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Operationalising the RightsAgenda: Participatory RightsAssessment in Peru andMalawiJames Blackburn, Mary Ann Brocklesby, Sheena Crawford andJeremy Holland

1 IntroductionThroughout the 1990s, debates about human rightsand development increasingly converged. With arenewed focus on poverty reduction, internationalagencies have moved away from a narrow concernwith the poverty line to attempt more directly tounderstand the underlying dynamics of poverty inany particular society or context. This shift has beensupported by the increasing use of powerfulanalytical frameworks developed from theoreticalwork by Sen (1981; 1997) on entitlements andcapabilities, from the food security literature of the1980s (Devereux and Maxwell 2001) and later workon vulnerability (Swift 1989; Moser 1998).Significantly, this has moved policy debates awayfrom a focus on assessing and responding to needs,a process that in the past has not necessarilydisturbed existing allocations of entitlements(Brocklesby and Crawford 2004a).

During the same period that developmentagencies have embraced these multidimensionalanalytical frameworks, human rights concerns havedeveloped from a first-generation “negative” concernwith protecting individual civil and political (CP)rights, to a broader and more developmentalconcern with ensuring economic, social and cultural(ESC) rights linked to poverty reduction goals.Among development agencies, the United NationsDevelopment Programme (UNDP 2000) has beeninstrumental in pushing the rights and entitlementsagenda, now widely reflected in developmentagency discourse (see Cornwall and Nyamu-Musembi, this issue). A more recent UN inter-agency statement (United Nations 2003) of

common understanding stresses the need fordevelopment cooperation to contribute to thedevelopment of the capacities of “duty bearers” tomeet their obligations and/or of rights holders toclaim their rights (see Piron, this issue).

This convergence of discourse – thedevelopmental approach to rights and the dynamicapproach to poverty – enables development agenciesin principle to engage with what Moore and Putzel(1999) call the “politics of poverty”. The rightsdiscourse politicises poverty analysis and refocusesattention on the institutions and processes thatdetermine development outcomes. This presentsa new set of challenges to development agenciesthat are not easily addressed. Important factorsexplaining the continued absence of a rights focusin poverty and policy debates are the language ofrights and the politicised nature of rights assessmentand fulfilment. This article, through a review of acontinuing Department for InternationalDevelopment (DFID) initiative in Malawi and Peru– the Participatory Rights AssessmentMethodologies (PRAMs) project – looks at thechallenges facing donor agencies as they seek tooperationalise a stated commitment to rights-baseddevelopment. These experiences of assessing rightsin practice draw attention to how rights are definedin particular contexts and how the effectiveness ofrights in a particular context is mediated by existingpower structures, which may be slow to change.

A focus on participatory rights-based assessmentties in with the growing trend towards participationin development processes (see below), with itsemphasis on institutional engagement and change

and on local ownership. By bringing a more specificrights and entitlements analytical framework,however, a participatory rights assessment approachpoliticises analysis, highlighting power relationsand processes of exclusion and discrimination.Participatory rights assessments have the potentialto identify both the institutional structures thatdefine, interpret and implement rights as well as thepolitical processes that define the channels throughwhich citizens can contest their claims. The lessonslearned from DFID’s PRAMs initiative highlight boththe potential of rights to address the structural causesof marginalisation, and also the complexity ofimplementing rights-based approaches.

2 Rights, participation andinstitutional changeFirst, it is useful to situate the emergence of rightsassessments within wider concerns about moreparticipatory and politicised approaches todevelopment. In moving from poverty assessmentto this approach, the role of national institutionsand the need for institutional analysis takes on anadded significance. Not only does rights-baseddevelopment politicise development, but it buildsin a strong action orientation linked to institutionalaccountability and transparency. Within thiscontext, participation itself becomes politicised,echoing Gaventa and Valderrama’s (1999) thesison the evolution of community and politicalparticipation into what Lister (1998) describes as“citizenship participation”:

Citizenship as participation can be seen asrepresenting an expression of human agency inthe political arena, broadly defined; citizenshipas rights enables people to act as agents. (Lister1998, cited in Gaventa and Valderrama 1999:4)

Webster and Engberg-Pederson (2002) make acritical distinction between strategies of the poorto access directly assets and resources and thosethat seek to influence policy design andimplementation in favour of redistributive equity.This second type of strategy, they argue, hasimportant implications for the nature ofparticipation, for empowerment of the poor andfor the institutional basis of poverty and inequality.The success of this qualitatively different type ofparticipation, however, is contingent upon the

opening up of “political space” for engagement andchange. Webster and Engberg-Pederson (op cit)conceive of three elements of political space forparticipation by the poor:

n institutional channels through which policyformulation and implementation can beaccessed, controlled or contested by the poor;

n political discourses in which poverty and povertyreduction are significant issues; and

n social and political practices of the poor, whichmay be a basis for influencing decision making,agendas, policy and programme implementation,etc.

