(2) Accountability
All people have human rights that can never be taken away: they are “rights-holders”. This creates duties in other actors that have obligations to facilitate and secure these rights: these are “duty-bearers”. Accountability refers to the ability to hold these duty-bearers to account for actions or lack of action to fulfil their obligations to the rights-holders.
Rights-holders of course also have responsibilities: to exercise their rights responsibly, to respect other‘s human rights and to be active subjects, making efforts to invoke and realise their human rights.
So who are the duty-bearers? States are the primary actor here. By signing and ratifying human rights treaties, States are the principal duty-bearers in their countries, with legal obligations. They are required to respect, protect, fulfil and promote all of the human rights that they have committed to in each signed international or regional treaty or that are present under international customary law. There also will (or should) be laws, policies and regulations at the national and district levels that reinforce these obligations in the national context and set them out in greater detail.
Other actors may also be duty-bearers: corporations and other businesses, development agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), regional institutions, schools, and families. While they don‘t have legal human rights obligations, they have moral obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948, and the other instruments of the International Bill of Rights to respect and promote human rights. Actors also create obligations themselves by setting up entitlements to provide something. For example, development organisations that engage themselves in a community to provide health care; a school, or water, are obliged to ensure that the community obtains sustainable access to the water or service promised. Further, the development organisation must implement an empowering and participatory process lead and owned by the community and that ensures access for the most excluded and includes full access to information and effective mechanisms to hold the development agency accountable. Finally, they should also, where it is possible, shift their role to that of facilitator: to strengthen State capacity to provide services itself and support community capacity to hold the State accountable.
From Principle to Practice
People with AIDS who live in rich countries are able to pay for the expensive drugs they need to prolong their lives. Most people in poor countries, however, cannot afford the medicines and are left to die. In 2001 the international NGO Oxfam, together with other international and national NGOs, launched a global campaign to force the world‘s largest pharmaceutical companies to lower the costs of their AIDS drugs. To get their message across, Oxfam lobbied key decision-makers in pharmaceutical companies and in governments, used the media, and organised public action. The organisation combined these three approaches to mobilise public opinion to build pressure on decision-makers to make the necessary changes. The campaign was very effective, creating much negative publicity for the corporations. Within a few days they lowered the prices for AIDS drugs sold in poor countries.
Brief Introduction to Rights-based Programming
Save the Children (Sweden 2003)
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There are creative means that are developing to hold these diverse non-state actors accountable. These include, for example, other kinds of laws (criminal laws), voluntary guidelines, parallel reports, naming and shaming, negotiation and other accountability mechanisms.
