Human Rights and Development: A Short Guide for the Vexed and Perplexed

Varun Gauri

May 24, 2010

Human rights based approaches come in many flavors

Treaties: soft law to hard law Constitutional law: judicial review Statutory and administrative law

Equality and universality in service delivery

Redress Due process Participation

Principles for development agencies Norms and values

Rights as “trumps” Rights as weighty claims Rights as principles for institutional

design

Myths about human rights and economics

The human rights approach means big government

Human rights are silent on tradeoffs

Economists are not concerned with accountability

Economists are only concerned with income per head

Educational rights claims in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa A political economy to human rights: shift to rights

discourse changes the resources used to make claims Less litigation than in health

AIDS exceptionalism Less middle class use of educational facilities Harder to monitor than drugs

More university than primary litigation Indonesian case on spending Nigerian case banning private schools Brazilian cases on disability and access South African cases on language rights

Illustrative cases on the right to education The right to education implies the right to:

require local or national government to spend more require due process before expelling university

students challenge whether a school has sufficient infrastructure limit the fees that schools can charge challenge competency testing in a particular language require schools to have functioning water or electricity open private religiously affiliated schools disallow corporal punishment in an independent school require a public school to accommodate students with

disabilities allow the government to limit tuition increases in

private schools

Social and economic rights as claims to change rules governing behavior: A typology

State

Providers Recipients

Courts

Regulation Provision or Financing

Provider/recipient obligations

1. State Provision of Services to Recipients

2. State Regulation of Providers

3. Provider/recipient rights and duties