Importance of 'Win-Win Compromises' in Rights Work

Some people say, "Win-win solution is no solution" while we have heard many people talking about the usefulness of 'win-win compromises' in programming.

As we think about promoting and protecting rights of people, one part of the process is to deal effectively and with various interest groups. When the denial or violation of rights happens, certain groups lose while certain groups gain from the situation. We are familiar with how some people benefit from a war (e.g. arms dealers, those who stock food and other essentials, etc), illegal occupation of resources (e.g. grabbing of khas land by rich powerful people), not giving due share to others (e.g. land owners not giving due shares of crops to sharecroppers), and plenty of other examples. The interest groups benefiting from a rights violation or denial do not want to give up very easily. Therefore, finding some 'win-win' or 'compromise' arrangements is helpful in such cases.

Our experience with the initiative to promote and protect the sharecroppers' rights in Chapai Nawabgonj supports this strategy. According to the sharecropping policy of the government of Bangladesh the output produced in the sharecropped land should be divided equally into three shares between landowner, sharecropper and supplier of input (e.g. fertilizer). Also, according to the policy, a landowner has to give land for sharecropping at least for five years in writing and the owner cannot take away the land before the end of this period without a valid reason. In practice, many sharecroppers in the country get half of the produces although they give the labor and other input. On top of this a landowner can take away land from the sharecropper any time. As a result, the sharecroppers in Chapai Nawabgonj were not willing to invest in land improvement and applying advance technology as they were not sure whether they would get the land in the next season. This resulted in poor yield in most cases along with an uneasy relationship between landowners and sharecroppers. In this situation, identification of the some 'win' for both sides made them interested to sit with each other and negotiate. The landowners found that giving land for five years under formal sharecropping agreement would make the sharecroppers interested to invest more resulting in higher agricultural output that would benefit both the parties.

We can also link such strategy with the idea of taking 'middle grounds' when required in our intervention to do rights work. When we analyze the causes and parties involved in a rights violation, it is important to 'polarize' between whose rights are violated, who are the violators and who is responsible to act. For interventions, trying to understand why an actor cannot deliver may be helpful. In a government Upazila hospital it was found that the Head had to agree to the proposed transfer of more than half of the nurses as they brought recommendations and pressure from political leaders and top bureaucrats. This resulted in shortage of nurses and affected the service of the hospital. When we see from outside, the Head of the hospital is responsible to ensure service where s/he is not performing well. But if we try to understand why s/he cannot perform we may work together to influence the appropriate authorities to ensure services in the hospital. This may also give us an ally in the Head of the hospital, a person within the government.

A 'win-win' strategy is also supportive of our position to do rights work in a non-violent way. To be effective in this strategy, only awareness and identification of suitable areas for 'compromises' is not enough; we have to identify and promote areas for 'compromises' that can bring benefits to all parties involved. Certainly we have to do these without compromising our principles of Rights Based Programming. Also, in such negotiations whenever required we have to squarely take the sides of the poor and marginalized people whose rights are denied / violated.

Please forward your comments/questions/suggestion to the following address:

M. Shameem Siddiqi  Rights and Social Justice Coordinator CARE Bangladesh Email: shameems@carebangladesh.org