UNESCO Small Research Grants on Poverty Eradication: Building National Capacities for Research and Policy Analysis.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)have announced the establishment of a small grants programme aimed at encouraging young professionals and their institutions to contribute to poverty reduction strategies and national action plans that are participatory and country-owned. Through the grants programme UNESCO wishes to encourage research and poverty analysis on areas that have hitherto not received adequate attention.

A particular area of analysis that has been highlighted for study by UNESCO is the link between poverty and human rights. This is a linkage that CROP has a specific interest in givenits recent organisation of an international consultancy on the issue of "poverty as a violation of human rights" for UNESCO. As a result of its continuing research cooperation with UNESCO on this issue it was decided that grants on this specific linkage shouldbe administered by CROP. Three grants have now been earmarked by UNESCO for state of the art reviews of the literature on poverty and human rights (one in each of three regions: Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia,Latin America and the Caribbean), to be allocated on a competitive basis to qualifying members of the CROP network.

Rationale and Direction of the Small Grants on Human Rights and Poverty

In a globalised world in which human rights have become central mechanisms for justice, and liberal democracy has become the hegemonic foundation for government, a knowledge about rights and their application have become essential mechanisms for guaranteeing both personal prosperity and claims for security. As such, a lack of knowledge about rights can be identified not only as a cause for social exclusion, but also for persisting poverty (Van Genugten & Perez-Bustillo 2001. Despite a widespread formal agreement on guaranteeing universal access to the benefits of the international rights system, it is also widely acknowledged that access to and knowledge about rights is unevenly spread(Molyneux & Lazar 2003). Recent research demonstrates that despite the spread of new mediums for communication a large number of the world’s poor remain ignorant of their basic political, economic, social and culture rights (Pogge 2002; Goode & Maskovsky 2001). Moreover, there is some recognition that the structures and foundations of the international rights system are partly responsible for this uneven spread of knowledge(Wilson 1997). Whilst the system of international rights creates inclusive possibilities for some, its reliance on the good-will of nation-states and international organisations that have been long established within the constraints of liberal democracy, results in the exclusion of others bearing demands and needs considered to be outside the field of established discourse (Engle Merry 1997). To respond adequately to these complexitiesthere is a need to not only study the conditions in which knowledge about rights are created, but to understand better the relationship this knowledge has to poverty reduction. It must therefore be asked what limitations must be overcome, and what are the appropriate means to improve access to knowledge about rights and poor people’s abilities to use them to their own advantage?

By drawing together state of the art research findings, the grants earmarked by UNESCO ear-marked to study the linkage between poverty and human rights aims to make a major contribution towards answering this question. The practical basis for the research to be carried out by eventual grant-holders follows from the conclusions made by, and in response to, the UNESCO Draft Consultation Document “Abolishing Poverty Through the International Human Rights Framework: Towards and Integrated Strategy for the Social and Human Sciences”. The general reaction of the participating academics and policy-makers to this consultation documentwas that more knowledge is needed to assess the implications of accepting a human rights violation approach to poverty (p.5). It was concluded that research is needed to investigate the legal and theoretical significance of human rights for povertyreduction, as well as the practical implications ofits policy and monitoring systems.As such there was general agreement with the reports concluding recommendations (p.32) that there is:

  1. A need to develop and strengthen knowledge and analytical capacity about poverty as a human rights violation.
  2. A need to strengthen national and international legal frameworks and institutions for law enforcement of practical usefulness in pursuing poverty as a violation of human rights through litigations and quasi-legal institutions, the UN human rights treaty bodies, the Human Rights Commission, and other relevant international human rights bodies and institutions.
  3. The need to strengthen public governmental provisions for abolishing poverty as a human rights violation, and to strengthen citizens’ capacity for making individual or collective complaints about violations of their right to be free from poverty.

The small grants programme will give individual researchers the possibility of assisting UNESCO address these three recommendations. The proposed research will collect together and reviewpublished academic theoretical, methodological and epistemologicalresearch findings on poverty and human rights on, and in, each of the specified regions. The research will also draw together and review the regions' available governmental and non-governmental development policy documents related to the issues of both human rights and poverty. Particular interest will be given to national poverty reduction strategies and to national action plans that specifically target poverty, or which contain initiatives of relevance to its treatment. Special attention will also be given to collecting a record of, and reviewing, key legal cases that have bearing on the issues of human rights and poverty.It is important to highlight that the research to be carried under the programme aims to be multi-disciplinary and to move away from the limitations of existing econometric and quantitative foci on income poverty. In cooperation with its partners, UNESCO aims to support research that moves towards a multi-dimensional understanding of poverty, and to create a "heightened awareness of the injustice of poverty as asustained and chronic deprivation of the resources, capabilities, choices, security and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights". As such, there is a desire for the research conducted under the small grants programme to draw on research across, and beyond, the spectrum of the social sciences[1].

Funding and eligibility

The UNESCO Small Research Grants on Human Rights and Poverty will provide individual project grants of $10,000 to institutionally-based professionals at universitites, specialised research centres, relevant Government departments, NGOs etc, in the targeted regions of the world and within CROP's existing research network. The funding is intended to cover the direct costs of the research, including the local travel and the subsistence of the principal researcher(s) and research assistants, acquisition of relevant literature and supplies, data collection, analysis and report preperation. The grant will not cover the salary of the principal researcher(s) or international travel.

Young researchers who have attained a doctoral degree (PhD) are the intended beneficiaries of this capacity-building initiative. Proposals from senior professionals will also be considered if they can demonstrate that the intended project is a joint effort with younger researchers and will contribute to their capacity.building. A number of young researchers could also team up in a project as long as reasonable justification is given for this.

[1]i.e. to include perspectives drawn from international relations, history and philosophy etc.