Minority Rights and Development: Overcoming exclusion, discrimination and poverty

29 May 2002

Executive Summary

Development policy is failing minorities. They continue to be among the poorest and most marginalized. They are an anomaly among the so-called ‘vulnerable groups’: whereas the international development community has responded to discrimination against women in development and is rethinking policy on indigenous peoples’ rights in development, minorities continue to be overlooked.

Minorities are more likely to be harmed by or left out of the development process. They are particularly susceptible to the causes of poverty, such as lack of assets, restricted access to markets and public institutions, voicelessness and vulnerability, because of violations of their rights to, inter alia, fair distribution of resources, participation in the public sphere, non-discrimination, and education in their language and culture. Ignoring the rights of minorities has weakened poverty reduction strategies and could prevent the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals. The exclusion of minorities from the benefits of development also has direct implications for security and stability. When political exclusion of minorities is compounded by economic exclusion, the propensity for impoverishment to lead to extreme or desperate reactions from minority groups is heightened. At the root of the problem is the continuing refusal of many governments to recognize the minorities that exist within their territory.

Combating the poverty and exclusion of minorities means protecting their rights. Governments and development agencies (be they multilateral, bilateral, development banks or international NGOs) need to mainstream the rights of minorities into development policies and practice.

Development policies and operations should comply with international standards on the rights of minorities. Discrimination must be tackled in order to reduce inequalities between majority and minority communities. The first and most crucial step in redressing discrimination is for governments to acknowledge that minorities exist. The right to participate in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of development plans and programmes that affect minorities should be ensured for minority communities. Adopting appropriate methodologies for assessing the impact of development on minorities is essential. Implementation of a good strategy for mainstreaming minority rights in development requires that development actors and minorities strengthen their capacity to engage with one another effectively.

Mainstreaming minority rights in development can mean improved human development for all, through more democratic and inclusive governance, greater stability and better strategies for poverty reduction.

Introduction

During the past ten years, the international community has made numerous pledges to promote human development. From the World Summit on Social Development in 1995, to the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, to the forthcoming World Summit on Sustainable Development, development for the improved welfare of poor communities has become a global priority.

Over the same period, the idea of a ‘rights-based approach to development’ has been gaining currency. The rights-based approach has profound implications for development policy and practice: it makes human rights standards the guide to processes and outcomes for development; it puts human beings at the centre of development and empowers them to make ‘rights’ claims on governments regarding development issues; and it puts the spotlight on international cooperation in development as a necessary precondition and indeed, an obligation of states, in order to achieve universal fulfilment of human rights.

The rights-based approach to development also potentially has benefits for groups that have been excluded from (or harmed by) conventional approaches to development. By using rights to define goals for development, the rights-based approach gives groups whose ‘special’ rights have been recognized by international treaties and standards (such as women, children, minorities or indigenous peoples), greater leverage in securing the benefits of development and the opportunity to articulate their own priorities in development.

To date, a rights-based approach to development has not been universally accepted, nor has it been consistently applied by even those governments that have adopted this concept into their policy statements. What has evolved is a concept of human development and an understanding of poverty that moves beyond the limited perspective provided by income measurements. The result is a more comprehensive perspective on development that incorporates many aspects of a rights-based approach without the ‘rights’ language. The notions of freedom, capability, vulnerability, powerlessness and participation, so central to human rights, are now commonly found in development policy documents of many multilateral and bilateral development agencies.

This bodes well for the so-called ‘vulnerable groups’ in the development process. Many of the criteria that development practitioners now use to define the causes and circumstances of poverty, for example, lack of freedom, restricted capability, vulnerability, powerlessness and exclusion from participation, are felt acutely by vulnerable groups. For some of these groups, this has led to (long overdue) improved policy responses that aim to overcome such barriers to poverty reduction. Among the vulnerable groups, women, children and, to a lesser extent, indigenous peoples, have already felt the benefits of these changes.(1)

Unfortunately, the same is not true for minority communities. There is a noticeable and alarming absence of attention to minorities in development policy and practice. This absence is perplexing as the identified causes of poverty, from discrimination to exclusion, from voicelessness to vulnerability, are the common experiences of minorities. Why then are minorities and their rights overlooked in strategies to achieve human development?

This can be answered in part by a general ignorance of what minorities are and of the nature and extent of the human rights violations they face. This is a symptom of the ‘invisibility’ of many minority groups, imposed by states that refuse to acknowledge the existence of minorities and/or purposely prohibit the expression of their identity as distinct communities. This, in turn, stands in the way of development agencies that must work under terms and conditions dictated by the state; minority issues are usually regarded as internal, political matters, which should not be the object of scrutiny by development agencies. Also, in contrast to the strong international solidarity of indigenous peoples and women’s groups, amongst minority groups there is a lack of universal cohesion, which would enable them to mobilize collectively for their rights in development at the international (or national) level.

What the development agencies overlook is the added-value of giving special consideration to minorities – and their rights – in wider development policies. Understanding better the situation of minorities will improve the formulation of policy responses for human development. Incorporating minorities’ rights into the development process, and making the fulfilment of these rights a goal of development, will strengthen the success of development. Minority rights, if fully respected, are a useful tool for overcoming many of the key barriers to development already identified by development practitioners. In order for the utility of minority rights in strengthening these policy responses to be understood, the link between the current understanding of the barriers to development and the situations of minorities needs to be made. This is an important step in realizing a rights-based approach to development, and a step towards realizing equality in human development for those whom past policies have failed to aid. Mainstreaming minority rights in development cooperation will not only provide for improved human development for persons belonging to minorities; enforcement of minority rights can mean better development for all as a result of more democratic governance, greater stability and new policies to target development funds more effectively.

This report will attempt to sketch out in greater detail the claim that protection of minority rights can strengthen development effectiveness. First, it will examine existing conceptions of development and poverty. This will be linked to current situations of minority communities, drawing on examples from different regions of the world. The rights of minorities in the development process will be outlined. The current policy trends for development will then be presented and analysed from a minority rights perspective. Finally, an assessment of how these policies could be strengthened through the implementation of minority rights in development will be elaborated.

Several recommendations to policy-makers will be presented to this end. Minority Rights Group International (MRG) has drawn on the experiences and inputs of its partner organizations working on the rights of minorities in development, and the research on this subject produced over the past four years, to articulate a strong set of recommendations for mainstreaming minority rights in development. These recommendations are founded on a rights-based approach to development and have the right to non-discrimination and the right to participation as core objectives.

A few words on the scope of this paper are also necessary. The primary focus of this paper is national, ethnic, religious, and linguistic minorities.(2) While there are many recommendations contained herein that could inform practice vis-à-vis the rights of indigenous peoples in development, this paper does not set out to make such links. It is also worth reiterating that minorities and indigenous peoples themselves have the right to identify their own group membership and are free to exercise (or not exercise) their rights (in development or otherwise) as they choose.

