Monday 17 January 2005 (to be held at BIICL, directions)
Economic and social rights: legally enforceable rights?
Chair: Michael Anderson (DFID)
Speakers: Katarina Tomasevski (Lund University) and John Mackinnon (Freelance Economic Consultant)

This session will examine how best to enforce economic and social rights to achieve poverty reduction. Are legal enforcement strategies, in particular with regards to the rights to health and education, effective? Is the law sufficiently developed to provide development professionals with clear guidance? Is there evidence that non-legal strategies are more effective?

Background paper      Read meeting report or listen to the meeting

Tuesday 25 January 2005
Reconciling rights, growth and inequality
Chair: Adrian Wood (DFID)
Speakers: Lord Brett (ILO) and Andy McKay (ODI)

Many economists continue to be sceptical about the utility and affordability of economic and social rights as guides to resource allocation and policy-making. This session will focus on the impact on growth of meeting rights claims, including through redistribution, examining the relationship between growth, poverty reduction and tackling inequality.

Background paper      Read meeting report or listen to the meeting

Monday 31 January 2005
Can human rights make aid agencies more accountable?
Chair: Sheelagh Stewart (DFID)
Speakers: Peter Uvin (Fletcher School, Tufts University) and Owen Davies QC (Two Garden Court Chambers)

This session will consider the compatibility between rights-based approaches and the current aid consensus on development partnerships and national ownership. Are rights-based approaches genuinely different from past aid policies and practice? Do they create a new form of partnership? Can they avoid resort to blunt political conditionalities? Can they make donors more accountable? What is the impact of the UK's international human rights obligations and the Human Rights Act on the Department for International Development?

Relevant ODI publication: The Right to Development: Study on Existing Bilateral and Multilateral Programmes and Policies for Development Partnership, Laure-Hélène Piron, Report for the OHCHR, 2004

Background paper      Read meeting report or listen to the meeting

Monday 7 February 2005
Why the human rights approach to HIV/AIDS makes all the difference
Chair: Tony Barnett (LSE)
Speakers: Marianne Haslegrave (Commonwealth Medical Trust) and Mandeep Dhaliwal (AIDS Alliance)

A comprehensive strategy for tackling the exacerbation of impoverishment by HIV/AIDS would include prevention of transmission, respect for human rights and progress on poverty reduction. This meeting will identify best and worst practices in order to single out the impact of institutionalised human rights violations associated with HIV/AIDS and, conversely, beneficial effects of rights-based approaches to dealing with the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Background paper

See details of an ODI meeting on: 'Demography, HIVAIDS and reproductive health: implications for the achievement of the MDGs' (2 February 2005, part of ODI's 'MDGs: The 2005 Agenda' series).

Background paper      Read meeting report or listen to the meeting

Monday 14 February 2005
Rights and natural resources: contradictions in claiming rights
Chair: Duncan Brack (Chatham House)
Speakers: Mac Chapin (Native Lands Centre) and David Brown (ODI)

This session will examine issues relating to conflicts in defining and claiming rights associated with natural resources. Using the forestry and conservation sectors the session will explore two main areas: firstly the way in which national legislation can undermine local rights where, for example, conflicts between statute and customary law are not resolved. Secondly, at the international level there are a number of questions associated with the role of intermediary mechanisms (such as large international NGOs) and the partnerships between conservationists and indigenous peoples. What, for example, is the legitimacy and accountability of these external organisations, as well as their funders, in the representation of local rights?

Background paper      Read meeting report or listen to the meeting

Monday 28 February 2005
Protecting rights in conflict situations and fragile states
Chair: Frances Stewart (University of Oxford)
Speakers: Andy Carl (Conciliation Resources) and Christine Chinkin (LSE)

Violent conflicts and fragile states pose a number of challenges for the realisation of human rights. Can a rights-based approach play a positive role in conflict prevention or does it exacerbate tensions? In post-conflict or fragile states situations, should donors and the human rights community insist on standards being met, or are there approaches to help manage the process by making it clear which rights are to be prioritised in such circumstances? When it is permissible for such states to derogate from core human rights obligations?

See details of an ODI meeting on: 'Failed and fragile: How can the MDGs be acheived in difficult enviroments?' (2 March 2005, part of the 'MDGs: The 2005 Agenda' series).

Background paper      Read meeting report or listen to the meeting

Monday 7 March 2005
Advocates or aid workers? Approaches to human rights in humanitarian crises
Chair: James Darcy (ODI)
Speakers: Andrew Bonwick (Oxfam) and Anneka Van Woudenberg (Human Rights Watch)

This meeting will explore two contrasting approaches to human rights in humanitarian crises, examining the extent to which human rights and humanitarian action form a common, complementary or conflicting agenda. What is a rights-based approach to humanitarian programming? Is it preferable to an approach that views the role of humanitarian action as being to fill the void between human rights rhetoric and reality?

Read meeting report or listen to the meeting

Tuesday 22 March 2005 (World Water Day)
Rights to water: strengthening the claims of poor people to improved access
Chair: Peter Newborne (ODI)
Speakers: Lyla Mehta (IDS) and Bruce Lankford (University of East Anglia)

If the number of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation is to be reduced by half in the next decade, current sentiments have to be converted into concerted action. At present the pace of change is not nearly sufficient to meet the challenge. In this context, how is discourse on human and other 'rights' to water (e.g. contractual and property rights) being converted into principles and rules which give voice to poor people and strengthen their claims for improved access to water resources and water services?

Read meeting report or listen to the meeting

ODI Briefing Paper: Right to Water: Legal Forms, Political Channels

Download programme

Read the report: Human Rights and Poverty Reduction: Realities, Controversies and Strategies

Read the 1999 meeting series reports: A Rights-based Approach to Development: From Theory to Practice