Leveraging Rights for Livelihoods: Charting a Human Rights Path for Curio Traders

My recent visit to Victoria Falls in Zambia exposed me to the poignant desperation of Curio traders, highlighting the stark reality of their struggles. The experience left me grappling with the realization that, inadvertently, my contribution to tourism had primarily benefited an elite minority, perpetuating a non-inclusive system. Curio trading, a vital yet overlooked component of the tourism industry in Livingstone, Zambia, provides employment and income to indigenous residents. Despite its significance, curio traders face formidable challenges hindering their economic sustainability. This article analyses how a human rights-based approach can serve as both the means and an end to surfacing the needs of disenfranchised curio traders in Livingstone.

Challenges Faced by Curio Traders in Livingstone

Zambia’s curio trading is a largely informal entrepreneurial activity in which indigenous residents sell curios in tourist areas and it is seemingly treated as a derivative of the mainstream tourism industry [1]. Curio trading provides much-needed employment and income for households in Zambia, where employed persons typically provide for entire households [1]. Yet, despite the growing prominence of this sub-sector of tourism, Barber and Krivoshlykova (2006) noted that people working in this sector are among the poorest, with normalized 10-12 hour working days and very few benefits of their trades realized in their livelihoods [1].

Among the challenges that curio traders face, I could observe the overcrowded spaces that they work in. Sidewalks near hotels and lodges were occupied by curio traders and vendors competing for tourists’ attention. Trading in designated stalls, such as the Mukuni Market and the Victoria Falls Market, was extremely concentrated with traders selling similar items which seemed to eat into each other's revenue. From conversations with some of the curio traders, their sales and ultimately livelihoods were extremely vulnerable to the cyclical nature of tourist inflows and the business they bring. Off-peak travelling seasons, such as my trip, meant that it would be difficult for them to generate enough money to provide for their households.

Scholars have observed other challenges experienced by curio traders. Zhou (2017) found that curio traders were significantly hampered by the taxes, rental fees or licensing fees they had to pay to local council authorities and the government. Rental fees remained the same regardless of the amount of business that curio traders received. This has resulted in some traders incurring losses and even borrowing money so that they do not lose their stalls [1].

De Beer (2005) noted that curio traders were unable to gain capital or loans through financial institutions because they lacked collateral or had no bank history. This hampered their ability to start up entrepreneurial activities or to meet demands during peak seasons [1]. The respondents in Zhou’s (2017) study also expressed their grievances about being excluded from the support of the SMEs Ministry.

McLachlan’s (2013) thesis revealed that several local craftsmen, artists, and curio sellers in Livingstone expressed that they were significantly affected by what they perceived to be accommodation businesses monopolising tourist expenditure by establishing curio shops. The informants lamented that it was difficult for them to compete with these businesses as they had stronger relationships with the tourists who were staying there, had more resources to market effectively and discouraged tourists from visiting markets by creating a perception of crime in these environments [2]. Zhou (2017) also observed fierce competition between licensed and unlicensed curio traders because unlicensed curio traders could afford to knock down their prices as they did not have the extra burden of a licensing fee.

It was disheartening to learn that this adversity was not just experienced by curio traders. Walking through the town, I noticed that our jovial energy and brief attempts to engage with locals were seldom reciprocated, the exception being vendors hoping to sell us something. I can’t forget the scathing remark we received walking to a pub on our first night from an embittered local man: “Hmm… You guys look beautiful while the rest of us suffer”. It felt extremely hostile and misdirected at the time, but throughout the rest of our stay, it was easy to sympathise with the despair and injustice that locals of such a popular destination experience.

The observable struggle of the residents, and specifically the curio traders, drew my attention to tourism that was non-inclusive, inequitable and exploitive. The state’s apparent neglect of curio traders marginalized them and forced them to grapple with various challenges that stifled their potential. All the while, the excellent quality of hotels and private lodges contradicted the hardship surrounding them. This is a stark contrast to the global trend of achieving sustainable tourism.

Implication for Sustainable Tourism

The local man’s comments ingeniously speak to the weak economic links between the outstanding hotels and lodges mostly owned by international companies and wealthy locals, and the poor infrastructure in the rest of town. This concurs with Bwalya-Umar and Mubanga’s (2018) assertion that the priority of donor-supported tourism has been infrastructure development, stimulation of the private sector, macroeconomic growth, and earnings from foreign exchange. There has been a misguided belief that the macroeconomic benefits of tourism development will eventually trickle down to the local poor [3]. This was a discernible phenomenon in Livingstone, personified by locals' sense of apathy towards tourism, and evidenced in Bwalya-Umar and Mubanga’s (2018) results showing that residents in the study believed that tourism has economically benefited only a few households while all households bear its costs through increased prices for food and services (Figure 1). Most of the employment opportunities provided to the local community were low-paying, unskilled and menial jobs and Synman (2014) reported that households with members working for eco-tourism businesses in Zambia had mean monthly incomes of USD 218. This shows that most Livingstone residents do not identify themselves as economic beneficiaries of tourism and that opportunities to benefit from tourism were privileged to individuals and businesses with the capital to engage in tourism enterprises.