Changing conceptions of development and poverty: what benefits for minorities?
Concepts of development and poverty have undergone significant transformations in the last decade. The economic crisis in East Asia forced economists to rethink their prescriptions for development. Where the World Bank’s1990 World Development Report emphasized ‘labour-intensive growth’ and ‘broad provision of social services’ for poverty reduction, the 2000/01 World Development Report was examining poverty through a different lens. Influenced by a major initiative on the part of the World Bank to document the experiences of poor people around the world, in the Voices of the Poor reports, the World Bank in 2000 saw the causes of poverty as: ·

Lack of income and assets to attain basic necessities – food, shelter, clothing, and acceptable levels of health and education. ·

Sense of voicelessness and powerlessness in the institutions of state and society. ·

Vulnerability to adverse shocks, linked to an inability to cope with them.(1)

In the analysis, the World Bank further reduces these causes to assets and access. People’s assets range from good health and employment skills, to land, adequate physical infrastructure, access to credit, and assets such as ‘social capital’ and community networks. Access refers to access to markets, but also access to justice, to public institutions and to political power. This access may ‘also be affected by implicit or explicit discrimination on the basis of gender, ethnicity, race or social status’.(2)

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Human Development Report 2000, on ‘Human Rights and Human Development’, presents a similar understanding of the causes of poverty, but makes a greater effort to articulate these causes in human rights terms. The report defines human development as ‘the process of enlarging people’s choices, by expanding human functionings and capabilities’.(3) The link to human rights is clearly stated: ‘human rights and human development are both about securing basic freedoms’.(4) Seven basic freedoms are outlined in the opening paragraph of the report: freedom from discrimination; freedom from want; freedom to develop and realize one’s human potential; freedom from fear; freedom from injustice and violations of the rule of law; freedom of thought and speech and to participate in decision-making and form associations; and freedom for decent work – without exploitation.(5)

A second important aspect of shifting conceptions of development has been the emergence of new (particular) definitions of development. In the 1990s there was a nearly universal acceptance by policy-makers that economic growth, through trade liberalization and structural adjustment measures, defined the ends and means of development. The anti-globalization movement is now challenging these assumptions in a highly visible and public way. The movement questions the benefits of globalization and argues that the majority of the world has either been excluded from these benefits, or made worse off as a result of the gains of the few. Even before anti-globalization protests, many constituencies had long been challenging the prevailing (and autocratic) prescriptions for development. Indigenous peoples have been at the forefront of demands for the recognition of alternative definitions of development and alternative priorities in the development process. Building a large dam and flooding indigenous lands, thereby causing the displacement of indigenous peoples, impoverishment and cultural erosion, is not, from their perspective, ‘development’. The right of indigenous communities to define development in their own terms is central to their right to self-determination and the preservation of their culture.

Alternative approaches to development blend well with the changes in definitions of poverty. Together, they give space for groups that have not benefited from conventional approaches to development to influence reforms in development practice. Our understanding of development and poverty is not what it used to be; but policy is only beginning to catch up with these new conceptions. In order to make policy effective, development practitioners need to understand how the realities of poor communities relate to the new parameters of development. Examining the experiences of minorities is especially informative for policy reform, because to date they have been largely overlooked in policy rhetoric and in policy implementation. The next section will demonstrate why this is a harmful oversight on the part of development practitioners, by outlining the experiences of minorities in the development process.

How do minorities experience development?

In all parts of the world, developed and developing, minority groups are more likely to be poor, either in relative or absolute terms. Their poverty is a symptom of the common experience that unites these otherwise disparate groups: the experience of discrimination and exclusion.

Some successes have been achieved in understanding how gender discrimination and the exclusion of women has impacted negatively on development and impeded women’s human development. Most development agencies now have an institutional expertise on how to overcome these barriers for women. Yet, despite the repeated acknowledgements within development policy rhetoric that discrimination, in all its forms, impedes human development, little in the way of a parallel attempt to understand discrimination against minorities has been undertaken.

It is instructive to apply the current understanding of the causes of poverty to the realities of life for minority communities to illustrate the extent to which minorities are vulnerable to poverty. The World Bank’s outline of the causes of poverty in the World Development Report 2000/2001 is a good framework (not least because it is based largely on testimony from poor people around the globe as surveyed during the Voices of the Poor project). These causes are: lack of income and assets; voicelessness and powerlessness; and vulnerability to adverse shocks.

Before examining the status of poor minorities, it is necessary to point out that not all minorities in the world are economically disadvantaged. To be clear, minority status and poverty are not co-terminus; in fact, membership in a strong, cohesive minority community may even improve the economic prospects of minorities because of factors such as solidarity, communal ownership of goods and wealth, or the psychological benefits of taking pride in one’s ethnic, religious, cultural or linguistic identity. It is also sometimes the case that minority communities are economically dominant (for example, because of specialization in certain fields of employment), while still being denied a range of human rights, in particular access to political power and protection from discrimination. The disproportionately high rates of poverty among many minority communities across the continents, however, are too compelling to ignore.

Lack of income and assets for minorities

Measuring income is the most common method of identifying poverty. Household surveys are used to gather this data. Unfortunately, household surveys do not always simultaneously gather information to correlate income to membership in a minority group. This means that statistics on minorities’ relative incomes are not readily available for many countries. The statistics that are available, however, reveal significant differences in the levels of income for persons belonging to minorities. In Bulgaria, 84 per cent of Roma and 40 per cent of Bulgarian Turks live in poverty, in contrast with a 31.7 per cent poverty rate for ethnic Bulgarians.(6) In Nepal, 90 per cent of Dalits live below the poverty line, compared to 45 per cent of the overall population,(7) and Muslims have a human development index rate that is less than half the national average.(8) Surveys in Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala and Peru indicate that monthly mean earnings for Afro-descendants are roughly half that earned by white people.(9) The lower levels of income may be the result of several factors, including discrimination in access to higher-paid employment opportunities and fewer opportunities for access to higher education and attainment of specialized skills. Lower incomes may also result from situations where, even in lower-paid employment, minorities on average are being paid less than others, and where minorities are more likely to lose their employment in periods of economic hardship because of discrimination. Women belonging to minority groups will be disadvantaged further because of the additional impact of gender discrimination in employment.

These lower incomes are also related to the assets (or lack thereof) of minorities. Land is for many communities the most critical resource for income generation. It is an all too common phenomenon, however, that the traditional lands and territories of minority groups are appropriated by the state for development or conservation purposes. Minorities find themselves displaced to less fertile land or to urban centres, without their consent, without adequate compensation and with little or no consideration for the impact of displacement on their livelihoods and cultures. Equitable market access for minorities is also difficult to secure. Minority businesses may be less profitable because, inter alia, their goods and services (just as their labour) may be valued less on the open market; they may be discriminated against in access to credit and other financial services; and the physical infrastructure in their regions may be suffering from under-investment.

Poor infrastructure also impacts on other aspects of the lives of minorities. Lack of investment in schools, hospitals, housing and municipal services in regions with large minority populations has led to consistently lower levels of educational attainment, life expectancy and adequate living conditions for minorities. The available statistics are revealing. In Brazil, Afro-descendants have an average infant mortality rate of 62 per 1,000 births, compared to an average of 37 per 1,000 for whites; in some regions the average for Afro-descendants climbs as high as 96 per 1,000 births.(10) Similar differences in infant mortality rates for Roma children are recorded in the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic, where infant mortality is twice as high for Roma as for non-Roma.(13) In India, the literacy rate of women from scheduled tribes in rural communities was only 16 per cent in 1991 and for scheduled castes the rate was 24 per cent; this is in comparison with a national average for women of 39 per cent.(14) A study in Bulgaria revealed that 30 per cent of Roma women had received no formal education, in comparison with a national average of 2 per cent.(13)

Much attention is being paid to non-tangible assets in poverty alleviation. Development economists have been examining the role of ‘social capital’ in development.(14) Social capital refers to the network of social contacts, social integration and shared norms between individuals. It is argued that where social capital is strong, development can be facilitated by these existing relationships. Exclusion because of discrimination from the social capital shared by the majority means that minorities might not be able to accrue the social and economic advantages of these relationships within the community. While social capital within minority communities may be considerable, these networks may confer little advantage in the broader economic and political spheres of society.

All of these assets, from employment skills to community contacts, health care and housing to credit facilities and clean water, form an ‘enabling framework’ to give people the individual capacity to overcome poverty. Equally important, however, is an enabling environment, which gives people the freedom and necessary conditions to use their capacity.

Voicelessness of minorities

Poor people across the world are discriminated against and excluded because of their poverty. They are ‘second-class citizens’ because of their ‘lower-class’ status. The World Development Report 2000/2001 explains that the ‘lack of voice, power and independence’ of poor people subjects them to ‘rudeness, humiliation, shame, inhumane treatment, and exploitation at the hands of the institutions of state and society … [a]bsence of the rule of law, lack of protection against violence, extortion and intimidation, and lack of civility and predictability in interactions with public officials’.(15) Minorities, however, regardless of their economic status are treated frequently in this manner; voicelessness for them is not a question of wealth, it is a question of minority status.

