Dialogue in Pursuit of Development - Are you looking for one of ...

235
This scenario obviously presents an opportunity for dialogue, where the
human rights conventions and standards, supplemented by governmental,
NGO and international bodies’ assessments of the human rights situation,
can form an excellent basis for discussion. Unfortunately, however, this opportunity
is far from always, or even rarely, used as constructively as one
might wish. Very often such discussions are influenced by a myriad of differing
agendas, many of them politically oriented, and so both parties may
not really have room to listen openly to each other’s stories and truths.
To avoid this, a constructive approach would be to look at the state’s
obligation according to its ratification or adoption of these conventions and
standards, analysing not only whether violations of any of them occur but,
more interestingly, why they occur. Such analysis would, in many cases, indicate
that violations are caused by a combination of two different factors,
namely lack of commitment and/or lack of ability, and the interesting object
of examination is then the relative balance between these two factors. In
other words, if a transitional or newly democratic government has to prevent
the police from violating the human rights of members of society, this
should be viewed against the background of the obstacles, e.g. the need to
provide education and training on human rights standards to an entire police
service, as well as poor salaries, inhuman living and working conditions
for officers due to lack of sufficient funding, and a political demand for
effective combating of violent crime in society in general (Lindholt, 2002).
In order for the dialogue to be constructive, donors on the one hand need
to be sensitive to such lack of ability, but the recipient state must also not
fall for the temptation to compensate for a lack of commitment by overemphasising
its structural problems.
However, one problem in relation to the ability for human rights standards
to serve as a basis for analysis is that, in most cases, they have been
defined in overall terms, necessitating interpretation, and that in only very
few cases (for instance in relation to torture) are the precise definitions
spelled out clearly enough so that no misunderstanding should occur on
whether there is a violation or not. Any donor or institution embarking on
such a process of assessment may therefore have to be prepared to operate
in an area which is contested and fraught with potential for clashing between
differing positions.
In the second scenario, where the initiative to a dialogue on human rights
comes from either a governmental institution, a national human rights institution
or a civil society actor, the approach will typically be quite different,
because the main reason for contacting a foreign donor institution or country
will often be not only existing serious human rights problems, but also a
commitment to remedy these and to implement human rights principles –
in other words, addressing an area where there is determination to achieve
progress, and where the problems in themselves are not only recognised but
even form the justification for asking for assistance. This naturally becomes