Rights-Based Approach Local to Global
Our distinctive RBA ‘local to global to local’ (L2G2L) approach has leveraged our role as an international actor, ensuring that local voices are heard at national and global level.
LWF World Service has always taken a rights-based approach (RBA) in the work we do – putting people at the centre.
The positive changes we seek are inherent rights to which people should have access, to meet their needs and live in dignity. We pay particular attention to the rights of women and girls, those living with disabilities, youth, and other key groups.
Key elements of our rights-based approach include:
- Participation
- Accountability
- A focus on the rights of those who are vulnerable or discriminated against, and
- Empowerment
This is fundamental to how we work. In our strategy, we commit to reinforcing this as an essential feature of all our programming and our humanitarian response.
Alongside grassroots, rights-based programming to secure concrete improvements, we also seek change by addressing structures of power, aiming to ensure that those who should deliver on the rights of communities (‘duty bearers’) do so. This involves rights-based action and advocacy at an institutional and structural level.
The LWF Rights-based Approach ‘Local to Global’ (and back to local) – RBA L2G2L - is an expression of that conviction and commitment. The ‘local’ element is where it starts: everything that we do is people-centred, focused on the rights and dignity of each individual – woman, man, girl, boy – whom we serve.
‘Local to global’ is a programmatic methodology which expresses this in a consistent and replicable way. Every rights-based or advocacy intervention is carried out as part of a clear and consistent logical framework, with activities at local, national and international level, earthed always in a particular country and in a particular locality in that country. Aiming for change for that locality, in that place, and holding to the discipline of specific indicators of local, concrete improvements in the rights, the well-being, and the lives of children, women and men at local level, is a way to hold ourselves accountable and focused on the ultimate goal of all this activity. The goal is that people not only have the theoretical ‘right’ to something established, but that they have the thing itself: good health, proper education, real opportunity, a healthy environment, economic security, and hope for the future.
Watch our five-minute video presenting the Rights-Based Approach Local to Global initiative on land rights, with material drawn from projects in Mozambique and Colombia.
I had two hectares where I grew food for my family. Suddenly about a year ago, the area was fenced off and I learned that someone had come with documents saying this land was now his.” — a local farmer in Moxico province. Watch our short video on land conflicts issues and how LWF supports communities at local, national and international level.
Improved access to land for refugees in Chad “Before I didn’t have any land to cultivate. Now I have land, seeds, and tools”, says Zenaba Arbab Abdallah. In Chad, LWF and its partners have worked so refugees have a better access to land through local negotiation committees with host communities. Learn in this short video how local action is linked to national and international advocacy for concrete long-term changes.
“LWF improved the life of many people by creating job opportunities, and today many women are generating income for their family”, says the Mayor of Awbare Town. In Ethiopia, LWF works with Somali refugees and host communities to access their fundamental human rights and meet their needs.
Learn in this short video how LWF helped to change attitudes towards women’s and children’s rights and how this translated into concrete actions.