Discrimination and exclusion against minorities is compounded by poverty, not caused by it. Their ‘voicelessness’ has many facets. Exclusion from political power is common, in democratic and undemocratic regimes alike. While some minority groups have managed to obtain a strong degree of political representation and are therefore able to influence government policy on, inter alia, development, the vast majority of minority communities have little or no access to any form of political influence or public participation. Their exclusion from statutory bodies means that access to government services may be impeded by discriminatory treatment or language barriers. Access to justice may be similarly precarious; abuse of minorities at the hands of police is not uncommon, particularly for poor minorities, and judicial remedies may be ineffective for a variety of reasons.(18) The public voice of minorities is often limited by language barriers or an absence of media outlets accessible to them.

The voicelessness of minorities is also manifest in the absence of disaggregated data for development indicators. Most countries do not collect disaggregated data. There are various reasons why this is the case. Collecting disaggregated data is not impossible, but it does raise many opportunities for inappropriate manipulation. Disaggregated data, for example, have often been used maliciously to support claims of inferiority of certain minority groups. More often it is the case that governments do not collect disaggregated data because they do not want to recognize the existence of distinct minorities within their territory. National censuses do not give individuals the opportunity to self-identify as members of a minority group, which means no other social or economic indicators gathered can be cross-analysed according to such membership. In this way, gross inequalities between groups continue to be masked by the absence of data, and the collective impoverishment of minorities goes unrecognised.

The voicelessness of minorities in these various spheres should be of particular concern, because the absence of a voice can breed a level of community discontent that erupts into conflict. When political exclusion is compounded by economic exclusion, the propensity for impoverishment to lead to extreme or desperate reactions from minority groups is heightened.

Vulnerability of minorities

Poor people are more vulnerable to economic shocks and natural disasters because they already live on the edge of their own means, with little security to absorb the impact of adverse events. Poor minorities are similarly vulnerable to adversity, but they are also vulnerable to discrimination in the provision of remedies to cope with adversity or to policies in response adversity.

When disaster hits, minorities may find themselves in the back of the queue for assistance. In Voices of the Poor, Hindus in Bangladesh described how they were being discriminated against in flood relief and development assistance being provided by the government.(17) In times of economic crisis, limited resources may be diverted to placate the more vocal, visible and politically powerful majority communities. Development prescriptions for austerity measures and liberalization policies may result in a far greater negative impact for minorities than for other groups. For example, when companies are forced to lay off workers, minorities are likely to be the first to be dismissed and the last to be called back to work. Trade liberalization policy could adversely impact on an economic niche in which a minority group has specialized (for example, artesanal fishing, cattle farming), without any provision being made to compensate or re-train them.

Minorities are also likely to be denied access to justice when their rights have been violated, either by the state or by private individuals, even where anti-discrimination legislation exists. Some minorities are prevented from obtaining citizenship because of language barriers or citizenship laws based on descent; this means they can have difficulties in accessing social security benefits to aid them in periods of economic vulnerability.

The human security of minorities is also very tenuous. Minorities are often the scapegoats of regimes in crises. They are displaced across borders only to find themselves further impoverished and excluded as refugees; this displacement can lead to further conflict. They may also be more susceptible to violent attacks by private citizens or police and have less chance of securing justice or financial compensation from the courts.

In sum, all of the aspects of poverty, that is, low income, lack of assets, voicelessness and vulnerability, are felt more acutely and systemically by minorities than by other poor people. All of these experiences are a direct result of the violations of the rights of persons belonging to minorities. An examination of these rights will demonstrate how better enforcement of minority rights by the state and through development assistance activities, will impact positively on poverty reduction strategies.

What are minorities’ rights in development?

There is no legally binding international convention that guarantees the rights of minorities in development. This is in stark contrast to some other so-called ‘vulnerable groups’ in the development process, namely indigenous peoples and women, both of which have their rights in development strongly articulated in international treaties.(18)

The absence of an explicit international treaty provision on minority rights in development does not, however, preclude the assertion of such rights through other avenues. There are several international standards relating to minorities that together clearly delineate distinct rights for minorities in development. The key points in these standards are the right to participate, the right to non-discrimination, the right to development and the right to respect for other minority rights, such as the right to education in or of their language and to practise their own culture.

The right to participate

The UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992) is a good starting point for elaborating minority rights in development One of the key provisions of the Declaration is Article 2.3, which states that ‘persons belonging to minorities have the right to participate effectively in decisions on the national and, where appropriate, the regional level concerning the minority to which they belong or the regions in which they live.’ Although development is not mentioned explicitly, it can reasonably be concluded that development issues would be included in the application of this article. This conclusion is further supported in Article 4.5, which outlines the obligations of states ‘to consider appropriate measures so that persons belonging to minorities may participate fully in the economic progress and development in their country’.

The Declaration also indicates that ‘national policies and programmes shall be planned and implemented with due regard for the legitimate interests of persons belonging to minorities’ (Article 5.1) and, furthermore, that ‘programmes of cooperation and assistance among states should be planned and implemented with due regard for the legitimate interests of persons belonging to minorities’ (Article 5.2). In this context, what constitutes a ‘legitimate interest’? Using the aforementioned Article 4.5 as a reference, it can be argued that ‘economic progress and development in their country’ is a legitimate interest for persons belonging to minorities, in accordance with the spirit and purpose of the Declaration. In sum, minorities have a right to participate in decisions regarding the economic progress and development in their country and states have an obligation to respect this participation, both in respect of national policies and in respect of policies of cooperation and assistance between states.

The right to participate is key, but it is not enough; it leaves unanswered questions on implementation, which may weaken the meaning of this right in practice. Understanding the scope of minorities’ rights in development requires a broader examination of applicable rights. The right to participation therefore needs to be seen in tandem with other rights, in particular the right to non-discrimination, the right to enjoy the benefits of development and the right to respect for other rights of minorities.

The right to non-discrimination

Enforcement of the right to non-discrimination is crucial in overcoming discrimination, which is one of the key barriers to development for minority communities. The right to non-discrimination is a customary principle of law and is contained in all international human rights treaties. The UN Declaration on the Rights of … Minorities recognizes this obligation of all states, to ‘take measures where required to ensure that persons belonging to minorities may exercise fully and effectively all of their human rights and fundamental freedoms without any discrimination and in full equality before the law’ (Article 4.1).

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) is the core international treaty for promoting the right to non-discrimination and is equally applicable to minorities.(19) It includes several provisions that are directly relevant to the development process. The most obvious is the provision on non-discrimination in enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights, which requires that States Parties:

‘undertake to prohibit and to eliminate racial discrimination in all its forms and to guarantee the right of everyone, without distinction as to race, colour, national or ethnic origin, to equality in the law, notably in the enjoyment of the following rights…e. economic, social and cultural rights, in particular: (i) the right to work…(iii) the right to housing; (iv) the right to public health, medical care, social security and social services; (v) the right to education …’ (Article 5)

The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination routinely makes recommendations to States Parties in Concluding Observations on how to address discrimination in enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights for certain minority groups within their territory.(20)

