There have been recent paradigms which are gradually coming into dominance in the intellectual discourse of development, trailing on the shift in development thinking towards human centred perspective and the linking of human rights with development. Prominent development scholars and philosophers like AmartyaSen and Martha Nussbaum have featured landmark works on the concept and practice of the capability approach to development and human development respectively.
The capability approach as an approach to development also provides a framework for the analysis of poverty. The capability approach has been agreed by some as providing the framework that can reflect many ways in which human lives can be blighted, and which thus offers some promise for poverty analysis, Hick (2012:1). The United Nations human development reports have absorbed the capability approach as its measure and methodology for analysing development, specifically human development. The capability approach has provided insights for the human development approach and the human development reports. Capability approach is not a distinct field of study but is rather a lens with which to view the problem of poverty, Hick (2012:2). The capability approach is an approach to the analysis of wellbeing or human development which focuses more on what people have or what people feel. It is another aspect of the human centred dimension in the analysis of wellbeing. AmaryaSen argues that, “we should shift our focus from the ‘means of living’, such as income, to the ‘actual opportunity a person has’ namely, their ‘functioning’s’ and capabilities Sen (2009:253).
In analysing wellbeing Sen defines ‘functioning’s’ as the various things a person succeeds in doing or being such as, participating in the life of society, being healthy and so forth, while capabilities refer to a person’s real or substantive freedoms to achieve such functioning’s e.g. the ability to take part in the life of society. Sen (1999:75). Martha Nussbaum, another philosopher has alongside Sen pioneered the capability approach. The capability approach is a particular approach to wellbeing and advantage in terms of a person’s ability to do valuable acts or reach valuable states of being.
In capability approach abilities are emphasized as against availability, as in certain cases there can be availability but inability or the ability might be constrained on the part of the individual. The capability approach is a derivative of the related human development approach which results from the emphasis on human development in development discourse. Sen’s theory of development as an expansion of capabilities provides the starting point for the human development approach. The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) conscripted this philosophy in its measurement of human development, using tools such as the human development index, the measurement of poverty in human lives rather than incomes through the human poverty index. AmartyaSen defined human development as,“the process of enlarging a person’s “functioning’s’ and capabilities to function and the range of things that a person could do and be in her life” Fukuda-Parr (2003:303). Sen’s work provides the conceptual basis and framework for the UNDP’s human development reports which assesses the quality of life in the nations of the world using the concept of people’s capabilities or their abilities to do and to be certain things deemed valuable.
Human Rights Based Approach: The New Way for Development Practice
A human rights-based approach is a conceptual framework for the process of human development that is normatively based on international human rights standards and operationally directed to promoting and protecting human rights. It seeks to analyse inequalities which lie at the heart of development problems and redress discriminatory practices and unjust distributions of power that impede development progress. Under a human rights based approach, the plans, policies and processes of development are anchored in a system of rights and corresponding obligations established under international law. Sano and Lankford (2010:8).
The human rights based approach commonly known as the HRBA can be practiced in a variety of ways however; the two main common features of the HRBA are that human rights guide the goals of human development while human rights principles guide the process of development. Human rights based approach is a conceptual framework for the process of human development that is normative which is based on international human rights standards and operationally directed to promoting and protecting human rights APF and CESR(2015:7). The human rights based approach is an approach that seeks to integrate the principles, standards, norms and goals of the international human right systems into the process of developing and implementing socio-economic policies. It includes the assessment of living standards, health and well being. These are social and economic rights which constitute the second arm of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights (UNDHR).
Having recognised that the United Nations declaration is incomplete without the economic and social-cultural rights also known as the ICESCR, and that they are interdependent with the civil and political rights also known as the ICCPR, it therefore implies that the continued existence of poverty undermines human rights and attests to the failure of the UNDHR. Rights based approach works to shift the paradigm away from charity towards moral duty imposed on the world through the international consensus on human rights.
In 1997 the Secretary General to the United Nations called to mainstream human rights into all work of the United Nations. Then in 2003 various organisations and agencies met to develop a common understanding of a human rights based approach given six main principles, universality and inalienability, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness, equality and non-discrimination, participation and inclusion, accountability and rule of law.
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