Democratic Governance and Human Rights

2007 Commonwealth People’s Forum
Pre-Committee of the Whole National and Regional Consultations

Realising People’s Poptential

Democratic and Rights based Approach to Governance:Linking Human Rights and Citizens Participation

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John Samuel, International Director, ActionAid International

This is one of six papers commissioned by the Commonwealth Foundation to help stimulate discussion in the national and regional consultations being held in preparation for the 2007 Commonwealth People’s Forum and Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. The issues raised are intended to be a springboard for consultation participants to launch into a more in-depth exploration of the issues as they relate to their own context.


Why Governance Matters?

The dominant stream of the ‘good’ governance discourse, promoted by the proponents of neo-liberal economic globalisation, is often a means for effective macro management of economic resources and is primarily apolitical in nature. This techno-managerial approach fails to question the unequal and unjust macroeconomic framework that serves the interest of the powerful. Such an apolitical approach fails to seek accountability from the global institutions like the World Bank, United Nations, International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organisation, and G-8. The good governance paradigm does not emphasise the notion of freedom, human rights and justice. Neo-liberal economic globalisation, seeks to reshape the governance systems and process in such a way so that the policy and political process in developing countries can be controlled by the dominant powers. How does this impact on transforming economies and realising people’s potential?

Governance is a crucial area of interest to citizens because it is the arena where public policies are formulated, legitimised and implemented and it provides the institutional means to claim rights and seek justice. It is the interface through which citizens mediate and interact with the state and seek accountability. Governance is an arena of power relationships that represent the macro and micro power relationships within the social, political and economic arena.

Fighting poverty and injustice requires the realisation of rights and justice through the process of accountable governance. Governance becomes accountable only when people are empowered to ask questions, seek justice, and claim participation. Thus accountable governance and empowerment of the marginalised are two prerequisites to claim human rights and fight poverty and injustice.

Towards a Democratic and Human Rights based approach to Governance

Democracy

Democracy works when citizens and the most marginalised people have the capability to ask questions, seek accountability from the state, and participate in the process of governance. Democracy becomes meaningful when people can shape the state and the state, in turn, is capable of creating enabling social, political, economic and legal conditions wherein people can exercise their rights and realise the freedom from fear and want.

It is not merely elections or universal adult franchise that define the process of democracy. While a constitutional framework and human rights guarantees can form the grammar of democracy, it is always people and the ethical quality of political process that make democracy work. Democracy involves dignity, diversity, dissent, development, participation and accountability. Unless even the last person can celebrate his or her sense of dignity, exercise democratic dissent and inform and participate in the process of governance and development, democracy becomes empty rhetoric.

Social movements and civil society organisations, which act as counterbalances and counterweights to the dominant powers of state and non-state actors, have an important role in deepening the democratic process and expanding the spaces where poor and excluded people can participate as well as challenge the process of governance. Democratic and human rights-based governance is informed by actions, policies and programmes that make sure the poor and excluded can challenge, and change, unequal and unjust power relationships inherent to the process of governance at various levels.

Human Rights

At the very core of a rights-based approach to development is the obligatory role of the state in respecting, protecting and fulfilling human rights. Such an approach necessarily involves the empowerment of the excluded as well as citizens to intervene in the process of governance to claim rights and demand accountability. It also involves a set of clear tools, laws, systems and a clear knowledge base with a primary stress on reforming institutions of governance to make them more democratic, just, participatory, transparent and accountable.

The human rights-based approach to governance implies that:

§ People are not passive beneficiaries or charity seekers of the state or government. The state’s political and moral responsibility is to guarantee all human rights to all human beings, particularly the right to live with dignity. Hence, people have a right to demand that the state ensure equitable social change and distributive justice.

§ Citizens are the owners of the state. Hence, the state should be transparent and accountable to citizens and defend human rights. People-centred advocacy mobilises people and civil society against societal violations of human rights as well as to influence the process of governance and public policies.

§ It seeks to bridge the gap between micro-level activism and macro-level policy change. It stresses a bottom-up approach to social change rather than a top-down approach through macro-level policy change. It seeks to strengthen people's participation in the process of policy making and implementation.Rights-based and people centred approaches to governance also mean the provision of legitimate spaces to question, to dissent peacefully, to develop alternatives by citizens and institutionally by civil society.


