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Development:
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an unfinished job
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Dimensions of the Latin American crises
10/2004 |
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UNDP Report: an unfinished job
A major strength of the Human Development Report, so far, has been the clarity of its concepts. Thus development is defined as enabling as many people as possible to shape their lives as they choose. In order to do so, they need money, knowledge and physical fitness. Accordingly, the Human Development Index is based on indicators of income, education and health. Its intelligent design has considerably contributed to the success of the report the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) presents every summer. However, this year’s document has a penchant for deviating from the normal orientation along individual rights. It starts off by re-asserting individual rights of cultural self-determination but then becomes entangled in demands for group and community rights.
That said, the UNDP’s call for policy to adapt to multicultural reality is adequate. As the UNDP correctly points out, people are able to have multiple identities. Stable systems of governance and domestic peace cannot be achieved by concentrating on only one aspect of people’s lives (language, ethnicity, religion, region). The idea of the state being the form of organisation of ethnically, religiously and culturally homogeneous societies is deceptive. Diversity is the norm – even in Europe, where states are more likely than in other continents to have been defined along ethnic lines.
Nonetheless, the UNDP does not put enough effort into dealing with difficult questions of how different cultural communities can live together in a spirit of partnership. It is certainly true that bilingual school systems can stimulate the development of children. However, young people are handicapped when the education system is not up to the task, which, sadly, is the case in many countries. Therefore, the acclaimed role model of the language policy in India is unconvincing. Indian schools cannot even guarantee that all children learn to read and write in their native language. In this depressing context, it is of little consolation that regional languages have their official place in the system alongside the national language of Hindi and the international language of English.
Demands for legal pluralism are even more problematic. It is undeniably possible to allow room for ethnic or religious legal practices. This realistically makes sense in isolated regions and in areas where state infrastructure is weak. Of course, it is true that, wherever states fail, the only alternative to customary law is a complete lack of rights. The UNDP report, however, places two different demands side by side. On the one hand, it wants group specific rules to be recognised in accordance with legal pluralism; on the other hand, it calls for human rights to be respected. The everyday experience of women, however, shows that traditional conventions are not necessarily compatible with modern ideas of human rights. The UNDP does not elaborate on how the two goals might be reconciled when in conflict.
Introducing quota systems in order to strengthen disadvantaged groups is similarly dubious. Experience shows that affirmative action does not improve the living standard of the entire community. When reserving places at university means that the children of black doctors can enter the same profession as their parents more easily than the offspring of white doctors, then the seeds are being sown for a new generation of grievances. In the long term, it would probably be wiser to support families according to their socio-economic status rather than the colour of their skin.
The UNDP addresses important questions – but not all answers are thought through very well. Some statements are valuable, such as state oppression of individual communities along religious, linguistic or other lines being more likely to arouse stubborn resistance than to promote prospering communities. And yet the UNDP fails to suggest what to do when fanatics mobilise against democracy and human rights on the basis of their exclusively perceived identity. The report banks on the theory that radicals, once they take over power, tend to become more moderate. The UNDP does not deal with relevant cases where this did not happen (as, for instance, in Gujarat, Iran or Nazi Germany).
All summed up, the Human Development Report 2004 shies away from the crucial question: where does the trust come from which enables people to co-exist in harmony in a multicultural society? What the UNDP recommends may be useful – but its proposals are only likely to work wherever there already is a minimum sense of goodwill.
Hans Dembowski
United Nations Development
Programme (Ed.):
Human Development Report 2004.
Cultural liberty in today’s diverse world.
New York, Oxford University Press 2004, 384 pp.,
$ 22.95, ISBN 0-19-522146-X
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