wr2014_web_0

PUTTING DEVELOPMENT TO RIGHTSPutting Development to Rights:Integrating Rights into a Post-2015 AgendaBy David MephamBefore Tunisia’s popular uprising erupted in late 2010, many in the internationalcommunity saw the country as a development success story. Economic growthwas close to 4 percent, 9 in 10 children went to primary school, and life expectancywas an impressive 75 years.But for many Tunisians this progress was clearly not enough: higher incomes andbetter access to services did not compensate for the ills and costs of corruption,repression, inequality, and powerlessness. Nor did it satisfy aspirations forgreater justice, freedom, and dignity. In January 2011, popular protests oustedZine el-Abidine Ben Ali from the presidency after 23 years in power.While Tunisia’s struggle for rights-respecting democracy continues, its recentexperience exposes the narrowness and inadequacy of many existing approachesto development. It also provides a compelling case for development to bereframed more broadly, not just as higher income (important as this is), but asthe creation of conditions in which people everywhere can get an education, visita doctor, and drink clean water, and also express themselves freely, be protectedby a fair and accessible justice system, participate in decision-making, and livefree of abuse and discrimination. These are some of the basic economic, social,cultural, civil, and political rights that governments are obligated to honor butdeny to hundreds of millions of people.Many of those who are most impoverished belong to society’s most marginalizedand vulnerable social groups—women, children, people with disabilities, ethnicminorities, people infected with HIV—who often lack the power, social or legalstanding, or access to decision-making that allows them to challenge their disadvantagedstatus or improve their circumstances.For the most part, development policy and programs have ignored the criticalinterdependence of economic and social rights with civil and political rights, andso have failed to challenge systemic patterns of discrimination and disadvantagethat keep people in poverty. As a result, many poor people have been excluded,29