Rights based approach to development and the third world

Kolloquium (Prof. Dr. Susanne Schröter)

Mit Subrata Sankar Bagchi, Ph.D. (Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Bangabasi Evening College)

Abstract
This paper seeks to explore whether or not the rhetorical shifts to the Rights-based Approach to Development, striving for the “constant improvement of the wellbeing of the entire population and of all individual” as propounded by the Vienna Declaration, can bring substantive changes in the life of the Third World people. It questions whether the conditionality of good governance, participatory poverty reduction and development partnerships associated with the recent international aid could actually cause empowerment of the poor and the incorporation of the local knowledge and critique in the development policy making. The author argues that contrary to the claims by the multilateral aid agencies, recent aid policies such as the poverty reduction framework led to a shrinking of the development policy space, which in turn, constrain and undermine the ability of the ‘locals’ to determine and implement their own development policies based on their own priorities. In the absence of the incorporation of local knowledge and critiques, development is seen by the ‘locals’ in the Third World as a “Gift” from the outside agencies rather than a right for them. Thus the author asks—how does development seen as a “Gift” make humanitarian aid or charitable giving a “problem” for both donors and recipients and can Marcel Mauss’ theory of “The Gift” help shed new light on the silencing of the ‘voices of the local’ in development programs on the one hand and the prioritization of donor policy prescriptions and preferences on the other hand. The author further argues that the absence of voices of the ‘local’ in the development policies framed by the aid agencies pose a grave challenge for the Human Rights Approach to Development in the Third World, which among other things, emphasize sovereignty, self-determination, citizens’ participation and the right to development.  

13. Juni 2013, 18 Uhr
Campus Westend, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main
Gebäude "Normative Ordnungen", EG 01
Lübeckerstraße/Ecke Hansaallee

Veranstalter:
Exzellenzcluster "Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen"