[governance] right to development, the structure of IGCand IG issues for march deadline

[Mawaki Chango]

(Please note: Last email read with this thread before writing: "David
Allen: [governance] erratum - Re: right to development")

Dear all:

I had followed the beginning of this thread and dropped off; now I
see how dense it has grown. If you don’t mind, I’d like to add my
belated two cents.

>From Avri, Milton’s and probably some other’s earlier postings,
the question emerges as to how to claim and operationalize any right
to development (RTD). I see this rather as a collection of more basic
rights such as rights to potable water, food, shelter, justice, and
more if you will, which may pertain to different legal corpuses and
fail to be coded in any unified “Development Law” (if such thing
is imaginable. Note: I use “law” here in a generic sense, either
national law or international treaty, which may provide any framework
for implementation and enforcement). Now, since RTD “exists” in,
and pervade from, the discourse and the literature (of the kind of UN
“agreement” Renata was referring to, and probably other pieces
Meryem may have been thinking of), I will make the provisional
hypothesis – what a pleonasm! – that RTD exists positively.

In their attempt to address or discuss this question, I note a few
participants refer to philanthropy-based philosophy of (aid to)
development.

Avri, Mar10, was musing… and "struggling":
"for the right of development to see any notion of being satisfied,  
there needs to be a corresponding duty to enable and provide  
development. finding the targets of this duty is somewhat more  
difficult.  what places the duty on another community?  it is easy to
 
find the moral necessity, this is what motivates all 'charity'.  and 

one can certainly see a requirement in the notion of compensation for
 
colonial exploitation.  but the developed world has shown itself  
relatively immune to the reasons of morality or compensation for the 

crimes of history. so to find other bases is the challenge i am  
struggling with."

In Vittorio’s language, Mar9, we are referred to "solidarity",
"generosity", "help" (obviously from those who have enough to afford
such leanings) as founding notions of development cooperation and/or
assistance, and asked:  
"I am sure that this is exactly the vision that supporters of a
"right to development" might challenge, as they might think that
developed
countries have a moral and legal duty to help developing countries.
Am I right?"

Though I agree with Avri that our common history is paved of crimes
on, and deprivations of some peoples in the name of some others, and
that this might be a basis to some moral claim of entitlement to any
kind of compensation, I do think both are missing an important point
here – especially if your intention is to lessen the ideological
charge of the debate for the sake of operational purposes of a
possible RTD. The point is there might be another "species" of
supporters of the RTD, those for whom the first "targets of this
duty" must be the developing country Governments. As simple as that.
They are the first to be held accountable as to whether their people
have potable water, food, shelter, or are protected against injustice
or any arbitrary and illegitimate violence, have a reasonable access
to the symbolic resources useful to the development of the individual
citizens, etc. 

If there is any claim that can only be resolved beyond that line of
responsibility, I think it is the duty of those national Governments,
pressured, spurred or assisted by CS entities or any citizen
organizations, to take the case further before their peers in the
relevant institutions of the international arena. The issue may then
become a global one, with possible/desirable involvement of a global
CS movement. It might sound weird to hear this within a CS group, but
sorry folks in the real world, the first actors and the final
decision makers are still the states. As CS participant, I see our
role in clarifying the debates, analyzing the issues, advocating for
a wider public interest, foiling hindering hidden agendas, disclosing
adverse machinations, alerting on equally adverse impacts on human
rights, etc. Ok, I’m aware we are heading for "multistakeholderism"
but you also know we are not near the time the CS (even globally
represented by just one seat around the table) will have one vote
equaling that of a state. All we can do is to discuss and try to
convince the decision and policy makers that we are right or our
opinion/analysis is legitimate to be taken into account.

Though I understand the temptation to consider a "community as a any
undeveloped grouping of individuals", at any level, but avoiding "any
particular region […] or […] sovereign entity", I think we still
live in a world where the nation states are still strong and have the
leverage to frame and determine our collective life. So we cannot
just skip that level of analysis and… responsibility.

Am I making any sense out of this? Well, if you have understood by
now that my problem with RTD is not on "right", but on "development",
then I guess I do. We must be kidding when we think of
philanthropy-led, charity-based agency as driving force for
development!!! I take that as a response to crises – and that was
much needed to face the devastating effects of the hurricane
Katarina, the Tsunami, etc. It is just unfortunate that Africa has
got crises as its usual trick, and you may notice that those are
often consequences of political situations. But charity is by no
means a solution for long-term development.

So I have hard time trying to build a concept out of "development";
at best I see it as an ideology born from a mis-take or a stammering
of history. Of course development is an old word, and it is obvious,
or should be, that when we say every country or community (including
the rich) is at a certain level of development, and still develops,
we don’t mean exactly the same thing (at least not ideologically or
politically) as in the expression "public assistance to development",
"developing countries", or "right to development." In the former we
refer to something more neutral, maybe to development as a concept
(probably as old as human thinking), and in the former we refer to a
mix of ideas and practices that have been there only from mid-20th
century. Indeed when President Truman first mentioned the term in
that sense of public assistance to development, in the Point IV of
his address on the state of the nation, on Jan 20, 1949, I doubt
anybody knew what exactly we were heading into. Anyway, for some
reasons that are obscure to me "development" has become something
that is believed _exclusively_ achievable by means of _international_
resources: be it technical assistance, financial aid, or claims,
negotiations, and subsequent rights, etc. And I see the CS supporting
this trend; I guess it’s a natural move – nature always fills the
holes, the empty spaces. People, part of the nature, will even more,
if in addition those spaces provide some resources, even simply
symbolic. The international organizations, especially UN, are today
more likely to accommodate CS than plenty of the national Governments
on this earth. For those of the CS from countries were they are not
given a say in the government decision-making, it is the place and
opportunity to compensate, play a role, and be heard (and I guess it
is an old strategy trick to try to get from another way - outside -
what you can't get from one way - inside). On the other hand, I
suppose for those of the CS who have the possibility to be heard in
their home country, it is still one more platform for maybe a
farther-reaching impact. So, everything should be fine.

The thing is the development has meanwhile become an _international_
business, but guess what, not only for international development
agencies and global advocators, but more and more for the people we
would like better developed. Now they are waiting for the solutions
to come from outside – the developed world – because outside is
the cradle of modernity. Yes, I think the average African sees the
developed countries as if they have always been developed, so they
have all the solutions, and in his mind being developed is confounded
to being modern: in Europe and North America, the Tradition is by
essence Modernity. And the behavior of most of the political
leadership and that of the development agencies throwing out their
experimental "take-it or take-it" solutions does not make it any
better for him to stop beleiving that. That is, for me, the most
dreadful outcome oe effect of "development": the business of
development does not produce development, but thwarts it, impedes it,
by making it quite exclusively an international affair.

I have been wondering finally if there has ever been a case where
development has been achieved through international/foreign public
assistance. I first thought no, but finally I found one: the Marshall
Plan (not surprisingly, this is also a result of the Truman doctrine,
which was announced in 1947 by the Secretariat of State George C.
Marshall, and authorized by the Congress the following year). But we
know in what specific conditions that Plan was implemented. Other
than that, one can hardly find examples of success. So what's wrong?
Why are we stubbornly favoring that path? 

I could go on with this, but please let me not, and just add: if you
want to fight for a RTD, please make sure that our Governments be
reminded that the first, if not only, raison d’être for a Gvt is
to be the guardian of, and to be answerable for, the interests of his
people. And then codify so that if another country is illegimately
behaving in a way to impede them to fulfill that duty, then they can
claim an infringement to the RTD before the international community.
It is not the CS to decide of a RTD, since it cannot be held as a
target of the duty of development; it can only advocate for it, if it
wants. This sould be done in a very cautious and articulated way so
that not only it makes sense, but it helps achieve something.

Mawaki

P.S.
For those who want references, Rist 1996 could be a starter for
questioning development.

This is a debate I have publicly started with the ADF III (Third
African Development Forum, organized by the UNECA) on their
discussion list in 2002:
http://www.bellanet.org/lyris/helper/index.cfm?fuseaction=Visit&listname=adf3

See email from Chango, Mawaki or 'chango4scan at arc.sn', especially on
2002/03/13
Subject: Développement et intétégration régionale 
(French only)

More in:
Chango, Mawaki - 2002/02/25
Subject: Infrastructures pour l'intégration régionale en Afrique 
Translation by moderator (non-endorsed by the author):
Email from Muthoni Muriu (or Rifche2000 at hotmail.com) - 2002/03/05
Subject: ADF III: Integration through Infrastructure development from
Chango Mawaki




_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance