In Kuywa, a rural village in western Kenya, Wafula is carefully watching over his grandmother’s goats. He counts them ‘one, two, three… sixteen’. That’s right. It’s the fourth time he’s counted in the last hour but he wants to make sure. It’s been a long hot day and he’s been out herding since sunrise. He can feel the day starting to cool and decides it’s time to return home. He walks the familiar route back, past the rice fields, left at the corn fields, and along the straight dusty road.
As he turns the final corner to his grandmother’s farm, he counts the herd for the final time ‘one, two, three…fourteen’. Two missing. He freezes, unsure of whether to go looking for the remaining two or shepherd the rest back to safety. Before he can decide, his grandmother comes out of her house, a warm smile on her face as she greets him. As the goats dutifully trot past her, he can see her counting them one by one. Fourteen. The warm smile quickly transforms to a cold stare. Wafula searches every corner of his brain for a believable excuse – nothing. He owns up and offers to go find them but she refuses, she will send someone else. She asks him to come inside, he knows what comes next.
After the punishment has been administered, Wafula’s grandmother replaces her sandal back to her feet. After Wafula goes inside, a neighbor, who had been outside the front of their house, and seen the whole incident asks the grandmother, ‘Why did you use the sandal on that child?’
The grandmother replies with assurance ‘He needs to learn, now he knows he must keep a more watchful eye over the goats. If I don’t punish him he will grow up to be ill disciplined and lead a sinful life’. She goes on ‘It’s in the Bible- whoever spares the rod hates their children’. The neighbor looks puzzled but shrugs and goes back inside.
This story was inspired by conversations that took place during fieldwork conducted during Busara’s project with Investing in Children and their Societies (ICS-SP) (Busara, 2026). The project aimed to re-design a social norms transformation curriculum – a series of structured community workshops – aimed at addressing harmful attitudes and behaviors regarding corporal punishment, intimate partner violence in Western Kenya, and child marriage in Tanzania. The designing and piloting of this curriculum involved detailed and complicated discussions. During these discussions, there were a range of opinions being shared, some of which I naturally agreed with, some I instinctively disagreed with. But ultimately I was left with the question – how do we decide whose values should govern us?
This article compares some of the core arguments of a cultural relativist approach and a universal acceptance of human rights. It will also highlight how methods and approaches in behavioral science can help practitioners navigate these moral dilemmas in the design and implementation of their programs. It’s important to note that this tension is not just experienced when comparing cultural practices in Kenya and a more ‘western’ view. The relative merits of cultural practices, attitudes and behaviours can be compared globally, for example on issues such as LGBT rights and gender roles.
Whose values should govern?
The tension experienced in the social norms curriculum design is common in the development sector. Particularly when foreign organizations and practitioners are trying to promote changes in attitudes and behaviors in unfamiliar contexts. A cultural practice that might seem harmful to an outsider might serve a higher purpose to the community.
This can be summarised into two main arguments – cultural relativism and a universal acceptance of human rights (Donnelly, 1984). A hard-line cultural relativist would say that every culture should be judged by its own context and there is no universal justification for what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ only what is right or wrong in that context. Whereas, a strong advocate for universal human rights would argue that there should be agreed, codified standards of morality and the ‘rights’ that all humans are entitled to, just because they are human.
Evidently, this is a spectrum of opinion. And at either pole, you’re likely to find yourself in a fundamentalist position that could be difficult to defend. If you were a true believer in absolute cultural relativism, you could find yourself having to defend some of the biggest events of human suffering as something that was ‘acceptable’ in that culture at that time. For example, the holocaust in Germany in the 1930s and 40s or the genocide in Rwanda in 1994. To fulfill a true cultural relativist position, you would need a compelling case for why there would be no need for intervention from foreign actors (e.g., governments, NGOs) into these atrocities. By virtue of being involved, these foreign actors would be imposing their own – external – values and judgements on human rights onto that ‘culture’.
However, taking a hard stance on the universality of human rights doesn’t excuse you from difficult dilemmas. Whose values should we live by? Why is one set of morals better than another? How do we allow for moral evolution and learning? Is there a risk that all human societies become a robotic mono-culture?
Official charters, like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948), try to formalize a baseline position for all humans everywhere. But programs solely designed with universal principles in mind, parachuted around the world without consideration of local context, traditions and values, often fail to land safely. An autopsy of many failed international development programs might reveal that a lack of cultural sensitivity was a contributor to its inevitable demise. For example, America’s ABC model (‘Abstinence’ ‘Be faithful’ and ‘Condom use’) of HIV prevention is argued to have failed in parts of Botswana due to its contradiction with existing local sexual practices and views on sexual intimacy (Su, 2010).
By now, you might be hoping that the next paragraph will neatly summarise what the ‘right’ answer is: how do we balance cultural sensitivity with human rights? I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this is a complicated debate with no clear solution. A thoughtful organization would take a considered stance somewhere along this spectrum before getting too far ahead with the design and implementation of a development program. As Busara, we are right at the centre of this debate. An organization operating in the Global Majority, largely funded by Global North institutions. But as behavioral science practitioners, we have the skills, tools and responsibility to ensure behavior change initiatives have a thoughtful rationale behind their design and implementation.
Behavioral science as a map, not the compass
When reflecting on how (or if) behavioral science could help shed some light on this debate, I realised that the discipline’s biggest strength is often the means (how you get there) rather than the ends (what should change). Behavioral science does not serve as a philosophical compass, but it can provide a map to help navigate a moral maze and decide on a path that best suits the conditions. The map does not show you where north is, but it could show you what you are likely to encounter if you choose that direction.
Most policies, programs and interventions are ultimately about changing human behavior. This could range from taxation of consumer products to deter purchases, to building water points and providing street lighting. At their core the objective is to get people to do something differently. When done badly, the design happens back to front. An individual, team or organization comes up with a creative and innovative solution to a societal problem. They then work backwards to identify how this idea will bring about change and then finally why that change is important. The words ‘It seemed like a good idea at the time’ should also be engraved into the headstones of all unsuccessful programs and policies.
This approach to behavior change would ring alarm bells with a good behavioral scientist. Hopefully, they would quickly jump in and insist that the specific behaviors they are trying to change should be considered, articulated, and understood before any thought goes into solutions. A great behavioral scientist would slow things down further. And encourage you to go back a step or two and articulate the exact problem you are trying to solve and the ultimate goal you are aiming towards.
At this point, it might be hard to discern between your ultimate goal and the behavior: ‘We want to stop caregivers and teachers using corporal punishment in Western Kenya’.
Ok, but why? What are we really addressing? What is the goal of this goal?
Taking a step back and questioning your initial definition of the goal helps to broaden the horizon slightly, something like: ‘Increasing well-being of children in Western Kenya’ or ‘Improve familial relationships in Western Kenya’.
This is important because it unlocks a whole suite of options for how you could achieve that goal. It allows you to keep an open mind as to what might be the most locally appropriate, culturally relevant and, ultimately, effective way of achieving that goal. From a behavior change perspective, this would involve identifying and selecting one specific behavior to target with your intervention. For example, within the Behavior Change Wheel framework (Michie et al., 2011), a structured framework that helps guide you through the process of behaviour change intervention design, you are encouraged to consider the impact of changing the behavior (on your defined goal), how easy or difficult it would be to change the behavior, what the likely knock on effects might be (positive and negative) and how easy it would be to measure any change in behavior. There is also the APEASE criteria which encourages you to consider the Acceptability, Practicability, Effectiveness, Affordability, Side-effects and Equity of your decisions as you work through the intervention design process (Chadwick et al., 2020). These structured decision making processes can help build a clear, agreed upon and documented logic model for your intervention design. When informed by the right data and evidence, it also allows you to build a rationale for how cultural sensitivities have been taken into account throughout the process.
