Culture is and always has been central to development. As a natural and fundamental dimension of people’s lives, culture must be integrated into development policy and programming. This report shows how this process works in practice.

The starting point of the report is the universal validity of the international human rights framework. The focus is therefore on discussing and showcasing how culturally sensitive approaches are critical for the realization of human rights in general and women’s rights in particular.

The report gives an overview of the conceptual frameworks as well as the practice of development, looking at the everyday events that make up people’s experience of development. Culturally sensitive approaches call for cultural fluency – familiarity with how cultures work, and how to work with them. The report presents some of the challenges and dilemmas of culturally sensitive strategies and suggests how partnerships can address them.

Culture – inherited patterns of shared meanings and common understandings – influences how people manage their lives, and provides the lens through which they interpret their society. Cultures affect how people think and act; but they do not produce uniformity of thought or behaviour.

Cultures must be seen in their wider context: They influence and are influenced by external circumstances and change in response. They are not static; people are continuously involved in reshaping them, although some aspects of culture continue to influence choices and lifestyles for very long periods.

Cultural customs, norms, behaviours and attitudes are as varied as they are elusive and dynamic. It is risky to generalize, and it is particularly dangerous to judge one culture by the norms and values of another. Such over-simplification can lead to the assumption that every member of a culture thinks the same way. This is not only a mistaken perception but ignores one of the drivers of cultural change, which is multiple expressions of internal resistance, out of which transitions emerge. The movement towards gender equality is a good example of this process at work. ...

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State of World Population 2008
Reaching Common Ground: Culture, Gender and Human Rights

Author: UNFPA
No. of pages: 108
Publication date: 2008
Publisher: UNFPA
ISBN: ISBN 978-0-89714-889

Conclusions

• International development agencies ignore culture – or marginalize it – at their peril. Advancing human rights requires an appreciation of the complexity, fluidity and centrality of culture by intentionally identifying and partnering with local agents of change.
• Approaches based on cultural knowledge provide viability to policymaking – and enable the “cultural politics” required for human rights.
• Cultural fluency determines how systems of meanings, economic and political opposition, or supportive policies develop – and can be developed.
• To develop cultural fluency, UNFPA proposes a “culture lens” as a programming tool.
• Culturally sensitive approaches investigate how variables such as economic status, politics, law, class, age, gender, religion and ethnicity intersect and lead to divergent understandings and manifestations of power.
• Culturally sensitive approaches call for different analytical and operational frameworks, and for introspection within the development community.

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UNFPA — because everyone counts.

UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, is an international development agency that promotes the right of every woman, man and child to enjoy a life of health and equal opportunity.

UNFPA supports countries in using population data for policies and programmes to reduce poverty and to ensure that every pregnancy is wanted, every birth is safe, every young person is free of HIV/AIDS, and every girl and woman is treated with dignity and respect.

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