In examining development from a broader perspective, the ICERD also proves to be a useful mechanism for minorities. Access to justice and to political participation is guaranteed to all without distinction in Articles 5a and 5c.(21) Special measures(22) in the ‘social, economic, cultural and other fields’ may be taken to achieve full and equal enjoyment of human rights and ‘to ensure the adequate development and protection of certain racial groups or individuals belonging to them’ (Article 2.2). Under this provision, states could, for example, take special measures to address extreme and disproportionately high levels of poverty amongst minority groups, which violate their economic and social rights.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) has strong provisions on non-discrimination in the enjoyment of the rights set forth therein: ‘The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to guarantee that the rights enunciated in the present Covenant will be exercised without discrimination of any kind as to race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.’(23) The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its review of states’ periodic reports routinely requests that States Parties supply information on how the provision on non-discrimination is being achieved in practice, through the presentation of, inter alia, disaggregated data. The Committee has also made clear in its statement on ‘Poverty and the ICESCR’,(24) that discrimination is a major factor in the perpetuation of poverty amongst many groups, and that such discrimination has ‘profound implications for anti-poverty strategies’.(25)

The right to non-discrimination is firmly established in law in most countries but this does not in practice easily ensure non-discrimination in the articulation of development policies. Government policies may surreptitiously deny minority communities the benefits of infrastructure development, adequate schools and hospitals, access to loans, etc., through under-funding for regional development in areas where they live, or bias towards supporting development projects that benefit a particular sector or social strata from which minorities are excluded. Large-scale development plans may result in displacement or other harm of minority communities without prior consultation or adequate compensation, and may impact negatively on the traditional occupations and lifestyles of these communities. The right to development and to enjoy equally the benefits of development does, however, offer minorities some safeguards.

The right to development

Is there a right to enjoy the benefits of development? At present there is no single document or specific article directed towards minorities in this regard. The UN Declaration on the Right to Development (1986), however, includes a number of provisions that delineate certain rights for individuals to enjoy equally the benefits of development.

The Declaration confirms in the preamble ‘equality of opportunity for development is a prerogative both of nations and of individuals who make up nations’. In Article 2.3:

‘States have the right and the duty to formulate appropriate national development policies that aim at the constant improvement of the well-being of the entire population and of all individuals, on the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and in the fair distribution of the benefits resulting therefrom.’

While this article does not make any special considerations for minorities, it does underscore the need for ‘fair distribution of the benefits’ of development and is a strong claim against states to review the impact of their development policies on minorities. If the benefits of development are not being accrued fairly by persons belonging to minorities, then the state is not fulfilling the aims of Article 2.3 of the Declaration. The Declaration also requires that international cooperation in pursuit of the right to development should adhere to the same principles, thus: ‘States have the duty to take steps, individually and collectively, to formulate international development policies with a view to facilitating the full realization of the right to development’ (Article 4.1).

The Declaration goes further in its expression of equality in the right to development. Article 8.1 requires that states ‘shall ensure, inter alia, equality of opportunity for all in their access to basic resources, education, health services, food, housing, employment and the fair distribution of income’. It is incumbent on states to ensure the same equality of opportunity for minorities; indeed, the Declaration requires that ‘[a]ppropriate economic and social reforms should be carried out with a view to eradicating all social injustices’ (Article 8.1). Discrimination is principal among these social injustices and Article 5 indicates that states should take steps to eliminate ‘all forms of racism and racial discrimination’.

The right participate in development, strongly stated in the UN Declaration of the Rights of … Minorities, is an important part of the Declaration on the Right to Development. The right to development itself is a right of ‘every human person and all peoples … to participate in, contribute to and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development’ (Article 1.1). The Declaration also affirms ‘States should encourage popular participation in all spheres as an important factor in development’ (Article 8.2).

Finally, it is worth noting that the Declaration on the Right to Development gives strong support to the rights of ‘peoples’. Indigenous peoples have used this to back their claims to self-determination and the right to development as ‘peoples’ within the meaning of the Declaration:

‘the human right to development also implies the full realization of the right of peoples to self-determination, which includes, subject to the relevant provisions of both International Covenants on Human Rights, the exercise of their inalienable right to full sovereignty over all their natural wealth and resources.’ (Article 1.2)

This article reinforces the claims of indigenous peoples to control over natural resources that fall within their traditional lands and territories and to the right to set their own priorities for development. Whether minorities can make the same claims to being ‘peoples’ under the meaning of this Declaration is beyond the scope of this paper. Regardless, many other articles of the Declaration support the rights of minorities in the development process, not only to fair distribution of the benefits of development but also to participation, to non-discrimination and to reform measures for the eradication of social injustices they may affect them.

Distinct rights of minorities

The international community has recognized that persons belonging to minorities have distinct rights. Some of these rights, such as the right to participation in economic development and progress in their country, have already been discussed. It is important, however, to also mention some of the distinct rights of minorities that often have direct bearing on development policies, namely rights in education, language rights and cultural rights.

Support for education is a feature of many development packages. For minorities, the mere provision of the physical infrastructure for education is not enough to fulfil their right to education. Education needs to be accessible and relevant to the lives and lifestyles of minorities. Development policy-makers need to be aware of the right of minorities ‘to learn their mother tongue or to have instruction in their mother tongue’ (UN Declaration on the Rights of … Minorities, Article 4.3), at a minimum at the primary school level, but preferably at secondary and tertiary levels as well. This education must also enable minorities to ‘express their characteristics and to develop their cultural, language, religion, traditions and customs’ (UN Declaration on the Rights of … Minorities, Article 4.2). Mainstream curricula must encourage knowledge of history, traditions, language and culture of minorities and should promote tolerance and friendship between minority and majority communities.(26)

The right of minorities to use their own language is recognized in Article 27 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This right can facilitate other rights of minorities in development. For example, the right to participate in the elaboration of development policies could be impeded by language barriers. In response, development policies and consultations should be made available in minority languages, in particular where such policies will affect minorities, as a matter of good practice. Resources to enable governments to provide more services in minority languages could also be incorporated into development assistance.

The right of minorities to practise their own culture is also recognized in Article 27 of the ICCPR. The right to take part in cultural life is protected similarly under a number of other international treaties and declarations.(27) Preservation of culture is essential to the protection of minorities’ identities. While development policy may aim to support the culture of the majority, minority cultures may be marginalized, or as has been the case in some countries, exploited by government for the purposes of tourism. Development policy must therefore be sensitive to the rights of minorities to practise and promote their own culture, and should enable minorities’ cultural practices (where these practices do not violate international standards) to be part of development activities.

Development policies may impact on minorities’ distinct rights in a variety of ways not elaborated here. Even where policy may not be in explicit violation of these rights, there may be a negative impact on the ability of minorities to exercise their rights as an unintended consequence. It is therefore necessary for policy-makers to review their proposed activities against existing standards on minorities’ rights (as a minimum level of achievement) for all stages of the development process.

How do current strategies in development fail to implement the rights of minorities?
Minorities have particular rights in the development process and are especially vulnerable to the commonly identified obstacles to development. Development policy should therefore include provisions to overcome these obstacles and to protect minorities’ rights. To date, few development agencies have successfully incorporated either of these points into policy or practice.

Katarina Tomaševski recently produced a report for MRG on Minority Rights in Development Aid Policies (2000). Her research showed that explicit commitments to minority rights by development agencies are virtually non-existent.(28) This is in contrast to (long overdue) commitments on indigenous peoples, which have been adopted or are being reviewed by, for example, the World Bank, the UNDP and the European Union.(29) Even in those few instances where minorities are mentioned, the ability to translate this into actual benefits for minorities on the ground is undermined by the absence of sufficient institutional capacity on minority rights within development agencies.

Minorities are sometimes referred to in sectoral policies, in particular on conflict, education, culture and good governance, but not in a way that suggests any comprehensive attention to minorities or an adequate understanding of their rights. In the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) Social Development Priorities: A Framework for Action, ‘ethnic-minority groups’ are mentioned in two of the four priority areas of work, namely ‘child protection’ and ‘basic education’, but not in ‘health and nutrition’ or ‘HIV/AIDS’; in contrast, gender equality and human rights are said to be ‘an integral part of each of these four priority areas’.(30) In the draft action plan for CIDA’s work in basic education, frequent references are made to minority groups, but the plan omits key points on minorities rights in education, such as education in or of the mother tongue or curricula that encourage knowledge of the history, traditions and culture of minorities.

