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fulfil their citizens' rights. The shift in emphasis from a 'needs-based'
charity model to an approach which seeks to redress injustice and bring
about institutional change is also seen as more empowering for marginal-
ized groups. RBD have been mobilized in anti-colonial struggles and new
social movements, and human rights instruments concerning particular
social groups (for example, women, children, indigenous people) have
provided a useful basis for legal arguments and seeking social justice.
Competing understandings of the relationship between human rights
and development are, however, evident among development actors. The
World Bank, for example, views the attainment of human rights as a
goal of development, while the United Nations Development Programme
sees human rights as critical to achieving development but not as a goal
of development in itself (Manzo, 2003). Rights-based approaches have
also been subject to a number of critiques, as Tsikata discusses (2007).
First, there has been a lack of clarity about the differences between
rights-based approaches and how they relate to other development
alternatives, such as participatory development, gender and develop-
ment and so on. Second, RBD are 'state-centric', as human rights
instruments define the nation state as the primary site for accountabil-
ity and responsibility for fulfilling the rights of its citizens. This
'state-centric' approach appears to contradict the dominant neoliberal
agenda that prioritizes increased global interdependence and often
results in a weakened role for the state, with significant power instead
being accorded to global financial institutions such as the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund and transnational corporations.
RBD imply that citizens have legal rights and can potentially make
a claim against their governments to fulfil their economic and social
rights. However, in the context of neoliberal restructuring and eco-
nomic liberalization within much of the global South, decisions about
the economy and public spending priorities that would improve social
protection are often beyond the control of nation states. Indeed, the
privatization of essential services such as water, education and health,
and cost-recovery measures under structural adjustment programmes
which reduce access to basic services for the poorest groups, could be
seen as violations of people's economic and social rights (Tsikata, 2007).
Yet governments in the global South are often unable to fulfil these
economic and social rights. Meanwhile, global financial institutions,
multilateral and bilateral agencies, transnational corporations, Western
governments and international NGOs, who are acknowledged as the
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