ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the culture of the World Bank, which is the largest and most influential development agency, and the role of human rights within it. It focuses on two major frameworks - instrumental and intrinsic - which roughly correspond to economic and legal perspectives on human rights. The chapter argues that interpretive gaps are a critical factor in analysing how human rights get internalized in international institutions and development agencies. It then uses a case study of two AIDS projects to reveal competing approaches to the human rights of people living with HIV/AIDS, and their operational implications. The chapter argues that the power of human rights in shaping staff behaviour depends on their discursive fit with an organization's values and culture. It promotes further consideration of the regulatory structures that would most effectively bridge different visions of human rights within organizations. The chapter describes competing interpretive communities based on discipline roughly correspond to divergent frameworks for human rights.