This conceptualisation of the constitution ofpolitical space is given operational focus by Moserand Norton (2001) in their analysis of the “channelsof contestation”, through which the poor can claimtheir rights in the context of a range of formal andinformal “rights regimes”, each with their owninstitutional structures. They define a rights regimeas a system of rights which derive from a particularregulatory order or source of authority. These canoverlap, for example through customary, religiousand statutory law. Institutional structures are thosethat determine the definition, interpretation andimplementation of key rights. The political processthen defines the channels through which actors cancontest claims and challenge institutional norms.

3 Operationalising the discourse:participatory rights-basedassessmentRights-based development, it seems, provides anoperational commitment to a qualitatively differentform of participation, in which citizens exercisetheir right to participate in challenging and changingthe institutions that govern their lives. If this is thecase then how might development agencies mosteffectively change their practice to make thisapproach work?

Certainly, elements of the donor communityhave arrived at a position of promoting process asthe basis for rights-based development. For UNDP,rights are not an outcome of development but areintegral to the development process:

human rights are not, as has sometimes beenargued, a reward of development. Rather theyare critical to achieving it. (UNDP 2000: iii)

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Similarly, the World Bank’s World DevelopmentReport 2000/01 (World Bank 2000) marked a shiftin emphasis on ‘empowerment’ through enhancedpolitical participation of poor people, promptinggreater efforts to articulate and categorise the formsof relations between citizen voice and dutybearer/service provider responsiveness.1

In its Target Strategy Paper, Realising HumanRights for Poor People, DFID (2000) outlines itscommitment to a rights-based approach todevelopment2 as the most effective means toachieving poverty reduction outcomes, measuredby the Millennium Development Goals (see Shetty,this issue).3 Founded on values of active citizenship,democracy and accountability and equality andnon-discrimination, the Target Strategy Paper buildsits strategy on the three core principles ofparticipation, inclusion and fulfilling obligation.Participation is central to the DFID strategy andmeans ensuring that the voices of the poor are heardas active citizens, rather than muted as passivebeneficiaries. Recent studies, including the WorldBank’s series of Consultations with the Poor (Narayanet al. 2000), have revealed that local people, eventhose living under democratically electedgovernments, feel powerless, starved of information,unable to hold public duty bearers to account andlacking in influence over the key decisions whichaffect their lives. People’s right to freedom of opinionand expression and their right to receive and impartinformation are widely threatened. DFID’s positionis that through participation, poor people, and notjust local elites, are empowered to claim all theirhuman rights.

In seeking to operationalise its Target StrategyPaper, one way forward for DFID was to developan existing research instrument – the ParticipatoryPoverty Assessment (PPA), but with greater focuson rights assessment and fulfilment. The PPA is aninstrument that brings together participation andmultidimensional poverty analysis. The “firstgeneration” of PPAs in the early 1990s emphasisedinformation extraction for donor evaluation throughparticipation, with a variable emphasis onentitlements. “Second generation” PPAs emphasisemore strongly national ownership of process andfindings, tied to policy processes such as the PovertyReduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), while emerging“third generation” PPAs stress greater localownership, the “scaling up” of participation (fromits roots in community development and project

cycles), through direct interaction between policy-makers and citizens and the need to identify politicalspace for institutional change. The next section willexamine two cases where participatory rightsassessments have been used to build a picture ofrights rooted in local realities and address theimplications of these examples for donors seekingto implement rights-based approaches in their work.

4 Two case studiesThe DFID PRAMs project is one response to thechallenge of putting their rights agenda into practice(see Brocklesby and Crawford 2004b; CDS Swanseaand Edinburgh Resource Centre 2002). The projectaims to find ways of supporting governments, civilsociety and other social actors in understandingtheir rights and obligations and in creating theinstitutional change necessary to ensureparticipation, inclusion and obligation for all humanrights for all people. The project aims to facilitate:

n people’s own identification and assessment oftheir rights

n understanding and agreement betweenstakeholders of the obstacles poor people facein accessing those rights

n identification of actions to support governmentsand other duty bearers in the protection,promotion and realisation of human rights; and

n institutional change and the opening up of newchannels of institutional engagement betweencitizens and duty bearers towards these ends.

