Rights-based development: Linking rights and participation - Challenges in thinking and action

The growing interest in pursuing rights-based approaches to development is raising questions about how these two broad traditions - human rights and development - can best work together in practice. In particular, participatory development approaches seem to have much to contribute to efforts to better define and achieve economic, social and cultural rights. At the same time, human rights perspectives and methods could deepen the impact of many participatory development efforts. In this comparative review of the discourses of major international human rights and development NGOs (largely US-based), it becomes clear that more systematic thinking and dialogue is needed on both fronts, however. There is a need to clarify actual meanings of participation and rights, their relation to notions of power and empowerment, and the ways these can all connect in practice. The development arena could benefit by rediscovering emancipatory and political notions of participation, while the rights domain could become better grounded in people's daily needs, their struggles for survival and their wishes to participate in decision making. Both the rights and development communities could benefit by deepening their analysis of power and empowerment. A more holistic understanding of these concepts and the links between them would help to bridge the gaps between development, participation, and rights, leading to more effective processes of social change.