Methodological ChallengesThe “Analytic Trap”Some programmes surveyed have suffered from what has been called the “Analytic Trap,” whereby practitioners get ‘stuck’ analysing legal and policy contexts (especially the human rights legal context of development problems) and find themselves unable to connect this analytic work to input from communities or the policy work of government counterparts. This may be due to a variety of factors, including poor integration of national and international consultant expertise. In order to avoid this trap, practitioners suggest that rather than begin analysis of the international human rights framework ‘from scratch’, country teams should work with local experts and inter-disciplinary teams to adapt existing analyses to local contexts. Other practitioners emphasized the importance of participatory approaches in the initial planning and design phases of programming, and of building desired outcomes into planning and assessment phases. Overly Complex ToolsSome country offices have spent significant time and resources developing tools that actualize human rights principles or link them to the MDGs, only to find that these tools are practically limited, as their use requires excessive human rights expertise. This is especially problematic when tools are intended for eventual use by local counterparts, who find them completely inaccessible. Practitioners indicate that there is less danger of creating overly complicated tools when tools are created by interdisciplinary teams, and programme teams have approached this in different ways, blending the expertise of national and international consultants, and different disciplines. PrioritizationMany practitioners have expressed frustration with the need to prioritize development projects and objectives, especially when linking human rights to the MDGs, and when all development choices are “good choices.” Some country offices have reported that this issue is best addressed by stakeholders themselves, through capacity building exercises and guided by human rights principles. One country office has reported that human rights analyses provided an excellent tool for deciding which MDGs should be prioritized in localization. Country offices have, however, also acknowledged that there may a fine balance between ownership of processes and conceptual integrity, and that participatory processes have at times produced priorities that contradict those spelled out by earlier human rights based assessments. No satisfactory solution to this dilemma is yet reported. |
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