The change in process among other objective is intended to seek a change in attitude and remove stereotype and perceptions in employees. Discuss this assertion By ngambakevile One of the highest priorities of international development is to reduce poverty. In recent years, the definition of poverty has evolved together with a better understanding of the nature of poverty itself and its underlying determinants. Human rights provide a normative framework in which vulnerable groups are empowered and recognized as principal actors and subjects of law.
They are not merely perceived as victims. Empowerment of the poor develops another dimension of poverty since empowerment is the expansion of assets and capabilities of poor people to participate in, negotiate with, influence, control, and hold accountable institutions that affect their lives UN (1997) In 1990, the World Banks World Development Report gave a key role to poverty reduction in development by integrating in its definition of poverty not only low income, but also capabilities such as health, education and nutrition, and by stressing the interactions among these dimensions.
History tells us how people have had to fght for their rights. The ornerstone in this struggle has always been political activism and people’s movement’s national liberation movements, peasants movements, women’s movements, movements for the rights of indigenous people. Often, the desire of people to be free and to enjoy their rights started the struggle. At the beginning of the 20th century a scant 10% of the world’s people lived in independent nations. By its end the great majority lived in freedom, making their own choices.
Alston (2002) described The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 as a breakthrough, ushering in a new era with the world community taking on realization of human ights as a matter of common concern and a collective goal of humanity. In tackling this question of empowerment process, the empowerment process will be assessed whether the process that is derived from human rights that can bring about development. Indeed, human rights provide a framework for poverty eradication in different ways.
Poverty is at the same time the cause and the consequence of human rights violations: a cause because the poor remain invisible and, thus, far from attempts to help them claim their rights, and because the manifestations of poverty are hunger, homelessness and illiteracy, among many others a consequence, ecause poverty can derive from an action or omission, that is, a violation of a human right, such as the lack of access to basic healthcare resources and forced eviction for example, in other words, poverty reflects a violation of human rights where the poor are deprived of the enjoyment of those human rights, or simply have no rights at all in this case if the poor have no privileged to exercise their human rights then the process of development would not take place. Narayan (2002) explains that empowering the poor men and women requires the removal of formal and informal ndividually or collectively and limit their choices.
The key formal institutions include the laws, rules, and regulations up held by states, markets, civil society, and international agencies. Informal institutions include norms of social solidarity, sharing, social exclusion, and corruption. If these issues are not addressed then the process of empowering the poor cannot exist thereby hindering the development process. Empowerment refers broadly to the expansion of freedom of choice and action to shape one’s life. It implies control over resources and decisions. For poor eople, that freedom is severely curtailed by their voice less ness and power lessness in relation particularly to the state and markets Stern (2005). Since powerlessness is embedded in a culture of unequal institutional relations.
A growing body of evidence points to the linkages between empowerment and development effectiveness both at the society-wide level and at the grass roots level. Empowerment approaches can strengthen good governance, which in turn enhances growth prospects. When citizens are engaged, exercise their voice, and demand accountability, government performance improves and corruption is harder to sustain. Citizen participation can also build consensus in support of difficult reforms needed to create a positive investment climate and induce growth. Stephens, etal. (2006), In addition, the empowerment agenda supports development effectiveness by promoting growth patterns that are pro-poor.
This involves reducing inequalities by investing in poor people’s capabilities through education and access to basic health care, as well as by increasing their access to land, financial capital, and markets. Since poverty is multidimensional, poor people need a range of assets and capabilities at the ndividual level, such as health, education, and housing and at the collective level (such as the ability to organize and mobilize to take collective action to solve their problems. Because state actions create the conditions in which poor people and other actors make decisions, the primary focus of this book is on state reform to improve provision of basic services, local and national governance, pro-poor market development, and access to Justice.
