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People's Conditionalities

The concept of "people's conditionalities" (popular demands that national and international development agencies honor human rights) is premised on the assumption that the norms, principles and standards contained in a variety of binding international human rights instruments are capable of being enunciated (or restated) as policy conditionalities that will govern all development actors - at national, bilateral and multilateral levels alike. Development practice is replete with conditionalities. We have the now notorious "conditionalities" of structural adjustment which have prompted at least one UN agency to call for "adjustment with a human face." We appear now to be on the verge of a new set of "green conditionalities" supposedly to protect global environmental interests. Hence, there seems little reason why "project-affected peoples" cannot demand a set of "people's conditionalities" invoking existing obligations under international human rights law, to protect themselves from being treated as an expendable "resource" in the development process.

People's conditionalities will need to be developed out of a process of learning from real-life, project-affected peoples. Two broad approaches suggest themselves:

1. Developing people's conditionalities according to category of victim group, e.g., women, children, indigenous people, subsistence farmers or fisherfolk, agro-foresters, pastoralists, etc.

2. Developing people's conditionalities according to type of development project, e.g., large-scale dams, reforestation, watershed reconstruction, industrial waste disposal and recycling, etc.

In both cases, it would be essential for the process to involve participatory-action research with the project-affected peoples.

Organizer and Moderator:

• Clarence J. Dias, President, International Center for Law in Development, 777 United Nations Plaza, Suite 7E, New York, NY 10017; (212) 687 - 0036.

Other Speakers:

• Manuel Gonzalez, representative of the Purepecha indigenous community, Santa Fe de Laguna, Mexico

• Tani Yoichi, (Minamata, Japan); Secretary General, People's Plan for the 21st Century, Japan (PP21); Tsuji-Kaita-Ku; Tsunaki-cho; Ashikita-gun; Kumamoto-ken, Japan, 869ᇌ.

• Ignacio Peon, Jose Arias and Rogelio Coba, all from Espacios, Mexico.

Also participating will be Davidson L. Budhoo, President, Multilateral Economic Negotiations Assistance Group, 926 Cup Leaf Holly Court, Great Falls, VA 22066, former Senior Economist at the International Monetary Fund who resigned as an act of conscience from the IMF two years ago to protest "conditionalities".

Other Mexican and Central American participants, and persons who are coming from Japan, Philippines, and other Third World countries.

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