The project is presently being piloted inpartnership with DFID country desks in Malawiand Peru. In each case, the project initially identifieda “political space” and associated institutionalstructures that determined the definition,interpretation and implementation of key rights inthat space. In Malawi, the intervention is integratedwithin a broader education sector supportprogramme and is focused on communityparticipation in school management. In Peru,participatory rights-based assessment is embeddedin a human rights programme, which disbursesproject funding and facilitates citizenshipparticipation in local governance. These pilotinitiatives are providing useful lessons for expandingparticipatory rights assessment into differentinstitutional and policy contexts.

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4.1 Case study 1: The Malawi EducationSector Support ProgrammeThe Malawi Education Sector Support Programme(ESSP) started in April 2001, designed by DFID toassist the Ministry of Education, Science andTechnology (MoEST) to implement its policyframework. ESSP contracted the international non-governmental organisation (NGO), CARE, throughits Partnership in Capacity Building in Education(PACE) programme, to support its work towardsschool improvement and increased communityparticipation in school management. PRAMs inMalawi4 is being promoted as the methodology toembed rights-based development in ESSP and tounderpin the PACE school improvement planningprocess (see Crawford 2004). This process is beingcarried out in six pilot districts, with stakeholdersat all levels participating in the development ofschool improvement plans. Plans are then put intooperation and networks of local government andNGOs established and their capacity for rights-based school improvement strengthened. Theschool improvement planning process addresseskey rights linked to gender, HIV status, child-headedhouseholds, teacher–child relations, child–childabuse and community participation.

The participatory rights assessment process inMalawi builds on workshops that train districteducation officers, staff of other ministries, nationalNGO representatives and the PACE support teamin the principles and practice of participatory andrights-based development for the schoolimprovement planning process. Teams then workwith communities and education sectorstakeholders to develop and implement schoolimprovement plans for local schools. To date, multi-sectoral District Education Support Teams havebeen trained in the six districts and have, in turn,carried out participatory school improvementplanning in their districts. National discussions onlessons learned from this process have furtherinformed policies for operationalising the NationalStrategy for Community Participation in PrimarySchool Management and, it is hoped, will influencethe development of a National Policy on SocialInclusion.

The participatory rights assessment process inMalawi has brought together people from all differentlevels in the Education system, from the ChiefEducation Advisor of the MoEST, DistrictCommissioners (DCs) and District Education

Managers (DEMs), through CommunityDevelopment Assistants (CDAs) and representativesof different groups in the communities, includingthe most marginalised individuals. People fromdifferent educational backgrounds, and with verydifferent experiences and authority, have workedtogether in mixed teams to do participatory rightsassessment in the school communities and build aschool improvement plan with local people. It mayseem a small thing, but in a hierarchical societywhere, traditionally, “big” men sit on chairs andwomen curtsey at their feet, the fact that the DC willtake off his jacket and tie and sit on the ground withchildren, is a big change in the way things usuallywork. The top officials were very happy to be partof the team; drawing maps in the dust, singing songsand encouraging children to express their own hopesand expectations for better education. Children andadults alike talked with these officials as if they werejust “ordinary people”. Afterwards, everyone saidthat the experience had been enjoyable. The DEMfrom Ntcheu, for instance, said that he felt reallybad that he had never had the opportunity to talkwith the people in his constituency in this waybefore. He said he had learned so much and hadpreviously had no idea about many of the problemsand issues that were raised.

A particularly powerful method for generatinga partnership approach to rights realisation was theuse of social contracts. The participatory rightsassessment teams facilitated the development ofSocial Contracts for School Improvement duringthe school community visits. Each interest groupin the community initially drew up their owncontract; they decided on what the communitycould expect from them in terms of putting schoolimprovement into practice.

The groups made their contracts using theinformation and understanding they had built upduring a Significant Change activity. Each groupbuilt a matrix to identify the most important schoolimprovements needed and decide on the “who,what, why, where, when and how” for achievementof these improvements. The groups identified theirresponsibilities and agreed on a time-frame. Theyalso thought about what could be expected fromother groups. So, for example, the girls consideredwhat their parents and the school managementcommittee should do, as well as considering theirown roles. At the end of the three-day visit, in theplenary meeting which everyone attended, each


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group presented its personal contract and then wentthrough a process of negotiating and agreeing untilwe ended up with a Social Contract which broughttogether the whole school and village community.