The next step is to figure out why that behavior is occurring or not. Your doctor doesn’t (or shouldn’t) prescribe a treatment without diagnosing the issues first – it’s the same for a behavioral scientist. Understanding the environmental, psychological, emotional and social factors driving a behavior is a crucial step. A good behavioral diagnosis can help you design an intervention that works with cultural norms and traditional beliefs, not against them.
In the case of Wafula, his grandmother, and her interaction with the neighbor, it seemed like Wafulas’ grandmother thought she was doing right by her grandchild by inflicting the punishment, saving him from a life of misfortune and sin. If one wanted to reduce the incidences of violent discipline, understanding this would be an important first step in being able to harness motivation, possibly into a less violent form of discipline. Similarly, understanding the significance and beliefs around cultural practices would be crucial in trying to improve outcomes for those involved. A good example of this comes from Ethiopia from an organization named Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma (KMG) who worked directly with communities for whom Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) marked a girl’s passage from childhood to adulthood. Instead of directing community members to abandon the rite, the intervention guided them in reimagining it, resulting in ‘Whole Body, Healthy Life’ public awarding and coming-of-age ceremonies for girls in the community. KMG’s approach aimed to preserve the public recognition and celebration previously associated with FGM while discarding the harmful practice. This intervention, in tandem with other FGM initiatives, led to a 92% reduction in the number of people practicing FGM in Kembatta over a decade (Stern & Anderson, 2024).
A best fit solution for complex problems
Hopefully, you have not got this far expecting a resolved philosophical position – the best I can offer is a practical one. When done well, the tools and approaches offered within behavioral science can help to ensure a clear, defensible, documented process has been followed. Built into this process are techniques to ensure that cultural sensitivities and local context have been a core consideration in the design and implementation of any program.
As a discipline, behavioral science does not always give us the perfect answers. Instead it presents a method of discovery to help us find best fit solutions to complex problems, using an appropriate, safe, and effective route.
References and further reading
- Chadwick, P., Pender, T., & Onduru, E. (2020). Using the behaviour change wheel framework within gender-focused international development programmes: A field guide. ActionAid Ireland. https://actionaid.ie/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ActionAid-Behaviour-Change-Manual.pdf
- Donnelly, J. (1984). Cultural relativism and universal human rights. Human Rights Quarterly, 6(4), 400–419. https://doi.org/10.2307/762182
- Gerard, B., Muutu, H., Christian, L., Kay, M., & Mills, Z. (2026, June 30). How can behavior change framework and co-design improve social norms curricula? Busara. https://doi.org/10.62372/EGCV8931
- Michie, S., van Stralen, M. M., & West, R. (2011). The behaviour change wheel: A new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementation Science, 6, Article 42. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-6-42
- Stern, E., & Anderson, A. (2015). “One hand can’t clap by itself”: Engagement of boys and men in Kembatti Mentti Gezzimma’s intervention to eliminate female genital mutilation and circumcision in Kembatta Zone, Ethiopia (EMERGE Case Study 3). Promundo-US, Sonke Gender Justice, & Institute of Development Studies. https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/articles/report/_One_Hand_Can_t_Clap_by_Itself_Engagement_of_Boys_and_Men_in_Kembatti_Mentti_Gezzimma_s_Intervention_to_Eliminate_Female_Genital_Mutilation_and_Circumcision_in_Kembatta_Zone_Ethiopia/26457811
- Su, Y. Y. (2010). The failure of the American ABC HIV prevention model in Botswana. Studies by Undergraduate Researchers at Guelph, 4(1). https://journal.lib.uoguelph.ca/index.php/surg/article/view/1278
- United Nations General Assembly. (1948). Universal declaration of human rights (Resolution 217 A). https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/2021/03/udhr.pdf