‘Sustainable Tourism’ refers to tourism practices that are aware of the negative and positive impacts of tourism. It has been defined by the UN Environment Program and UN World Tourism Organization as “tourism that takes full account of its current and future economic, social and environmental impacts, addressing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment and host communities.”. By this definition, tourism should bring maximum benefits to a destination and its residents' quality of life by being ecologically conscious, economically feasible and socially equitable [3, 4].

Sustainable Tourism’s Nexus with Empowerment and Human Rights

Research on sustainable tourism has explicitly tied it to the empowerment of local communities and the promotion and protection of human rights. Firstly, sustainable tourism’s relationship to empowerment underscores its dual role in enhancing the tangible economic, socio-cultural, and political conditions of local communities while simultaneously equipping individuals with the agency to shape their lives, future, and environment. This transformative process turns community members into proactive agents of change, endowed with the ability to devise solutions, make decisions, shape policies, implement actions, and critically evaluate outcomes [5].

The pursuit of empowerment within sustainable tourism aligns with the highest level of Arnstein's Ladder of Participation, requiring a collective action process for power redistribution. This process places people in positions that enable them “to develop social capital and politically exercise power”. It is intricately linked with cultural and institutional procedural shifts that make them more transparent and responsive. The outcome of this empowerment process is the newfound ability of individuals to articulate concerns and bring their perspectives to fruition, thereby influencing the circumstances of disadvantaged communities and creating avenues for the expansion of capabilities and resources [5].

Sustainable tourism is equally dedicated to protecting the human rights of indigenous communities. These obligations include the preservation of their cultural identity and control over traditional knowledge; fair and ethical employment practices (which include respecting workers' rights, providing fair wages, and ensuring safe working conditions), and equitable access to resources and their benefits (such as preventing the exploitation of natural resources and ensuring that local residents have access to the economic opportunities created by tourism) [3].

Bridging the Divide Between Legal Formulas and Practical Realities

Emerging from a perspective centred on service delivery and development, Human Rights-Based Approaches (HRBAs) have often appeared as these technical or legal solutions orchestrated by experts in a top-down manner, devoid of immediate practicality in addressing the urgent needs of people in dire circumstances. Integrating human rights principles has appeared overly focused on advocating for the protection of rights within the field of policy development. At the outset, this approach seems unproductive compared to the pressing task of devising viable alternatives to the pervasive inequities ingrained in economic, social, political, and cultural structures. This is especially relevant in contexts where governments are unable to provide even the most basic services to citizens. Reinforcing this perception, VeneKlasen et al. (2019) observe that many traditional human rights groups have prioritized the content of international laws as the focal point of their rights-oriented initiatives.

It is also important to acknowledge that human rights are dynamic, where groups with different interests often compete. In such situations, it becomes apparent that 1) human rights are not solely for the benefit of the marginalized and disempowered, and 2) analysing the power dynamics that exclude certain groups while privileging others is of paramount importance [6]. Governments often find themselves trying to balance the conflicting demands of citizens and workers against those of corporations. The struggles over whose rights hold precedence play out at the household, community, and national levels. Instances arise where ethnic, religious, and indigenous rights may challenge women’s rights, exemplified when the Southern Province Minister of Zambia rejected crafters' plea to prohibit hotels from selling curios. His argument, rooted in the state's adherence to neo-liberal ideas and a free-market economy, asserted that local crafters could not be granted preferential treatment [3].

VeneKlasen et al. (2019) challenge the misconception that HRBAs are incompatible with emancipatory and empowering practices (which are more central to service-delivery/developmental approaches). The authors posit that this perceived incongruity arises from a limited understanding of human rights work, which they categorize into two distinct approaches: a legalistic approach and a political process.

Historically, the legalistic approach has emphasised “what the law says” rather than the extent to which people’s rights are realized in their everyday lives. It has been best used in education initiatives (such as workshops and pamphlets) that teach people simplified versions of laws, and advocacy efforts that aimed to “deliver rights” through “legal reform” [6]. However, the legalistic understanding has had a narrow focus that has failed to expand the scope of rights, and significantly improve accountability and capacity to deliver social change processes. These approaches have done little to foster a sense of individuals as rights-holders capable of engaging with and reshaping power dynamics [6]. Instead of starting with people’s daily struggles, many rights-based organizations using this approach have usually led with discussions of rights as an entry point into communities. By beginning with the abstract notion of rights, interventions often don’t relate to how people experience the world and thus fail to build active constituencies or sustained support for change. Their strategies have often been sterile and unrealistic, struggling to address the realities of citizens’ power dynamics at the ground level, and communities have largely failed to relate to this superficial language [6].

A different perspective to human rights work is understanding it as a political process. In this manner, HRBAs empower people to articulate their needs and aspirations for an improved life into demands and obligations that states are forced to fulfil. As a political process, HRBAs are reconnected to their emancipatory and empowering roots. Additionally, expressing both demands and human needs through the lens of rights adds credibility to the pursuit of justice, and grants greater political significance and legitimacy to people’s claims. Basically, people’s rights are perceived as needs that have political legitimacy and enforceable expectations from the state. People’s needs/demands can be brought out into the “light”, enabling them to understand the social and political changes that need to occur and have the capacity to articulate this in a legitimized language. Citizens also gain an appreciation of the visible aspects of power, such as “policymaking and the human rights system”, and the invisible aspects of power that exclude people from making decisions that affect them [6].

