Ana Criquillion

This publication documents the experiences of practitioners and experts with respect to the varied practices of rights in development and how these have addressed gender equality and women’s autonomy in the South in particular. It also explores how rights thinking and practice is shaped by actual struggles. The papers in this collection help the reader to see the problematic of delivering on rights through development work in a way that treats and sees women as entities in themselves and worthy of rights, and not simply in relation to a man and as subordinate within gender relations. In order for rights-based approaches to promote the individuation of the female subject of rights and the autonomy of the person where other approaches have more or less failed, much more is needed than what at present constitutes rights-based practice. The authors remind us that in order to practice rights, we need on the one hand to side with, promote and learn from the awareness of those deprived of ...

The 1990s witnessed the 'rise of rights'(Eyben 2003) as many organizations and international development agencies adopted some form of 'rights-based approach'to development (Molyneux and Lazar 2003; Piron 2005). While the rights-based approach ...