The contracts themselves are quite simple; therewas no great elaboration of detail. What was veryimportant, though, was the fact that everyonecommitted themselves to particular roles andresponsibilities and pledged themselves to these ina public forum. People, especially those who arenormally marginalised from decision making, reallyvalued the chance to express what they could offer,and to assist in determining what other people canbe expected to do. People who held traditionaldecision-making roles did not feel threatened, butwere quite surprised at the “sensible suggestions”coming from people they do not always listen to,like children and older women.

4.2 Case Study 2: Human Rights for thePoor in Peru ProgrammePRAMs in Peru has successfully become embeddedas a methodological component of the HumanRights for the Poor in Peru (HHRR) Programme, aDFID-funded programme which is beingimplemented by Oxfam Peru. The purpose of HHRRis to facilitate strategies which enable the poor torealise their human rights, supported by civil society,government and the international community. Indoing so, the programme will help achieve twogoals: the increased responsiveness of governmentand civil society in Peru to the human rightsrealisation strategies of the poor; and themainstreaming of a rights-based approach todevelopment within the international communityin Peru.

One major objective of the programme is thesystematic use of participatory methodologies.These methodologies are being developed to assessrights and local strategies to claim them (in partthrough the design and sponsorship of Programmesub-projects and in part through associated broaderinstitutional change); and to assess programmeimpact. The HHRR has identified six local NGOpartners that will work within the target projectareas. These NGOs are already active instrengthening local organisations and in buildingrights awareness among local people and their roleis to facilitate local assessment of priorities anddesign of sub-projects for funding through theHHRR and to establish coridores, or communication

channels, between the participating geographicaldepartments. Each NGO has understood PRAMsin a different way and are developing quite differentprocesses and experiences which eventually willbe fed back into national learning and PRAMsdevelopment.

One of these NGOs is ADEAS QULLANA,5 asmall NGO that has long been rooted in SantoTomás in southern Cusco, a remote rural Quechua-speaking area, one of the poorest of Peru (seeBlackburn 2004).The general opinion of the ADEASteam members is that ‘we were doing PRAMs beforePRAMs; we just didn’t have a name for it’.6 Inextending its experience of community planningand training to participatory rights assessment,ADEAS has learned the importance of context.Political space in any context is already power-infused and what PRAMs can realistically achievewill vary according to the characteristics of theinstitutions in each context. In some contexts, localpower holders little used to being challenged havetraditionally held sway over local politics and intendto control the new spaces for citizen participationin planning and reviewing local public expenditureopened up by recent legislation, in particular themesas de concertación (municipal planning fora) andlocal coordinating councils. In other contexts, therehas been a greater openness to a partnershipapproach that involves collective rights assessmentand action for change.

The PRAMs process followed by ADEAS hasbeen to facilitate workshops with a partnership ofactors and organisations to raise awareness aboutrights, identify obstacles to their realisation andformulate “rights realisation” initiatives. ADEASthen stays with this process through toimplementation and monitoring of impact, withlessons learned documented for future practice.

ADEAS has encouraged participants to use arange of participatory methods, including cardsorting and problem tree analysis, withdramatisation particularly powerful for assessingthe rights context and barriers to rights fulfilment.The uses of drama in conscientizatión are well known.What is noteworthy in this case, is that ADEASmade good use of dramatisation to facilitatesystematic reflection by participants on the linkbetween problems and rights. More important thanthe drama itself, say ADEAS facilitators, is the spacefor discussion and interpretation afterwards. Clearly,ADEAS, as an NGO experienced in alternative


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education, has built up a considerable expertise inthe use of drama to raise awareness and in this caseit was evident that they successfully adapted thetool to the requirements of PRAMs. Indeed, whilethere is scope for expansion in the use of methods,particularly in using Participatory Learning andAction (PLA)-type tools for institutional assessment,the importance of developing and using tools incontext rather than being subjected to a perceivedPLA method “colonisation” was strongly emphasisedfrom the beginning.

PRAMs in Peru is being promoted as anempowering process which brings with it therecognition that ensuring inclusion of the poorestand most marginal will take time. Partners arecommitted to a lengthy process because they arecommitted to ensuring that inclusion, participationand obligation occurs in practice. They are alsocommitted to the local identification of rights incontext and to linking assessment of those rightsto local forms of action.

Follow-up stages planned at time of writing willinvolve the local NGOs providing technical supportto community-based organisations. This supportis aimed at helping those organisations developpartnerships with different organisations ingovernment and civil society and to develop smallproposals centred on realising their rights. Thenational HHRR programme will fund theseproposals. Once one cycle of identification, capacitybuilding and implementation is complete aparticipatory evaluation process aimed atdisseminating lessons learnt and mainstreamingthe approach throughout Peru will take place.