Individual country documents may include references to minorities, but not consistently: for example, the World Bank’s poverty assessments in the early 1990s noted the situation of minorities in Bolivia, China and Malaysia, but not in Ecuador, India, Mexico or Nepal.(31) Similarly, the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) country papers for Bulgaria and India pay good attention to minority rights, but the country paper for Rwanda ignores the Batwa peoples and the Nepal paper omits reference to any minorities.(32)

Perhaps even more worrying than the paucity of mentions of minority rights in policy are the misconceptions of minority rights when they are mentioned. Some development agencies discuss ‘ethnicity’, ethnic minorities or discrimination on the basis of race or ethnicity, but overlook national, religious, and linguistic minorities, who do not necessarily fit easily into categories of ‘ethnic’ or ‘racial’ groups. This narrow conception of what constitutes a minority may impede the formulation of good policy responses to the needs of all minority communities in a given state or region. Similarly, if development actors do not adequately understand the distinction between minorities and indigenous peoples, they may mistakenly assume that existing policies on indigenous peoples are sufficient to protect minorities as well.

There may also be apprehensions about the implications of focusing on minorities where peaceful relations between minority and majority groups are already strained. DFID’s guidance notes for poverty reduction strategies, Poverty: Bridging the Gap (2001), correctly identify ethnic minorities as one of the groups particularly vulnerable to poverty, but warns that:

‘[e]thnicity can be a controversial criterion on which to base poverty programmes and can raise accusations of unfair bias.… Indeed, targeting on the basis of ethnicity can offend not only those who feel excluded by the targeting policy but also members of the targeted ethnic group who are insulted by the poverty label.’(33)

This statement raises some legitimate concerns but points to a gross misconception of the overarching utility of specially targeted policies in allaying fears of exclusion or undue preference and averting conflict between communities.

It must be acknowledged that development agencies are restricted to a large extent by the will of governmental authorities to cooperate in respecting minority rights. Nevertheless, there are actions they can take to encourage governments to recognize minorities and improve their human development. Two case studies below reveal how development agencies have failed to take up opportunities to mainstream minority rights.

A review of two development initiatives: where are minority rights?
Many of the current initiatives in development policy reform provide excellent opportunities to mainstream minority rights. A brief examination of two of these new directions in policy – poverty reduction strategies and the Millennium Development Goals – will be useful in understanding how policies could be improved through the mainstreaming of minority rights.

Poverty reduction strategies

Principal among the reforms of policy thinking in recent years is the recognition that strategies for alleviating poverty should be devised by governments receiving development assistance rather than by donor agencies. Consequently the World Bank and the European Union (EU) have endorsed the elaboration of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs)(34) and Country Strategy Papers (CSPs) respectively. In principle, these Papers are to form the basis of development cooperation between the state and the development agency and will define the accepted priorities within this cooperation. The Papers are also unique in that they set out to ensure that all stakeholders, including the poor and civil society in general, are to have an opportunity to participate in the drafting of strategies for poverty reduction.

The provisions for civil society and poor people’s participation, however, have fallen far short of expectations. A recent study by Christian Aid on the World Bank’s PRSPs concluded that ‘the involvement of poor people in drawing up policies and writing PRSPs has been minimal and superficial’.(35) Several problems are identified in the study, but many of these are particularly salient for minorities. Christian Aid and its partners, in drawing up the study, make clear that participation in poverty reduction strategies is a political process; allowing genuine participation of civil society necessarily involves states in relinquishing some of their control in determining the outcomes of the process, and requires that governments recognize participant groups as legitimate entities. Because minority groups may be regarded as a threat to political power, or because governments may seek to deny minorities the right to recognition as minorities, their participation may be impeded or denied. Minorities may be also be socially stigmatised as ‘inferior’ and thus their contribution devalued. Participation also demands a certain level of technical capacity, which minorities may be particularly lacking (for example, because of poor access to higher educational attainments). Meetings and documents on the PRSPs may be provided in the majority language only, prohibiting minorities’ engagement; in Bolivia, for example, some PRSP documents were originally only available in English, then subsequently translated into Spanish, but were never made available in local languages such as Aymara, Quechwa or Guarani, which restricted the ability of indigenous representatives, in particular women, to provide input.(36)

Given all of the obstacles to effective participation for civil society and in particular for minorities, the World Bank’s own assessment of the PRSPs could be doing more to persuade governments to reform their practice in the drafting of these papers. A Joint Staff Assessment (JSA) by the World Bank and IMF is normally undertaken once a PRSP has been submitted. One of the expressed criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of the PRSP is a review of the participation of civil society, including involvement of ‘ethnic minorities’.(37) A cursory examination of completed JSAs reveals that they have inadequately addressed the weaknesses of civil society participation in the PRSP process; for example, most countries have omitted any reference to minorities or indigenous peoples in their PRSP (despite the presence of such groups in their territories), and the JSA has failed subsequently to raise any questions about this omission, despite a clear obligation within their guidelines to do so.(38)

The EU’s Country Strategy Papers demonstrate a similar pattern of neglect of minorities and indigenous peoples. Of the seventeen Papers approved by the European Commission (EC), only the reports of Botswana and Niger mention minorities and poverty.(39) The Botswana CSP notes that ‘there has been a certain disquiet that the nation’s several ethnic minorities are disadvantaged in comparison with the dominant Batswana group’ and that poverty is particularly prevalent among ethnic minorities.(40) The response strategies outlined in the CSA are vague, however, suggesting only specially targeted policies for minorities in respect to access to education:

‘Attention will be paid to ensure that ethnical [sic] minorities (e.g. San people) are able to shape their own social, economic and cultural development and their own cultural identities, and that they can preserve/promote their heritage of diverse knowledge and ideas, which are a potential resources for the nation, through appropriate education and training and through access to multilingual education.(41)’

In order to address effectively the disproportionate levels of poverty among ethnic minorities, attention to their rights in education is only one component of a broader reform process, which the Botswana CSA does not reflect. The Niger CSP has mainstreamed disaggregated data collection by ethnicity into the indicators of performance for many of the development objectives in the plan, including poverty reduction. In contrast, the World Bank PRSP of Niger mentions minorities only once (in relation to participation in local government).(42) These disparities between country papers to different agencies points to a lack of comprehensive strategy on minorities in development.

The Millennium Development Goals

A second major trend in development policy has been the endorsement of the 2015 targets, presently known as the Millennium Development Goals. These goals form the primary objectives for development cooperation to the year 2015, including several intermediary targets.(43) The first and principal goal listed is to achieve a reduction by half of the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015. Many development practitioners are sceptical that the goals are in fact achievable in the time set, particularly given that necessary increases in official development assistance (ODA) to enable the realization of the goals has not been forthcoming. Others fear that resources will be inappropriately diverted by governments or that corners will be cut in order to reach the goals on paper without securing them in a sustainable or effective manner.

From a minority rights perspective, the goals are unsatisfactory as presently articulated. It is possible to achieve all of the Millennium Development Goals without impacting positively on the lives of minorities, and policy-makers are not taking this into account. The concern over the diversion of resources to achieve the goals is relevant for minorities, who may find that more visible and politically influential majority groups are enabled to achieve the goals, while the situation of minorities is allowed to deteriorate further. The pressure to meet numerical targets may mean that the easiest route to achieve the target is adopted, thus sidelining groups for whom provision of services in different languages, special measures or additional resources would be needed because of their low starting point, minority language or systematic discrimination that they encounter. No safeguards have been built into the goals to prevent these things from occurring. For example, there is no requirement to measure progress towards the goals through disaggregated data for minority groups – only gender disaggregation of data is requested and ‘where possible and appropriate, countries should also disaggregate indicators to cover sub-national groupings such as urban/rural, income groups and administrative areas’.(44)

There is also no guidance on how to achieve the goals, which leaves too much space for governments and development agencies to adopt top-down policies and/or policies that are not compatible with international human rights standards. The goal of achieving ‘universal primary education’ by 2015 could be met, while minority children find themselves disadvantaged by an education system that is not available in their mother tongue, that under-resources schools in their communities, or that perpetuates discriminatory attitudes towards them. Or the goal of universal primary education itself may not be reached if minorities feel that the educational prescription is not relevant to their values and lifestyles, choosing instead to boycott the formal educational process.(45) Similarly, the goal for reducing maternal mortality rates may not succeed if minority women continue to be discriminated against in the provision of health services. A reduction by two-thirds of under-fives mortality could be achieved, with the remaining one-third of children being mostly from minority groups because no effort has been made to improve living standards in their communities, such as access to health care, clean water or adequate housing.