These reforms are premised on a mindset and values shaped by the view of poor people as partners and initiators of development ather than as problems The Millennium Development Goals a commitment of the international community have become the core instrument in the fght against poverty. They also form the basis of national poverty reduction strategies, despite all efforts, hopes of attaining the target of reducing extreme poverty by half in 201 5 are dwindling fast. Poverty continues to increase year after year according to the IMF/ World Bank Global Monitoring Report Stern, (2005) Human rights, and human development share a pre-occupation with necessary outcomes for improving people’s lives, but also with better processes being people-centered, they reflect a undamental concern with institutions, policies, and processes as participatory and comprehensive in coverage as possible, respecting the agency of all individuals.
To assert a human right to free elementary education is to claim much more than that it would be a good thing for everyone to have an elementary education or even that everyone should have an education. Education increases the number of possible ways of escaping poverty. Defining education in terms of rights enables a right- holder to know about his or her entitlements, and thus provides the capacity to claim Nations (1997) define education as an ‘overarching right’ because its enjoyment empowers other human rights. It comprises not only formal schooling, but also all learning processes provided by life experiences that enable a person to develop their skills, including capacities, talents, abilities and personality.
Education is therefore both a civil and political right, and an economic, social and cultural right. Indeed, education as a civil and political right requires governments to allow the establishment of schools respecting freedom of and in education. Education as a ocial and economic right requires governments to ensure that free and compulsory education is available to all school-age children. Education as a cultural right proclaims the respect of cultural diversity with regard to the inclusion of minorities, their languages and an education in accordance with their customs and values. Human rights have intrinsic value as ends in themselves. They also have instrumental value.
There are causal links between the realization of one right and that of rights to food, rights to free speech, rights to education and so on. These rights directly expand human freedoms and human development. They can also supplement and reinforce one another and when human rights are guaranteed by law, poor people can use legal instruments to secure them. SIDA (2006), Access to information is power. Two-way information flows from government to citizens and from citizens to government are critical for responsible citizenship and responsive and accountable governance. Informed citizens are better equipped to take advantage of opportunity, access services, exercise their rights, and hold state and non-state actors accountable.
Many of todays social movements defending economic, ocial and cultural rights arise as protests against government decisions that hurt the livelihoods of poor people, displacement by dams, and environmental damage from clearing forests. Often people have little information about decisions by the government or large businesses that have profound effects on their lives about building schools, roads, water supplies and irrigation systems or about setting up businesses that would create employment or pollute the environment. Poor people are dependent on public provisioning, natural environmental resources and employment for their livelihoods. But they are also least able to get information about important public policy and planning decisions and least able to express their views.
Hence if the poor have access to information they would empower themselves in varies developmental activities thus states have an obligation to put in place decision-making processes that are transparent and open to dialogue, especially with poor people and poor communities. In the commitment to holding itself accountable, the state must accept responsibility for its impact on people’s lives, As UNDPs Poverty Report 2000 points out, “holding governments accountable is a bottom-line equirement for good governance. ” This requires that people be organized, informed and able to claim political space. It also calls for devolution of authority to local governments and transparency in use of public funds.
Many countries are taking initiatives to facilitate participation and accountability. An empowering approach to participation treats poor people as co-producers, with authority and control over decisions and resources devolved to the lowest appropriate level. Inclusion of poor people and other excluded groups in decision making is critical to ensure that limited ommitment to change. However, in order to sustain inclusion and informed participation, it was usually necessary to change rules and processes to create space for people to debate issues, participate in local and national priority setting and budget formation, and access to basic and financial services.
Prada (2011) it is widely acknowledged that the crucial issues of rendering the poor capable of identifying their own priorities and solving their own problems, and of fully involving them in decision-making processes have not adequately been addressed, this have led to omehow derived the poor to access to taking part in decision making. A right based approach to development are making human rights an integral part of development the importance of looking at development goals and policies from a human rights perspective is increasingly recognized. The human rights perspective also assumes growth as importance in development cooperation bilateral and multilateral.
