Chapter 4: Normative Framework

This chapter outlines the normative level of rights formulation, meaning the norms and standards that have been set by the international human rights treatises, focusing specifically those that address women’s human rights. The idea is to explain what is meant by normative, what the potential and limits of the normative level are, and how the normative level can be and is being used in practical ways.

As recognised in Chapter 2, in reality the rights of poor women and men are negotiated in multiple legal systems. However, the framework provided by international standards is an indispensable resource that has frequently been used to legitimise rights-claims in national or local systems, and hence contributed towards the realisation of rights in many cases. These standards, set out in different human rights documents, have developed substantially over the last 50 years in response to demands made progressively by groups whose rights have either been inadequately recognised or inadequately met. From the perspective of a gender and rights-based approach to development, international human rights norms provide a framework for development initiatives and priorities.

Normative Level in the Operation of Rights

Rights and power are connected: rights are intended to constrain and control flows of power (Wilson 1997). However, they do not uniformly succeed in doing so; the extent to which human rights take root depends on power relations in a given context and on how particular constituencies have been able to negotiate these in order to claim rights. At the same time, the process of establishing human rights alters forms of governance and the exercise of power.

The normative level provides critical resources for practice of rights-based approaches in development.

Substantive rights-based justification – the human rights principles provide substantive rights-based justification for any organisation working for pro poor human development.
Legitimacy – The normative human rights principles have been arrived at through inter-governmental negotiations and as such are owned by these parties providing thereby the legitimacy for action and cannot be dismissed as interference.
Resource for public action – Civil society can and does utilise the conventions to gain political commitments and set standards.
Resource for holding international development agencies to account – International human rights standards have also been successfully used by civil society groups to hold international and multilateral development institutions to account.

Human rights are intended to control power by providing norms according to which the state and other institutions should treat people. In international development, human rights should provide the framework for policies, programmes and projects. The normative level of human rights sets the standards and provides legitimacy for rights claims in different social, cultural, legal and political contexts.