While most, if not all, of the Millennium Development Goals could be met in the short term without including minorities, this would probably not be sustainable. The persistent or increased inequality, discrimination, and exclusion of minorities could lead to either local or widespread conflict and insecurity which would undermine or destroy both the physical and social developments that have been made. With minorities constituting a disproportionately high level of those who have not achieved the goals – from poverty reduction, to maternal health, access to safe water and adequate housing – it is essential that special attention is paid to these groups in the process of reaching the Millennium Development Goals.

Mainstreaming minority rights into development: recommendations for policy and practice
There is a serious gap in development policy where minorities are concerned. Efforts to secure the human development of persons belonging to minorities are long overdue. Development cooperation between states can have a significant positive impact on the lives of minorities if they undertake to mainstream minority rights into policy and practice.

In July 2001, Minority Rights Group International convened an international meeting on the subject of mainstreaming minority and indigenous rights in development. Entitled, ‘Tackling Poverty and Discrimination: Mainstreaming Minority Rights in Development Assistance’, the two-day meeting brought together over 50 individuals from minority and indigenous organizations, UN bodies, multilateral and bilateral development agencies and non-governmental organizations working on development. The participants’ goal was to elaborate a set of recommendations that would guide the development community in reforming policy and practice vis-à-vis minorities and indigenous peoples. Five key themes emerged after two days of small group discussion: respecting standards; redressing discrimination; ensuring participation; assessing impact; and strengthening capacity. A summary and some explanation of these recommendations is provided below.

Respecting standards

As outlined above, minorities are particularly susceptible to the causes of poverty – voicelessness, vulnerability, and lack of assets and access – because of violations of their rights to, inter alia, fair distribution of resources, participation in the public sphere, non-discrimination, and education of their language and culture. Combating their poverty means protecting their rights.

These rights are outlined in international human rights treaties, standards for minority rights, multilateral treaties and standards pertaining to development, and national constitutions. Development policies and projects proposed by multilateral and bilateral development agencies should work to fulfil these rights and should not interfere with the ability of any government to meet its own obligations under international law vis-à-vis minorities within their territories.

The relevant international human rights treaties include: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (especially Article 27), the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural

Rights, and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Where women, children or other distinct groups within minorities are concerned, the international treaties relating to these groups should also be employed.(46) The ILO Convention concerning Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation, No. 11 (1958) is important in eliminating discrimination against minorities in work.

The key international standards on minorities are contained within the UN Declaration on the Rights of Persons Belonging to National or Ethnic, Religious and Linguistic Minorities (1992). The UN Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief (1981) is also instructive where religious minorities are concerned. The regional Council of Europe Framework Convention on National Minorities must be considered in relation to States Parties and can be useful in guiding practice in other states. The elaboration of other regional conventions or declarations on minorities should be encouraged and also considered as and when such agreements are adopted; these agreements should include detailed provisions on the rights of minorities in development. The ILO Convention Concerning Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries, No. 169 (1989) and the draft UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, should be employed when a minority group also self-identifies as an indigenous people. Development agencies could also make better use of the reporting systems of the various treaty bodies to inform policy, which routinely provide State Parties with recommendations on how to improve the implementation of treaty provisions where minorities are concerned.

National constitutions can include recognition of minorities and their rights; these rights should not be contravened by development plans. Where minorities’ rights are not included in national constitutions, governments should be encouraged to undertake to amend constitutions in this regard, with the full participation of minorities, with a view to their recognition as distinct groups. Minorities’ rights in the economic, social and cultural sphere should be included, in addition to civil and political rights.

Multilateral agreements on development do not explicitly mention minorities but nevertheless include provisions that relate to their rights. The UN Declaration on the Right to Development (1986) requires full participation, fair distribution of resources and policy to eradicate social injustices. Agenda 21 of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development includes provisions on participation in decision-making for local communities and endorses a ‘community-driven approach to sustainability’(47) in combating poverty. The Convention on Biological Diversity recognizes the obligation of states to ‘respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity’ (Article 8 j), including participation in the application of this knowledge and equitable benefit from its application. (48)

Enforcement of these provisions is the primary responsibility of states, but independent review and complaints procedures should be developed to ensure that development policy does not contravene the rights of minorities and other citizens. These mechanisms must be genuinely independent and should allow for the full participation of minorities in the monitoring process. Existing national human rights institutions could be adapted to take on this role.

A word on land rights is also necessary. The rights of minorities to the traditional lands and territories they inhabit are far weaker in international (and national) law than the rights of indigenous peoples to such lands.(49) Displacement of minorities in the name of development is, however, a recurring problem, one that often threatens the livelihoods of minorities and the preservation of their culture. Although a study of the land rights of minorities is beyond the scope of this paper, governments and development agencies need to be alert to the importance of land to the social, cultural, economic and political rights of minorities.

Redressing Discrimination

No development policy can effectively reduce inequalities between majority and minority communities if it does not tackle discrimination.

The first and most crucial step in redressing discrimination is for governments to acknowledge that minorities exist. Many governments are not prepared to do this, often claiming that recognition of distinct groups would threaten national unity or security. International law, however, clearly prescribes that states must protect the existence and identities of minorities within their territories. Development agencies can play an important role in encouraging governmental authorities to engage with minorities in dialogue on recognition and in providing technical support for drafting a legal and regulatory framework for minority rights, including their rights in development.

Once minority groups have been recognized, the challenge of overcoming discrimination can begin. States need to name discrimination against minorities and acknowledge that this discrimination is a barrier to the full enjoyment of their human rights and their equal economic, social and political participation. Once the discrimination has been named, policies to address it can be devised. These policies should aim to promote the value of minority cultures and identities, in accordance with the will and rights of minorities. Particular attention should be paid to addressing multiple forms of discrimination to which women, persons with disabilities, sexual minorities and people living with HIV/AIDS are often subject. The full participation of minorities in the elaboration of anti-discrimination measures must be secured. The provision of technical support from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, including from the new Anti-Discrimination Unit, could potentially be sought in this regard.(50) Development agencies may also wish to review their methods of distributing aid in order to circumvent potential discrimination by governmental authorities in (non-) allocation of aid to minorities.

In order to devise more effective strategies for tackling discrimination, development agencies need to assess how their policies and staff may be perpetuating discrimination against minority groups, either explicitly or implicitly. Implementing internal anti-discrimination policies and affirmative action measures will be an important part of reforming practice vis-à-vis beneficiaries of development programmes from minority groups.

Ensuring participation

Minorities have a right to ‘participate fully in the economic progress and development in their country’ (UN Declaration on the Rights of … Minorities, Article 4.5). In the context of participation in the elaboration of development policy, this right is usually ignored; either because minorities are not recognized; or because they are denied opportunities for participation; or because the processes of participation employed are not transparent, equitable, accessible or genuine.