5 Emerging lessonsThe DFID PRAMs programme is now drawing toa close. PRAMs has for the most part achieved itsaims. The project has demonstrated that a rights-based approach does work and can achieve results.When rights-based approaches and methods areused, people are empowered. Duty bearers feelmore secure in their work and claim holders feelable to join in decision making and share in rolesand responsibilities for their own development.This leads to greater commitment and investmentfrom all stakeholders. The project has also identifiedthe challenges and pitfalls associated with thisapproach and offered a range of potential strategies,entry points and methods for operationalisingrights-based development. These challenges are

not always new, but bear repeating in what is arelatively new operational context. While aprojectised approach to institutional transformationmust be necessarily modest in ambition, it seemsthat there are several elements behind the successor failure of donor-supported institutional changeinitiatives such as PRAMs. Here we consideremerging lessons as a contribution to the growingdebate on mainstreaming participatory rights-basedassessment, not just within DFID, but also withpartner organisations.

5.1 Rights-based development politicisesa process approachIn moving from poverty assessment to morepoliticised rights assessment, the role of nationalinstitutions and the need for institutional analysistakes on an added significance. Not only does rights-based development politicise development, it alsobuilds in a strong action orientation linked toinstitutional accountability and transparency. Rights-based development prompts an operationalcommitment to a qualitatively different form ofparticipation, in which citizens exercise their rightto participate in challenging and changing theinstitutions that govern their lives. The focus ofattention and intervention is on the relationships,institutions and processes, which determinedevelopment outcomes or change. This requires aprocess approach that embeds lesson learning fromday one.

The ambition of participatory rights assessmentto provoke institutional change should bring withit a recognition that conflict generation is also likely,particularly in local contexts where traditionalpower holders are likely to react adversely to rights-based approaches which challenge them. Futureparticipatory rights assessment should pay moreattention to the probable need for conflictmanagement strategies and methodologies on thepart of those facilitating the process.

5.2 Rights-based development addressesstructural inequalityPRAMs was only operational when a focus on thecauses of inequality became central to the way ofworking. Inclusion, one of the main tenets of rights-based development, brings with it an understandingthat building knowledge and capacity to enablepeople to claim their rights requires understandingof the barriers which stop certain groups of people


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exercising their rights and participating in decisionswhich affect their lives. Because such structuralinequalities deny certain groups of people such aswomen, children or minority groups access to theirrights, rights-based development is directlyconcerned with power relationships. Operationallythis focuses attention on building the capacity andvoice of poor and marginalised people, changingexisting structures and ensuring institutionalaccountability.

5.3 Rights-based participation meanschanging institutional relationshipsThere is, within development agencies (nationalgovernment hierarchies, the donor community andcivil society organisations), a tendency to manageparticipatory processes closely. Participation tendsto be seen as a technical method of programmeintervention rather than as a political methodologyof empowerment. These two quite distinct responseslie on a continuum between interventions: thosewhich work within existing structures and thosethat seek to transform structures (Mwasaru, thisissue). In implementing PRAMs, it was clear thatthe key entry point for all organisations was inrecognising the transformative institutionalfoundations of rights-based approaches. Rights-based development demands a commitment tochange the way representatives of the state and civilsociety organisations work with, and respond to,the demands of citizens. As well as betweenindividuals and institutions, this change is alsoabout change within and between individuals. It isthe difference between “doing” participation and“being” participatory. This does not mean imposingan artificial participatory process. Rather, it isbuilding on existing forms of participation usingtransparent, intentionally transforming practices.The PRAMs process demonstrated that this requiresa close reading of local development processes andinstitutional relationships.

5.4 Understanding the rights environmentis key to rights-based developmentdistinctivenessIt is essential that rights-based development buildsa basic understanding of the wider rights environmentin context. This includes understanding the formaland informal local rights systems within which peoplelive their lives and develop their own concepts andcapacities to address rights issues (Nyamu-Musembi,

this issue). Here it is useful to distinguish betweena formalist and a pluralist approach to rights-baseddevelopment. A formalist approach refers continuallyto rights standards as the baseline and defines goodpractice through the delivery of minimum standardsin goods and services as a right. A pluralist approachemphasises the way that people and structures relateto each other. These check that, in any givendevelopment intervention, all obligations andagreements have been met. In particular, powerfulpeople and institutions are held accountable to fulfiltheir responsibilities to those with less power.

