Challenges and Opportunities in Implementing a Rights-Based Approach to Development: An Oxfam America Perspective

Two practitioners/thinkers take old ideas about human rights and make a new case for an economic and social rights-based approach to development. Our mid-20th century predecessors recognized—in Franklin D. Roosevelt's Four Freedoms and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights—that a secure world requires a social contract that assures everyone access to basic economic and social rights. In today's globalized world, the private sector and civil society join the state in influencing the ability of the marginalized to enjoy basic rights. Pursuing a rights-based approach is an end to business as usual for international development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). NGOs will need to move beyond supporting delivery of services to building the capacity of civil society to be an organized and effective balance to the power of governments and of the private sector. This transformation will have profound effects on the basic business plans, evaluation systems, and staff competencies of international development NGOs.