The normative connection between laudable goals and reasons for action does not yield specific duties on the part of other individuals, collectivities or social institutions to ring about human development or to guarantee the achievement of any specified level of human development, or of its components. Alston (2002) considers further the example of the right to a free elementary education. If a girl is not schooled because her parents refuse to send her to school, then the responsibility for the failure and the corresponding blame can be placed on the parents. However, if she cannot be sent to school because the government forbids her going there as, regrettably, some governments have excluded girls, and then the blame can come down not on the parents but on the government. The school facilities are inadequate.
For example, the school may be unable to guarantee that teachers will be regularly present, so that the parents think that it would be unsafe for the young girl to go there. The attribution or sharing of blame can be quite important here, and can be viewed as important to recognize how the effects of different inadequacies in a social system tend to aggravate one another. The willingness of parents to make sacrifices for their children’s schooling will often be diminished when they have reason to doubt that this schooling will significantly benefit their children. The sacrifice of human development is much the same in all these cases, but the analysis of rights, duties and responsibilities must be quite different.
In this respect, concern with duties enhances the ways of Judging the nature and demands of progress. Since the process of human development often involves great struggle, the empowerment involved in the language of claims can be of great practical importance. There are other substantial ways in which ideas of human rights contribute tools to the analysis of social progress offered by the human development approach. Development hinking has traditionally focused on the outcomes of various kinds of social arrangements. Fukuda (2003) points out those Individual rights express the limits on the losses that individuals can permissibly be allowed to bear, even in the promotion of noble social goals.
Rights protect individuals and minorities from policies that benefit the community as a whole but place huge burdens on them. Rights thinking incorporate a distinction between how institutions and officials treat citizens and how they affect them. Human rights monitoring has traditionally focused on the onduct of public officials and the institutional structure within a society. This focus police procedures such as torture and execution without trial minimize the number of violent deaths within a society overall by creating fear and disincentives to crime, they are not celebrated as promoting the human rights to life, liberty and security of the person.
Human rights thinking give special weight to threats from certain official sources, capturing the idea that there is something particularly wrong about harm to people carried out by those responsible for ensuring Justice. Finally, without fficient, accountable and democratic institutions, the voice of the poor will not be heard, poverty reduction and economic growth will not be possible, and gender discrimination will not be eradicated . An adequate institutional framework will allow the poor to participate fully in decision-making processes concerning local development and will address the exclusion of politically marginal groups, particularly women, from decision-making and from the benefits of collective action; UN(1997) Efficient capacity building will allow the poor to improve and/or get basic education (2nd goal).
Without education, economic growth will not be sustainable, and participation in local politics will not be durable; Adequate access of the poor to locally-based and managed, efficient social services and basic infrastructure, especially in the area The promotion of economic development and growth through a number of interrelated measures is designed to promote environmental sustainability (7th goal), to protect renewable productive natural resources and to improve their productivity, to identify household economic opportunities farm and non-farm to generate income. The objectives are the improvement of secure access o food for the poor and the enhancement of household food security (1st goal).
Thus, attacking hungers at the local level essentially necessitate higher agricultural productivity, an improved supply system and increased purchasing power for farm and non-farm households. Furthermore, through its LDP approach, UNCDF links the social goals of the declaration with other goals connected to governance, such as empowerment, human rights of marginal and vulnerable groups, enhancement of local social capital, eradication of all forms of discrimination, equality of opportunity, freedom, livelihoods, employment . n conclusion the assertion that empowerment process which can be derived from human right can kindle development the fact , human rights are fulfilled when individuals enjoy certain goods and freedoms and when there are measures in place to secure these goods and freedoms.
Human rights analysis thus involves assessments of the extent to which institutions and social norms are in place that provide security to the human development achievements within a society However, as MDGs do not analyze the roots of poverty and do not provide a road map to poverty reduction, but only a general poverty- eduction framework, the United nations stresses the importance of MDG. Berne. Sen, a. (1999), development as freedom, oxford university Press, oxford. Deepa Narayan (2002) Empowerment and poverty reduction A Source book Human Right and development. Philip Alston (2002) Human rights and Development towards Mutual Reinforcements Oxford University press, London.
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