The PRAMs process suggests strongly thatinternational rights-based instruments and locallegal rights frameworks and institutions underpinour work, but do not necessarily form the entrypoint through which rights-based development canbe initiated and implemented. This is because whilerights-based development is facilitated through aclear “hook” within a programme, it will onlyemerge as a distinct and innovative approach todevelopment if it is embedded within the widerperspective that attention to the rights environmentbrings with it. The interrelated nature of rightsdemands this focus so that operationally, attentionis systematically given to working at all levels ofsociety from individuals through communities, topoliticians and national institutions.

5.5 The role of donor institutions mattersThe experience with PRAMs highlighted theinherent contradictions between a politicisedinstitutional change process and the technical andbureaucratic mode of operation that characterisessome donor institutions. The politicisation meansthat representatives of donor institutions must forgoa position of neutrality or supervision and becomepart of the messier and less manageable process oftransformative change. The success of PRAMs inMalawi and Peru was due in large part to theflexibility and sensitivity of the DFID staff involved.Individual “champions” of the project were able toidentify political space for participatory rights-basedassessment and play a proactive role in facilitatingthe process in each case.

5.6 Participatory rights assessment shouldnot be tool-drivenThis may seem obvious, but it was not the originalpremise of PRAMs. An early assumption of theproject was that a “toolkit” of methods could help


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Notes1. The concepts of “voice” and “responsiveness” are discussed

further in Goetz and Gaventa (2001).

2. See also Häusermann (1998), background discussionpaper.

3. The Millennium Development Goals were approved bythe General Assembly of the United Nations in 2000.They represent a continuation of the InternationalDevelopment Targets codified by the DevelopmentAssistance Committee of the OECD in 1996. See Shetty(this issue).

4. Interestingly, the Malawi stakeholders insisted on changingthe name from PRAMs to PRAss (Participatory Rights

Assessment), reflecting an increased level of ownershipof the process. PRAss could not have come about withoutthe dedication and commitment of all participants,particularly the MoEST, Norman Tembo and his team inCARE and Chris Cosgrove (until recently) in DFID-Malawi.

5. We are very grateful to the ADEAS QULLANA team forfacilitating a recent review of their work on the HHRRProgramme.

6. It is intriguing that the English abbreviation PRAMscontinues to be used by ADEAS (and indeed other HHRRpartners), even though no one knows what the actualEnglish words are. A Spanish equivalent remains to befound.

facilitate and engender rights-based practice. Duringthe process of implementing the project, anunderstanding of what was meant by rights-baseddevelopment and how PRAMs could take thisforward, deepened and changed. The tools andmethods emerge from the process of multi-stakeholder commitment to, and exploration of,the wider process of rights-based development;not, as was first assumed, the other way round.

5.7 Facilitating skills are more importantthan toolsIn the process of initiating and implementingPRAMs, the teams innovated and adapted aroundexisting participatory assessment tools. As such,PRAMs has demonstrated that rights-baseddevelopment builds on good practice, but as is truein all process-led approaches, good practice can beundermined by the way the tools are used.Promotion of a rights-based development processdepends on the manner of facilitation: facilitatorsof participatory rights assessment need a stronggrounding in rights-based development allied withhighly developed capacities for innovative, flexibleparticipatory work with stakeholders at all levels.

These insights from the PRAMs case studies

highlight a number of lessons that can be appliedmore broadly as DFID and other donors continueto refine and develop their approach to rights-based development. What is encouraging aboutthe experience of participatory rights assessmentin Malawi and Peru is that there is preliminaryevidence that a rights-based approach addssignificant value to more generic and long-standing“people-centred” development initiatives. Rightsin the PRAMs experience were not perceived as a“tag-on”, disconnected from people’s primaryconcerns. On the contrary, they were very muchthe central issue: ‘It’s what makes this projectdifferent from the others’, said a teacher in Haquira,Peru, voicing the predominant view. ‘PRAMs isdifferent because we’ve realised it’s not just a project,it’s all about us’.

The dominant perception, articulated by manywith considerable emotion and conviction, is thatprojects without an explicit rights dimensionengender conformism and passive acceptance. Incontrast, PRAMs would seem to facilitate ownership.But more than that, PRAMs arouses personalcommitment. As another PRAMs participant putit: ‘once you understand – really understand – thatyou have rights, everything changes’.


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operationalising the rights agenda: participatory rights assessment in peru and malawi

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