Human Rights and Human Capabilities

Abstract

I am a theorist, not a practitioner, and I believe that good theory is important for good practice. The most important theoretical development in human rights during the past two decades has been the elaboration of the “Human Development Approach,” otherwise known as the “Capability Approach,” embodied in the Human Development Reports of the United Nations Development Programme annually since 1990, and in theoretical work by Amartya Sen, myself, and, by now, hundreds of young scholars in various nations. The Human Development and Capability Association, four years old, of which Sen was the first President and I am currently the second, now has 700 members from around forty-nine nations, dedicated to pushing this intellectual work further. The Capability Approach, as I have developed it, is a species of a human rights approach. It makes clear, however, that the pertinent goal is to make people able to function in a variety of areas of central importance. Some who use the approach use it simply comparatively; I myself have attempted to defend the use, for political purposes, and as a basis for constitutional thought, of a list of ten “Central Human Capabilities,” including Life, Bodily Health, Bodily Integrity, the Development and Expression of Senses, Imagination and Thought, Emotional Health, Practical Reason, Affiliation (both personal and political), Relationships with Other Species and the World of Nature, Play, and Control over One’s Environment (both material and social). I specify each of these more concretely in Appendix A, but I also leave a good deal of room for countries with different histories and traditions to do this specification somewhat differently. Producing capabilities requires material and institutional support, and the approach thus takes issue with the facile distinction of rights as “firstgeneration” (political and civil) and “second-generation” (economic and social). All rights, understood as entitlements to capabilities, have material and social preconditions, and all require government action. The Capability Approach has pushed forward the analysis of women’s human rights, the rights of the poor, and, more recently, the rights of people with disabilities. At the same time, we have been arguing for the crucial importance of material redistribution across national boundaries. The Human Development and Capability Association is working on further theoretical development of the approach, and also on practical implementation. The United Nations Development Programme produces a Human Development Report each year that ranks nations in accordance with capabilities, not GNP, and this has led to a new attentiveness to health and education, for example, as keys

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