A human rights-based approach necessarily involves affirmative action to ensure women’s rights as well as the rights of minorities and marginalised people. Spaces for critical engagement include where civil society at times works to place checks on state power and at other times as collaborators in placing checks on private sector and power of international capital, particularly where application of national laws does not go far enough to ensure justice

Participation

Another aspect of governance is participation, notably participation that fosters empowerment and that is both a practice and a political philosophy. Participation is not a mere strategy to manufacture consent, manipulate consensus, or extract cheap labour. Participation is a principle based on an inclusive moral choice. Participation means sharing power, legitimacy, freedom, responsibilities and accountability. Participation is both a principle and means to include as many people as possible in the process of social change. Built on a deep respect for plurality, tolerance, and dissent, it also involves an ability to understand and appreciate differences. Transparency is a pre-requisite for true participation. In people-centred advocacy, participation is a crucial means to initiate, inform and inspire change in all arenas of advocacy.

The political participation of citizens, particularly women, requires both socio-political mobilisation and knowledge capacity to monitor governance. There has to be affirmative action to expand the space and role of women’s political participation and the participation of the marginalised people and communities. This requires both knowledge based activism and grassroots mobilisation. Participation is sharing of power and ability to influence the process and outcome of decision-making process and outcome. Participation becomes meaningful when people have enabling spaces, mechanisms, and power to participate. Monitoring of governance is a means to participate in governance and policy making and influencing process.



A democratic and human rights-based approach to governance implies that:§

State and non state actors are accountable, transparent to the people and promote and protect rights and justice

§ People have both political and policy spaces to participate in the process of governance, seek accountabilities, claim their rights and demand justice.

§ State guarantees basic rights for its citizens, including social, economic and cultural rights – e.g. such as the right to food, health, education and so on, and is strengthened to do so.

§ There are legitimate and valued spaces to participate, question, to dissent peacefully, to develop alternatives as well as for asserting identities are enjoyed by the citizens and institutionally by the civil society.

§ State society relationships are not buffered from imposition of policies and conditions by unelected institutions both national and international, as well as countries and blocs which severely restrict the capacity of the state to address its promises.

§ International Governance Mechanisms are democratised and govern on the principles of equity and justice and strong mechanisms to hold these processes and institutions to account are instituted.


Arenas for Action and Advocacy

There are five broad areas that could be considered for citizen advocacy and action in support of democratic and human-rights based approaches to governance to realising people’s potential:

Firstly, there is a need to create political space for public accountability and citizens
participation. Though the rhetoric on good governance and civil society has significantly increased in the last ten years, most of the governments remain unaccountable, non-transparent and non-responsive. It is important to have citizens and actions to promote enabling legislation to ensure the right to information, rights for citizens’ participation, women’s political participation, local self government and budget accountability.

Secondly, it is important to make governance work at the grassroots. Decentralisation of governments, devolution of power to local government and other structures, administration and financial resources help to strengthen the delivery, effectiveness and accountability of common goods and services. Innovative practices like participatory planning and participatory budgeting help to make governance work at the grassroots level through substantive participation of citizens and public accountability at community level.

The third broad area is corporate accountability. Transnational corporations and finance capital markets increasingly shape economic governance, which has taken precedence over both political and social governance. The key shapers and movers of economic governance are the unaccountable and non-transparent multinational corporations who control the market and media and thrive on unaccountable and unjust governance system. Demanding accountability and monitoring the actions and governance of the large and rich corporations is an important challenge to their influence on states and force accountability within the market and communities in which they operate.

A fourth area is democratising global governance. Democratisation of global governance institutions and seeking accountability and transparency of those supranational and international institutions that wield considerable power over governments in developing world or least developed countries is a part of the struggle against an unjust institutional system that perpetuates poverty. Many of these institutions, particularly the IMF, Word Bank, WTO and various regional development banks, demand high levels of accountability from the national governments while they themselves are unaccountable and undemocratic.

Finally, it is also important stress that accountability cannot be a one-way street. Without public accountability and spaces for citizen engagement and participation, civil society organisations (CSOs) and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will not have the moral and political legitimacy to challenge unaccountable and ineffective governments or governance.