaping the destiny of millions, if not billions, of people.
Although the nature of and fora for debates about power relations in the
future global community remain unclear, the debate has begun. We live in an
exciting time when it may actually become possible to speak meaningfully
about global social contracts that safeguard the environment, livelihoods, and
security. To achieve such bold goals, however, we must discard 19th-century
theories that mask our current realities. We must risk seeing the world and our
work in development in new ways. To do so is to rediscover the unfulfilled
promise of our recent past. Using the UN Human Rights Charter, in the holis-
tic manner in which its authors intended it to be read, offers us the possibility
of creating a future in which all our children would want to live.
Notes
1. The Covenant on Civil and Political Rights was also agreed to in 1966. See also the 1986 Con-
vention on the Right to Development, against which the United States cast the only dissenting
vote.
2. The emphasis on human dignity in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cul-
tural Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in 1966 was reaffirmed
by the Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986.
3. Links could be made between Jochnick’s concept of dignity and Amartya Sen’s concept of
“substantive freedoms—the capabilities—to choose a life one has reason to value” (Sen, 1999,
p. 74).
4. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted by the UN World Conference on
Human Rights, 1993.
5. The UN Conference in Monterrey in March 2002 sought to reverse this trend and called for
increases in international assistance to halve the number of people trapped in severe poverty. The
United States proposed to increase its assistance, beginning in 2004, but at levels below their Cold
War peak. It would also tie these funds to countries adopting “sound” economic policies, in other
words to countries integrating into global markets.
6. Paradoxically, a certain still small segment of U.S. public opinion rejects and has an unnatu-
ral fear of all international institutions and governance and would simply withdraw from the
game rather than widen the social contract even as global economic forces increasingly influence
domestic jobs and commerce.

7. Indicators designed by the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization for Eco-
nomic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to rationalize measurement of outcomes of devel-
opment projects.
References
Barker, E. (1969). Social contract: Essays by Locke, Hume and Rousseau. Oxford, UK: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Center for Economic and Social Rights. (1995, October). Developing a common framework for the pro-
motion of economic, social and cultural rights. Workshop I Summary Report. Retrieved from
http://www.cesr.org/publications.htm.
Eade, D. (Ed.). (1998). Development and rights. Oxford, UK: Oxfam Great Britain.
Epstein, H. (2001, April 12). Time of indifference. New York Review of Books.
Frumkin, P., & Kim, M. T. (2001, May/June). Strategic positioning and the financing of non-profit
organizations: Is efficiency rewarded in the contributions marketplace? Public Administration
Review, 266-275.
Glendon, M. A. (2001). A world made new: Eleanor Roosevelt and the universal declaration of human
rights. New York: Random House.
Jochnick, C. (1999, February). The human rights challenge to global poverty. Center for Economic and
Social Rights, New York, NY. Retrieved from http://www.cesr.org/publications.htm
Katrougalos, G. (n.d.). Social justice, economic development and human rights. Injustice Studies, 2.
Retrieved from http://www3.ftss.ilstu.edu/injustice/
Korey, W. (2001). NGOs and the universal declaration of human rights: A curious grapevine. New York:
Palgrave.
Korten, D. (2001). When corporations rule the world. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler.
Lauren, P. G. (1998). The evolution of international human rights: Visions seen. Philadelphia: Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania Press.
McMurtry, J. (1998). Unequal freedoms: The global market as an ethical system. West Hartford, CT:
Kumarian Press.
Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. New York: Knopf.
Sengupta, A. (2000). The right to development as a human right (Working paper). Boston:
Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Center, Harvard University.
Steiner, H., & Alston, P. (2000). International human rights in context: Law, politics and morals. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Oxfam International. (2000). Towards global equity: Oxfam International strategic plan, 2001-2004.
Oxford, UK: Oxfam International.
World Bank. (2000). World development report 2000/2001—Attacking poverty. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Raymond C. Offenheiser has served as president of Oxfam America since 1995. Before joining Oxfam, he
worked for the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and South America, for the Inter-American Foundation, and
for the Save the Children Federation. His experience encompasses community-based resource management,
enterprise development, human rights and local governance, and international security.
Susan H. Holcombe is currently visiting professor in the Sustainable International Development Program
at the Heller School, Brandeis University. She was the director of Global Programs at Oxfam America from
1996 to 2000. She has served in country-based offices of UNICEF, UNFPA, and other multilateral agencies
in China, Sudan, the South Pacific, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. She has a particular interest in development
management and is author of Managing to Empower.

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Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing a Rights-Based Approach to Development: An Oxfam

The online version of this article can be found at:

Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action

Email Alerts: http://nvs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

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Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing

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DEVELOPMENT MODELS AND

Why has Oxfam America embraced a rights-based approach? What does it

DISILLUSIONMENT WITH THE WELFARE MODEL

Most development programming is rooted in Western European and

For 50 years, we tinkered with a welfarist approach. Development institutions

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RIGHTS-BASED DEVELOPMENT AS AN ALTERNATIVE MODEL

A UNIFIED VISION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

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collapsing health systems, inadequate water supplies, privatized commons,

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Mainstreaming a rights-based approach into our organizations is a com-

BROADENING OUR VISION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

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Jochnick (1999) reminded us that “the distinction between individuals as

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There are important lessons for development organizations like Oxfam to

• He challenged the traditional cleavage between development and rights

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT

We next need to examine the implications Jochnick’s broader, integrated

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instead have concentrated on managing their nations’ participation in global

LINKING RIGHTS WITH FIELD-BASED REALITIES

Development professionals need a practical conceptual base to orient their

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Civil/Political Environmental Social/Econ

Figure 1. Rights-Based Development Model (National Level)

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1. Socialist model 2. Free market model

3. Economy dwarfs state power model

government may also feel constrained by the wishes of other states or by

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indivisible, in practice civil and political rights are usually enshrined in a

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Figure 2 offers a rudimentary diagram for the emerging system of global

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Transnational Civil Society actors

Figure 2. The Emerging System of Global Governance

• the right to a sustainable livelihood

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Figure 3. Legitimacy, Accountability, and the Challenge of Global Governance

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rules on the livelihoods of low-income farmers has convinced Oxfam to align

CONFRONTING THE CHALLENGES OF IMPLEMENTATION

In addition to Oxfam, many Northern NGOs—Save the Children, World

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legally adjudicative. As the next paragraphs suggest, these objections rein-

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Working to empower marginalized citizens within states and to build a

THE ROLE OF NORTHERN NGOS IN AN AGE OF GLOBALIZATION

Conceptual clarity requires moving beyond abstract declarations to gain an

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