Recalibrating Human Rights-Based Approaches to Development: Are they Progressive and Transformational?
This paper argues that notwithstanding criticisms levelled against Human Rights-Based Approaches (HRBAs) to development, such approaches are progressive and transformational because they provide a framework of standards on which development should be grounded. Further, HRBAs provide an analytic and institutional resource for articulating a wide range of justice concerns in order to challenge power relations and structural impediments in development processes. The paper is not blind to other contributions which have focused on the progressive potential of HRBAs and the attention that has been given to the challenges and pitfalls of implementing such approaches. Therefore, the paper builds on existing literature to advance its main thesis that HRBAs, which flow from human rights that are the subject of binding international legal obligations, are progressive and transformational because they provide a human rights language that can be vernacularised at national and local levels when development interventions are properly contextualised. The paper concludes with the position that despite concerns raised against HRBAs, such approaches offer a principled approach to development that puts a human person at the centre. Thus, concerns against HRBAs do not necessarily erode or invalidate the legitimacy of the transformative and progressive nature of such approaches in development practice.