The right to participate in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of development plans and programmes that affect minorities should be ensured for minority communities. This means that governments and development agencies must take concerted efforts to provide minorities with access to mechanisms for their participation.(51) These mechanisms should be designed in cooperation with minority communities. Special consideration should be given to ensuring that such mechanisms for participation elicit fully representative responses from minority communities, rather than selective responses from only the most amenable groups. Mechanisms should be compatible with traditional decision-making processes (where requested) while still allowing marginalized groups within minority communities, such as women, the opportunity to express their own views on development proposals. Participation should be accessible to minorities who are living in remote areas; have distinct language requirements that may impede their participation; or who may require technical assistance to facilitate their analysis of development proposals and evaluation of programmes.

Minorities are often overlooked in consultations because they are not commonly perceived as being part of ‘civil society’, in part because they may lack strong representation through political parties, NGOs or community-based organizations. Development agencies should therefore revise their guidelines on civil society participation to acknowledge explicitly that minority groups are a vital part of civil society, whose participation should be actively sought. Development agencies can also serve an important function by supporting the development of community-based organizations and networks for minorities.

Strategies for ‘good governance’ that form part of development programmes should be reviewed in light of the rights of minorities to full and equal participation in the economic, social and political spheres. Any programme for good governance must address the issue of minority representation in the political, juridical and public institutions of the state in order to overcome the elements of ‘voicelessness’ and unequal access to such institutions that are a major factor in the perpetuation of poverty and inequality for minorities. Activities to reform legislation and law enforcement, to promote civil society capacity-building and for media reform, should each mainstream issues on minority communities and their rights into their work. In this way, recognition of minority rights can be an important step in achieving transparent, accountable and democratic governance.

Assessing impact

Greater efforts need to be taken to assess the potential impact of proposed development activities on minorities and indigenous peoples. Development actors have a responsibility both to evaluate what harm might result from development proposals and to assess what real benefits might be accrued. Key questions should be: are there negative impacts on minorities?; are the impacts being felt unequally between minority and majority groups?; and is there routinely a nil impact on minorities and therefore a nil benefit in development?

Negative impacts in the social, economic, cultural and environmental aspects of the lives of minorities should be investigated. Sometimes impact assessments are carried out with narrowly defined indicators that do not fully evaluate the effects of development projects on the lives of persons belonging to minorities; for example, a project may result in net economic gains for a minority group on paper while simultaneously eroding their culture and livelihood. The monetary value of culture and community cannot easily be assessed but nevertheless should not be ignored when evaluating the net gains of a development proposal. Nor should it be assumed that negative impacts felt by a numerical minority with positive gain accrued by a majority is necessarily a ‘good plan’ for development; in fact, it can often be a plan for stimulating intercommunal tensions and conflict if the net ‘loser’ is a distinct minority community.

Examining inequalities in development gains is also important, particularly as a guard against conflict. External development agencies in particular have a responsibility to challenge government development strategies that result in highly unequal gains across regions or groups; such inequalities may be bona fide, but may also be part of a policy of systematic discrimination and underdevelopment for minorities.

Minorities sometimes experience neither gain nor loss in development; they are simply overlooked altogether. Proposed development projects should therefore routinely assess how minorities could be benefiting from development, particularly in those areas where there are marked inequalities between the human development of minorities and that of majority groups.

Adopting appropriate methodologies for assessing impact is essential. These impact assessments must follow principles of participation of minorities, in a manner that is transparent, genuine and which enables minorities to contribute effectively to the assessment process. The impact of development must be analysed against rights-based indicators, in addition to more conventional indicators, as required. The indicators should also be formulated in cooperation with minorities, in order to ensure that the impact on their lives is evaluated against their own conceptions of development. For example, a conventional environmental impact assessment may not take account of the cultural or spiritual value of certain aspects of the environment that are essential to the lifestyles of a given minority group. The use of rights-based indicators can be very instructive in this regard, because they allow for an assessment of factors that work to protect the identity and existence of minorities. An assessment of the impact on minorities of a development project for education, for example, should use the impact on the right to educational opportunities in their mother tongue as a rights-based indicator.

The collection of disaggregated data is necessary if the impact of development programmes on minorities is to be assessed and policy improved. Development agencies should increase their demands for such data in order that governments are pushed to address the lack of disaggregated data. Conditions for the collection of disaggregated data must be set; to ensure that data is collected and surveys designed with the full participation of minorities; and to ensure that recognition of minority groups is made in accordance with the principle of self-identification.(52)

Strengthening capacity

In order to implement an effective strategy for mainstreaming minority rights in development, the capacity of minorities and development actors needs to be strengthened.

For minorities, effective participation in the design, implementation and evaluation of development policies requires skills in researching the impact of development on their communities and knowledge of their rights. The realities of discrimination and exclusion in development for minorities need to be documented and presented to policy-makers; therefore, training for community-based organizations in these skills should be a priority in civil society capacity-building programmes in development. Key components of such training should include: minority rights and human rights, advocacy skills, collecting data and use of indicators.

Development actors also need to strengthen their capacity to engage with minorities. To begin, training on what constitutes a ‘minority’ (and an ‘indigenous people’) and what rights they are owed according to international and national standards should be a standard component of training programmes by development agencies, in the same way that sensitisation to issues of gender discrimination is mainstreamed. This will help development practitioners to identify the distinct groups in their country of operation, even where governments do not officially recognize these groups. Similar training can be offered to governmental authorities. Development agencies, both national and international, need to make a greater effort to exchange information with minority communities and should undertake institutional reforms to facilitate this, such as translating materials into local minority languages, building internal expertise on minority rights issues and employing staff from minority communities in their local and regional offices.

Development practitioners need to understand better how their activities impact on minorities, including in the social, economic, cultural and political spheres of the countries in which they operate. Programmes of research on minorities and development should be implemented or expanded in order to acquire knowledge of the nature, extent and dynamics of discrimination and exclusion of minorities in the development process. This information should be shared with governments as a way of demonstrating the central importance of respect for minorities’ rights to successful development outcomes.

Acknowledgements

This paper has been greatly informed by the work of the Minority Rights and Development Programme at MRG. In particular the issues papers of the Minority Rights and Development Programme written by Roger Riddell and Katarina Tomaševski should be noted. The research on ‘economics and racism’ by the International Council on Human Rights Policy has also been very informative. The recommendations are based on recommendations made by the participants of the meeting on ‘Tackling Poverty and Discrimination: Mainstreaming Minority Rights in Development Assistance’, convened by MRG in London, 26–7 July 2001, with the support of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Working Group on Minorities, and the ‘Durban International Seminar on Cooperation for the Better Protection of the Rights of Minorities’, Durban, South Africa, September 2001.

