1. Human Rights and Development: A Short Guide for the Vexed and Perplexed Varun Gauri May 24, 2010

2. Human rights based approaches come in many flavors Treaties: soft law to hard law Constitutional law: judicial review Statutory and administrative law  Equality and universality in service delivery  Redress  Due process  Participation Principles for development agencies Norms and values  Rights as “trumps”  Rights as weighty claims  Rights as principles for institutional design

3. Myths about human rights and economics The human rights approach means big government Human rights are silent on tradeoffs Economists are not concerned with accountability Economists are only concerned with income per head

4. Educational rights claims in Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa A political economy to human rights: shift to rights discourse changes the resources used to make claims Less litigation than in health  AIDS exceptionalism  Less middle class use of educational facilities  Harder to monitor than drugs More university than primary litigation Indonesian case on spending Nigerian case banning private schools Brazilian cases on disability and access South African cases on language rights

5. Illustrative cases on the right to education The right to education implies the right to:  require local or national government to spend more  require due process before expelling university students  challenge whether a school has sufficient infrastructure  limit the fees that schools can charge  challenge competency testing in a particular language  require schools to have functioning water or electricity  open private religiously affiliated schools  disallow corporal punishment in an independent school  require a public school to accommodate students with disabilities  allow the government to limit tuition increases in private schools

6. Social and economic rights as claims to change rules governing behavior: A typology State ProvidersRecipients Courts Regulation Provision or Financing Provider/recipient obligations 1.State Provision of Services to Recipients 2.State Regulation of Providers 3.Provider/recipient rights and duties