Rights and development: the costs of human rights in Ethiopia

It is sometimes argued that more attention needs to be paid to the cost of realizing human rights in human rights scholarship and practice. In Ethiopia, a focus on the cost of realizing human rights has played a crucial role in justifying the government’s aggressive development plans. While the aim of this development is to reduce poverty and secure greater rights and well-being for the future, rapid growth has come at a considerable human rights cost. This raises questions about what the relevant costs of rights are and how those costs ought to be understood or justified. A straightforward costs-approach to human rights, however, may not adequately take into account the cost of generating the means to pay for rights. We find that examining rights from a costs perspective in a case like Ethiopia requires investigations not only into what rights cost the government, but also into how that wealth is generated