Notes

1 World Bank, World Development Report, 2000/2001, Washington, DC, p. 34.
2 Ibid., p. 34.
3 UNDP, Human Development Report 2000: Human Rights and Human Development, New York, Oxford University Press, 2000, p. 17.
4 Ibid., p. 2
5 Ibid., p. 1.
6 Ringold, Dina, Roma and the Transition in Central and Eastern Europe: Trends and Challenges, Washington, DC, World Bank, 2000, p. 11.
7 Human Rights Watch, Caste Discrimination: A Global Concern, Working Paper Prepared by Human Rights Watch for the Second Preparatory Committee of the World Conference Against Racism, Geneva May 21–June 1 2001.
8 UNDP, Human Development Report 2000, op. cit., p. 97, Figure 5.2.
9 Zoninsein, J., The Economic Case for Combating Racial and Ethnic Exclusion in Latin American and Caribbean Countries, Research Report, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC, May 2001, pp. 9–10.
10 Davis, D.J., Afro-Brazilians: Time for Recognition, London, Minority Rights Group International, 1999, p. 23.
11 Ringold, op. cit., p. 20.
12 UNDP, Human Development Report 2000, op. cit., p. 110.
13 Ringold, op. cit., pp. 19, 53. Note that the national average was not disaggregated by sex.
14 See for example, Kliksberg, B., The Role of Social and Cultural Capital in the Development Process, Latin American Studies Center, University of Maryland, College Park, 2000.
15 World Bank, World Development Report 2000/2001, op. cit., p. 35.
16 See, for example, International Council on Human Rights Policy, Racial and Economic Exclusion: Policy Implications, Versoix, Switzerland, 2001, pp. 7–8.
17 Narayan, D. et al., Voices of the Poor: Crying Out for Change, New York: Oxford University Press, World Bank, 2000.
18 ILO Convention 169 provides that indigenous peoples, ‘shall have the right to decide their own priorities for development … and to exercise control, to the extent possible, over their own economic, social and cultural development. In addition, they shall participate in the formulation, implementation and evaluation of plans and programmes for national and regional development which may affect them directly’ (Article 7.1). Women’s rights in development are also set down in the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, where Article 14.2a recognizes the right of women ‘to participate in the elaboration and implementation of development planning at all levels’. Persons belonging to minorities do not have any international legal mechanism to which they can appeal for the guarantee of similar rights in the development process.
19 The term ‘racial discrimination’ in the meaning of the Convention applies to ‘any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms’. Although this definition does not mention religious or linguistic minorities, CERD has correlated religious or linguistic identity to other identities protected under the ICERD, such as ethnicity, in reviewing State periodic reports.
20 See, for example, a summary of ‘Concluding Observations Relating to Economic and Social Rights of Minorities and Indigenous Peoples’, in Felice, W., ‘The UN Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination: Race, and Economic and Social Human Rights’, Human Rights Quarterly, vol. 21, no.1, February 2002, pp. 219–23.
21 These rights are also guaranteed under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
22 The provisions and conditions for taking special measures are outlined in Article 1.4 of ICERD.
23 The ICESCR foresees that states will aim to fulfil the rights set forth in the Covenant ‘individually and through international assistance and cooperation’ (Article 2.1). The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has examined the international obligations for cooperation in General Comments No. 3 and No. 11. The Committee has interpreted that the article on non-discrimination in the Covenant is not subject to the provision in Article 2.1 that the rights in the Covenant will be achieved progressively, to the maximum of available resources of the state. Accordingly, all of the rights in the declaration should be respected without discrimination on any grounds at all times and without deference to existing resources.
24 UN Doc. E/C.12/2001/10, 10 May 2001.
25 UN Doc. E/C.12/2001/10, 10 May 2001, para. 11.
26 See ICESCR Article 13.1; CRC Article 29.1 c, d, Article 17d, Article 30; UN Declaration on the Rights of Minorities Article 4.4; UNESCO Convention Against Discrimination in Education (1960).
27 See ICESCR, Article 15.1a; CRC Article 30, Article 31.2, UN Declaration on the Rights of Minorities, Article 2.2, Article 4.2; UNESCO Declaration on Cultural Diversity.
28 A positive and recent example of good attention to minority rights is the UNDP Human Development Report 2000 on ‘Human Rights and Human Development’. CORDAID in the Netherlands and the bilateral development agency of New Zealand were identified as among the few aid agencies that name minorities as a priority in their policies for development assistance. See Riddell, R., Minorities, Minority Rights and Development: An Issues Paper, London, Minority Rights Group International, 1998, pp. 33–4.
29 The World Bank is adopting a new Operational Policy on Indigenous Peoples (OP/BP 4.10); the UNDP has recently drafted a policy note on engagement with Indigenous Peoples (http://www.undp.org/policy/docs/FINAL_IP_POLICY_Oct_11.doc; and the European Commission is considering a policy on indigenous peoples (http://europa.eu.int/comm/external_relations/human_rights/ip/). In all cases, opponents have argued that existing or proposed policies and the implementation of these polices, fall short of international standards on the rights of indigenous peoples.
30 Canadian International Development Agency, Social Development Priorities: A Framework for Action, Ottawa, 2001 and CIDA’s Draft Action Plan on Basic Education, Ottawa, January 2001.
31 World Bank, Implementing the World Bank’s Strategy to Reduce Poverty: Progress and Challenges, Washington, DC, April 1993, pp. 60, 63 and 77; cited in Tomaševski, K., Minority Rights in Development Aid Policies, London, Minority Rights Group International, 2000, p. 14.
32 To access DFID’s Country Strategy Papers see http://www.dfid.gov.uk/ .
33 UK Department for International Development, Poverty: Bridging the Gap, Guidance Notes, London, DFID, 2001, p. 57.
34 Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) describe a country’s macroeconomic, structural and social policies and programs to promote growth and reduce poverty, as well as associated external financing needs. PRSPs are prepared by governments through a participatory process involving civil society and development partners, including the World Bank and IMF. Source: http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/strategies/, 15 February 2002.
35 Christian Aid, Ignoring the Experts: Poor People’s Exclusion from Poverty Reduction Strategies, UK, October 2001, p. 2.
36 Christian Aid, Participating in Dialogue? The Estrategia Boliviana de Reducción de la Pobreza, UK, January 2002, p. 9.
37 Development Committee of the World Bank and IMF, Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers – Progress in Implementation, DC 2001–0010 (18 April 2001), Washington, 2001, p. 24.
38 Ibid., p. 24. JSA staff are instructed to describe, but not evaluate, the participation process.
39 To access the EU Country Strategy Papers, see http://europa.eu.int/comm/development/strat_papers/index_fr.htm .
40 Government of Botswana, Country Strategy Paper to the European Commission, 2001, p. 4
41 Government of Botswana, Country Strategy Paper to the European Commission, 2001, p. 17.
42 The Niger PRSP is available at http://poverty.worldbank.org/files/9355_NigerPRSP.pdf, 15 February 2002. The Niger PRSP provides excellent disaggregation of data by region, but does not correlate this to any minority groups. The PRSP also includes a separate chapter analysing gender discrimination in development.
43 See UN Doc. A/56/326 (September 2001). The Millennium Development Goals consist of eight goals, 18 targets and more than 40 indicators.
44 OECD, http://www1.oecd.org/dac/Indicators/htm/list.htm, ‘Measuring development progress: a working set of core indicators’, accessed on 14 February 2002.
45 See, for example, the case of the Karamoja people in Uganda who have consistently rejected formal education, which they felt was designed to undermine the continuation of their traditional nomadic lifestyles. A new project providing education according to the priorities of the Karamoja is having better results in maintaining student enrolment. Details in Baker, W.G., Uganda: Marginalization of Minorities, London, Minority Rights Group International, 2001, p. 13.
46 These treaties would include the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN Declaration of the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, the Convention on Migrant Workers and their Families.
47 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Agenda 21, adopted June 1992, paragraph 3.7.
48 The full text of Article 8j reads, ‘Each Contracting Party shall, as far as possible and as appropriate … (j) Subject to its national legislation, respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity and promote their wider application with the approval and involvement of the holders of such knowledge, innovations and practices and encourage the equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the utilization of such knowledge, innovations and practices.’
49 See, for example, the Final Report of Ms. Erica-Irene A. Daes, on Indigenous peoples and their relationship to land, UN Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/2001/21.
50 See the World Conference Against Racism Programme of Action, paragraph 190, c and d for an outline of the proposed mandate of the Anti-Discrimination Unit. Adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2002.
52 The World Conference Against Racism Programme of Action ‘urges States and encourages the private sector and international financial and development institutions, such as the World Bank and regional developments banks, to promote participation of persons who are victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, in economic, cultural and social decision-making at all stages, particularly in the development and implementation of poverty alleviation strategies, development projects and trade and market assistance programmes’, paragraph 112.
53 See CERD General Recommendation VIII on the principle of self-identification. The World Conference Against Racism Programme of Action sets out criteria for data collection and disaggregation ‘to assess regularly the situation of individuals and groups who are victims of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance’ and requires that ‘[a]ny such information shall, as appropriate, be collected with the explicit consent of the victims, based on their self-identification and in accordance with provisions on human rights and fundamental freedoms’, paragraph 92.