Report (Part 4): Sustainable Development Convention 2002

Rights and Humanity: Programme

Time: 30 October 2002, 16:00-17:00 Location: Salle B Chair: Ms. Pascale Morand; Rare (For respect and responsibility) Presenters/ Participants: Ms. Julia Häusermann, Rights and Humanity, Mr. Andrew Day; Rights and Humanity Reporter: Aida Nejad (ICVolunteers) Languages: English Key words: Human Rights, Development

This NGO based in the UK has been working on a rights based approach to development, by developing a comprehensive program which aims at reducing poverty and social isolation. 

Ms. Morand opened the session by introducing the two panelists; Ms Julia Häusermann, director and founder of Rights and Humanity and Mr. Andrew Day the Fundraising officer at Rights and Humanity. Mr. Day in a brief introduction, stressed to the participants that while Rights and Humanity uses existing Human Rights standards, it is a multi-cultural and multi-faith organization and takes into account issues of cultural relativism.

Ms. Häusermann added that in their experience human rights must be formulated in terms that people can understand rather than treaty jargon. The essence of human rights is based on equal worth and dignity and equality of opportunity. The human rights approach only serves to provide legitimacy to these basic demands trough legally binding rules. 

Ms. Häusermann gave a detailed description of their current projects under the comprehensive program. The program includes; an international congress on the implementation of the Human Rights approach to development in Jordan; Participation in a National Action Plan in Jordan through participation in the drafting of legislation; Another pilot project in Mozambique; Participation in the evaluation of South Africa's development program and toolkit to measure corporate implementation of Human Rights policies.

She went on stating that the current TRIPS agreement under the WTO, will present challenges for her organization, especially with respect to access to water and access to medicine. One the organization's strategies will be to work more closely with financial institutions in the future.

Surprising Issues
Ms. Morand asked whether one of the objectives of Rights and Humanity is to become sustainable in the future.

Ms. Häusermann replied that the organization was never intended to become sustainable and it was becoming increasingly difficult to find funding since Sept. 11. However, much of the organization's income comes from consultancy income and they are looking to expand on this. They are also exploring income producing activities such as training.

Interesting Questions
Ms. Morand also asked what is expected from the organizations partners. Ms. Häusermann said that this varies with each partner. For example their university partners provide research, their civil society partners provide information etc. Another participant asked whether in the organization's view, Johannesburg sufficiently took into account the Human Rights approach. She replied that insufficient attention had been given to the human rights approach and that an important opportunity to integrate human rights had been missed.

Another participant asked why Rights and Humanity is concentrating on small and medium-sized enterprises when it is general knowledge that the multi-nationals have the worst human rights record. Ms. Häusermann replied that there is already much work being done to monitor multi-nationals and a lack of concentration on SMEs. 

Conclusions
The work of Rights and Humanity was already very ambitious and in the future Rights and Humanity will also need to work more closely with private actors and develop more partnerships in order to achieve its objectives.