[Episcopal News Service] An incredible spectrum of groups around the world claim to be doing development, but what do they mean by development?

In its original sense, development is a term borrowed from biology to describe the life cycle from embryo to maturity. It was first used to chart how people, societies, and countries grow and advance after World War II. In its traditional application development describes a natural cycle in which poor, underdeveloped countries endeavor to evolve into rich countries and reach maturity. The application of “development” to the social and economic sciences created a less colonial and more scientific lens through which human societies could be judged. In contrast to the empiricism of biological analysis, the advent of “international development” created a subjective hierarchy of worlds: first and third, developed and undeveloped, advanced and backward.

The in-theory and practice of development has evolved into a vast array of concepts and approaches, some diametrically opposed, while others differing mostly in rhetoric or name. In all cases, development describes a process and type of change. What varies from one approach to the next is the articulation of goals and how progress, from embryonic to maturity, is measured. The intended meaning of “development” is almost always determined by the interests and objectives of the people or organizations imparting it. It is worth noting that this meaning may be completely lost on the people on the receiving end of a particular development prescription.

A Salvadoran priest and advocate for communities affected by gold mining and hydroelectric dam projects, Rotilio Sanchez, succinctly describes this semantic discrepancy. “When YOU say development WE hear death,” he says. In not so subtle terms Sanchez notes the tragic irony of the development experienced by communities on the receiving of a hydroelectric dam and metallic mining project. These megaprojects promise development for the country while wreaking ecological havoc and destroying livelihoods for the communities that lay in their path. This case exemplifies the subjective nature of development; it can be argued that one man’s concept of development is another man’s death.

At Foundation Cristosal, where I serve as the executive director, we have proposed a human rights-based approach to community development. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, we inherit this concept of development from the particular historical process that has taken place in El Salvador since the signing of the 1992 Peace Accords. A human rights approach is concerned with a different evolutionary track than traditional development theories that prioritize material gains or economic growth. In contrast, human rights-based development is a process that seeks ever-increasing opportunities to exercise human rights and individual freedoms for citizens in a given society. The goals of a rights-based approach are outlined by the standards laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We measure this development process from the experience of the poor, the excluded and the marginalized, as they gain the ability to fully exercise their rights.

The evolutionary track posed by rights-based development is best illustrated by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s description of “the arc of the moral universe… [that] bends towards justice.” Rights-based development is a development practice, whose actions seek to accelerate this bend towards justice for those whom it has historically alluded.

— Noah Bullock is the executive director of Foundation Cristosal, a San Salvador, El Salvador-based human rights and community development organization that began as ministry of the Episcopal and Anglican churches.