Gabriele Koehler - The Politics of Social Inclusion: Bridging Knowledge and Policies Towards Social Change

ibidem-Press, Stuttgart

Contents

Acronyms and abbreviations

ACHR Asian Coalition for Housing Rights

ADB Asian Development Bank

APVVU Andhra Pradesh Vyvasaya Vruthidarula Union

BJP Bhartiya Janata Party

BNA Basic Needs Approach

BSP Bahujan Samaj Party

CBOcommunity-based organizations

CEDAW International Convention on the Eradication of all forms of Discrimination against Women

CEE Centre for the Economics of Education

CERD International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

CPRC Chronic Poverty Research Centre

CRPD International Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities

CROP Comparative Research Programme on Poverty

CSEI Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion

DDA Delhi Development Authority

DFID (UK) Department for International Development

FAO Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

GPI gender parity index

HDA human development approach

HDIHuman Development Index

IAYIndira Awas Yojna

IDS Institute of Development Studies

IIEP UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning

IILSInternational Institute for Labour Studies

ILGI informal local governance institution

ILO International Labour Organization

IOM International Organization for Migration

ISCcould be a mistake

ISSCInternational Social Science Council

JNNURM Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission

KCC Kampala City Council

KCCA Kampala Capital City Authority

MDG Millennium Development Goal

MGNREGA Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act

MHUPA Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (India)

MOSTManagement of Social Transformations

NBER (US) National Bureau of Economic Research

NCDHR National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights

NGOnon-governmental organization

NPEP National Poverty Eradication Programme

NSDFU National Slum Dwellers Federation of Uganda

OBC other backward castes

OHCHR Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

OPP Orangi Pilot Project

PATH Programme of Advancement through Health and Education

PCI Planning Commission of India

RAY Rajiv Awas Yojana

SCScheduled Castes

SDGSustainable Development Goal

SDI Slum/Shack Dwellers International

SESsocio-economic status

SIDS Small Island Developing States

SP Samajwadi Party

SRS Slum Redevelopment Scheme

ST Scheduled Tribes

UDHR Universal Declaration of Human Rights

UiBUniversity of Bergen

UNDESAUN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

UNDP UN Development Programme

UNDRIP UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

UNICEFUN Childrens Fund

UNRISD UN Research Institute for Social Development

UPA United Progressive Alliance

WHO World Health Organization

Acknowledgements

This book has its origin in an international workshop organized by the Comparative Research Programme on Poverty (CROP) of the International Social Science Council (now the International Science Council (ISC)) and the University of Bergen (UiB), and UNESCOs Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST), held at the UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 67 July 2017.

The editors would like to express sincere thanks to the CROP Secretariat, the contributing authors, UNESCO, the International Science Council and the University of Bergen for all their support. A special thank you also to Katja Hujo (UNRISD) for critical insights, and to John Crowley, Jakob Horstmann, Sonja Keller and Maria Sollohub for steering the process.

Part I

Conceptual understandings of social inclusion

Chapter 1
THE POLITICS OF SOCIAL INCLUSION: INTRODUCTION

Gabriele Koehler, Alberto D. Cimadamore, Fadia Kiwan and
Pedro Monreal Gonzalez

A. The rationale for a volume on the politics of inclusion

Academics, policy-makers, civil society and concerned citizens across the planet are alarmed by the persistence of global poverty, the intensity of social exclusion and increasing inequalities. Multidimensional poverty continues to affect half of humanity. Inequality has reached unprecedented levels: according to Oxfams analysis, for example, in 2018, 26 people owned the same wealth as the 3.8 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity (Oxfam, 2019; also see Piketty, 2014; UNRISD, 2018). Climate change impact and armed conflicts are wiping out many human development achievements of the past decades, frequently exacerbating existing patterns of social exclusion.

To redress the dystopian situation, the international community adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development Transforming our World (United Nations, 2015), the Paris Agreement on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 2015), and designed a new urban agenda (UN Habitat, 2016). All of these have in common a commitment to norms and principles of social inclusion promising to end poverty and hunger in all their forms and dimensions and to leave no one behind. Leaving no one behind has been understood in a universalist and rights-based interpretation as including all people on the planet in sustainable and just societies. That would indeed be transformative of the dominant socio-economic orders, which have been reproducing and cementing poverty, inequality and social exclusion throughout history.

The status quo to be transformed is maintained by power relations which need to be addressed in order to produce sustainable economic, social, ecological and political inclusion for all. However, the structural transformations that would be required to unseat the dynamics of poverty, inequalities and exclusion are far less addressed, and do not feature expressly in the normative texts. Besides, the concept of inclusion is not defined, and therefore it is not possible to measure or evaluate progress toward the achievement of this goal, which is central to the general ambition to leave no one behind. In short, power relations tend to be ignored or overlooked in domestic and multilateral policy debates (UNRISD, 2016), and the absence of a clear understanding of what social inclusion means articulates the problematic on which this book intends to focus.

This volume was therefore conceived to address the power relations that both sustain and transform social orders marked by social exclusion, and to advance the understanding of the politics of social inclusion.

The collective construction of this understanding began with an international workshop held at UNESCO Headquarters, followed up in collaborative work between the editors and authors. This introductory chapter intends to synthesize and reflect on this process of collaborative knowledge production while advancing useful knowledge on the politics of inclusion. In order to do that, we first track social inclusion deliberations from two critical vantage points first, that of academic discussions which generally analyze the phenomenon of social exclusion, and second, from the discussion of social inclusion as it has informed debates and agenda-setting at the United Nations and related multilateral bodies, and at the European Commission. We then provide an overview of the two sections of the volume and their chapters. In closing, we sketch out a possible way forward regarding the research and policy nexus, trying to avoid jargon and unnecessary complexities to reach beyond the academic community.

B. Defining and understanding exclusion, inclusion and their political dimensions

Social inclusion presupposes in our view the realization of human rights, as laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), and the UN Covenants on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and Political and Civil Rights. This general understanding needs of course to be contextualized within national and subnational legal orders that articulate states and societies around notions of justice which are not normally realized. The high levels of poverty and inequality are indicative of the structural violation of human, social, economic and cultural rights observed in many societies. In this view, social exclusion implies the denial to members of society of their basic human, political, social and economic rights guaranteed in international, national and subnational constitutions and legal orders. Rights are not realized for many reasons, principally because the excluded and the poor have limited or no access to the institutions of justice, and therefore are usually powerless in systems structurally biased against them. In this general context, the politics of inclusion refers to the power relations evolving within historical forms of states and international relations where asymmetrical economic, social and political orders tend to exclude large segments of the population (Cimadamore, 2008; UNRISD, 2018).