The Development Dimension : Integrating Human Rights into Development

Human rights have become an important aspect of development policy and programming. This trend is reflected in the human rights policies that a growing number of bilateral and multilateral aid agencies have adopted over the past ten years. This chapter reviews donor approaches and rationales for working on human rights. The analysis shows that human rights work is considered as an objective in its own right, as constitutive of development, and as contributing directly to objectives pursued by donors in the areas of governance, poverty reduction and aid effectiveness. Donor approaches to implementing policies are categorised in a five-part typology, ranging from implicit human rights work to human rights-based approaches. Legal and political constraints and empirical challenges to the further development and implementation of human rights policies are highlighted. 26 – CHAPTER 1. DONOR APPROACHES INTEGRATING HUMAN RIGHTS INTO DEVELOPMENT – ISBN 92-64-02209-0 © OECD 2006 Policies The trend is clear: both bilateral and multilateral agencies have adopted or are in the process of adopting or refining human rights and development policies. Among bilaterals, a first wave of foreign policy statements in the 1990s was often later complemented by aid agencyspecific documents on human rights and development. They often emphasise the positive measures that donors can support through financial or technical assistance and dialogue to promote human rights in partner countries. Multilaterals, such as the UN system or the European Commission, have also developed new policy frameworks, though this is not the case with the international financial institutions. Table 1 illustrates how the majority of agencies surveyed have either adopted human rights policies, or are in the process of developing or updating them in light of experiences gained over the past ten years. By comparison, there are fewer agencies with no human rights policies at all. Agencies without explicit policies may still refer to human rights in other documents, or work on human rights in indirect ways, as is examined below. (The table is not intended to be comprehensive.)