People’s struggles should be the starting point of HRBAs, and their actions should move beyond the confines of “what the law says” but rather create changes in communities that ensure those rights are realized [6]. Recognizing rights as a dynamic political process enables practical entry points of coordinated action and the development of comprehensive strategies that acknowledge the complexities of power [6].

When confronted by rights that only exist on paper, “the challenge lies in claiming them by engaging and reforming structures and institutions charged with upholding them, while also expanding people’s understanding of and sense of entitlement to rights” [6]. The process of claiming one’s rights, seeking justice and accessing political and economic resources will require us to ‘speak the language of the system’ where it is necessary, gain recognition of these rights, and ensure they are realized in people’s daily lives [6, 7].

Empowering Curio Traders: A Human Rights-Based Intervention

In addressing the challenges faced by curio traders in Livingstone, a human rights-based response necessitates drawing on the lived experiences and perspectives of traders. This goes beyond “asking locals because they know” but involves a critical analysis of not only the visible aspects of power, but also understanding the invisible aspects of power that disempower them in the first place [6]. A human rights-based response to the needs of curio traders should also strengthen the capacity of the state and institutions to “protect, fulfil and enforce rights through accountable governance and community action and organization” [6].

It’s been established that a significant reason that curio traders severely struggle to thrive is due to licensing and stall fees in a cyclical business environment. A human rights-based intervention could capacitate curio traders to organise themselves and formalise their complaints to their local authorities. With this base of support from their local constituents, they could engage in high-level lobbying to demand the provincial or national government to uphold its legal obligation to enable access to local markets and promote fair trade practices that benefit indigenous businesses. Possible solutions could be licensing and stall fees related to tourist inflows. Furthermore, curio traders could initiate dialogues with hotel and lodge owners and collaborate with the Competitions Act Commission, presenting their challenges and interests not merely as victims but as rights-holders. These initiatives could be framed as the state’s and private sector’s responsibility to adhere to fair and ethical business practices, avoiding anticompetitive behaviour and ensuring rights to fair and transparent dispute resolutions. Such strategies, grounded in the collective strength of numbers and enhanced socio-political engagements, have the potential to catalyse government institutions to reform economic policies and level the playing field for curio traders.

Understanding human rights and HRBAs as a political process unfolds their utilitarian value. Beyond being an ethical framework and legal foundation, their application becomes a transformative endeavour aimed at changing the immediate and long-term material circumstances of disenfranchised communities. They serve as a justification for asserting demands against privileged actors, fostering empowerment, nurturing political consciousness, and building the capacity of individuals and grassroots organizations to sustain policy changes [7].

Through HRBAs, service delivery and developmental efforts that address the concrete needs of curio traders can have legitimacy in the political arenas (through advocacy strategies) to influence and hold private and public institutions accountable. To deliver bigger market spaces, improve visibility and promotion, increase accessibility to financial support, suppress the impact of tourist inflows and prevent unfair competition in a sustainable manner requires not only a needs-based focus by providing resources, but it also requires claiming rights and directly engaging with political institutions.

Conclusion

The plight of curio traders in Livingstone unveils the harsh realities of non-inclusive tourism and economic disparity. Their struggles underscore the urgent need for a human rights-based intervention that goes beyond addressing immediate challenges to fostering long-term empowerment. By redefining human rights as a dynamic political process, we can bridge the gap between legal formulas and practical realities, ensuring that curio traders not only claim their rights on paper but also realize them in their daily lives. Sustainable tourism's nexus with empowerment and human rights provides a framework for transformative change, aiming to create a tourism ecosystem that is ecologically conscious, economically feasible, and socially equitable.

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Work Cited

1. Zhou, Z., Victoria Falls curio sector analysis: insights through the lens of a dollarized economy. 2017.

2. McLachlan, S.D., The Development and Impact of Tourism in Livingstone, Zambia. 2013, University of Otago.

3. Bwalya-Umar, B. and K.H. Mubanga, Do locals benefit from being in the ‘tourist capital’? Views from Livingstone, Zambia. Tourism and Hospitality Research, 2018. 18(3): p. 333-345.

4. Boley, B.B. and N.G. McGehee, Measuring empowerment: Developing and validating the resident empowerment through tourism scale (RETS). Tourism Management, 2014. 45: p. 85-94.

5. Gohori, O. and P. van der Merwe, Tourism and community empowerment: the perspectives of local people in Manicaland province, Zimbabwe. Tourism planning & development, 2022. 19(2): p. 81-99.

6. VeneKlasen, L., V. Miller, C. Clark, and M. Reilly, Rights-Based Approaches and Beyond Linking Rights and Participation: Challenges of Current Thinking and Action. Power, 2019.

7. Gauri, V. and S. Gloppen, Human rights-based approaches to development: Concepts, evidence, and policy. Polity, 2012. 44(4): p. 485-503.