Human Rights and Social Accountability

There is an emerging consensus within the international development community to subscribe to a human rights based approach to development. Most countries have signed onto international human rights conventions that have important implications for national legislative frameworks. The World Bank has thus far not directly endorsed a human rights based approach to development, but has argued that it contributes to their realization through tangible development outcomes as well as through support for governance and public sector reforms. In recent years the World Bank has been supporting “social accountability” initiatives which share many features with the rights based approach to development. The purpose of this paper is to explore the common features and linkages between rights based approaches to development and social accountability and suggest how social accountability initiatives can be strengthened by recognizing more explicitly the principles of the rights based approach. The first section of the paper presents an overview of both rights based approach to development and social accountability. The section also outlines five principles of the rights based approach to development, namely: • the poor should be placed at the center of the design, control, oversight and evaluation of the development projects that affect them • the institutions responsible for implementing development programs should be fully accountable for their actions • non-discrimination, equality and inclusiveness should underlie the practice of development • citizen participation and voices should be “scaled up” and linked with national and international policy processes and international rights frameworks • rights based approach should develop an active linkage between development and law The second section analyses four specific cases of social accountability initiatives which have served as models for or are directly supported by the World Bank: the Bangalore Citizen Report Cards implemented by the Public Affairs Centre in India, the Malawi Community Scorecard implemented by CARE, the Justice for the Poor program initiated by the Government of Indonesia with support of the World Bank, and the construction of a “System of Social Accountability” for public expenditure management developed by the Government of Peru and supported by the World Bank and other development partners. Using these cases, the author finds a high degree of mutual reinforcement between the rights based approach to development and social accountability initiatives. The author points to three challenges that social accountability initiatives need to address: (a) taking an exclusive local level perspective on issues, (b) top-down design of initiatives, and (c) failure to link up with the legal structure. Social accountability entrepreneurs intent on taking up rights based approaches to development would do well to explicitly recognize and address these elements in their work. SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT PAPERS Participation and Civic Engagement