The Impact of Political Culture on the Human Rights-based Approach to Development in the Central Highlands of Vietnam

Abstract

The Human Rights-based-Approach (HRBA) to development has been endorsed by the United Nations (UN) and development agencies as the preferable approach to development. It has the potential to adequately address poverty in the developing world and to align development work with universal instruments on human rights, such as the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR) (1948). However, while much has been written about the HRBA as a viable approach to development, little is known about how the HRBA is implemented in practice, especially in non-western settings. This paper provides empirical data from a HRBA-framed poverty reduction project conducted in two ethnic communities in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, undertaken by Action Aid International Vietnam (AAV). The results demonstrate that the adaptation of the HRBA to these two local contexts was not easy or smooth. While there are many dimensions that shape the success of development work, in this article I focus on the ways in which political culture can create obstacles to the implementation of the HRBA. The article concludes by recommending some strategies that work to ameliorate these concerns.