The Development Dimension Integrating Human Rights Into Development Donor Approaches Experiences And Challenges

By giving numerous examples of practical approaches, this publication shows that there are various ways for donor agencies to take human rights more systematically into account – in accordance with their respective mandates, modes of engagement and comparative advantage.

This book enhances touches on why and how we need to work more strategically and coherently on the integration of human rights and development. It reviews the approaches of different donor agencies and their rationales for working on human rights, and identifies the current practice in this field. It illustrates how aid agencies are working on human rights issues at the programing level, and it draws together lessons that form the core of the current evidence around the added value of human rights for development. Lastly, it addresses both new opportunities and conceptual and practical challenges to human rights. By giving numerous examples of practical approaches, this publication shows that there are various ways for donor agencies to take human rights more systematically into account.

This joint World Bank/OECD volume is the second edition of a 2006 study which charts donor approaches, experiences, and challenges integrating human rights into development policy. It analyses a range of rationales for donor approaches to human rights and results these have yielded in policies, programs and projects.

This second edition of Integrating Human Rights into Development consolidates the findings and research compiled in 2006 with key developments and activities that have occurred in the intervening seven years.

The past two decades have witnessed a convergence between human rights and development, particularly at the level of international political statements and policy commitments. This phenomenon is captured in milestones such as the 2007 OECD DAC Action Oriented Policy Paper on Human Rights and Development (AOPP), the 2010 UN World Summit Outcome Document, the commitments of the 2005 and 2011 High-Level For an Aid Effectiveness in Accra and Busan. The connections between rights violations, poverty, exclusion, environmental degradation, vulnerability and conflict continue to be explored and better understood. More positively, there is growing recognition of the intrinsic importance of human rights in a range of contexts, as well as their potential instrumental relevance for improving development processes and outcomes. This second edition of Integrating Human Rights into Development: Donor Approaches, Experiences and Challenges consolidates the research and findings complied in 2006 with relevant developments that have occurred in the intervening six years. It brings together the key political and policy statements of recent years with a discussion of the approaches and experiences of bilateral and multilateral agencies engaged in integrating human rights in their development cooperation activities in a variety of ways. Despite rapid changes in the donor landscape and acute budget pressures resulting from the financial crisis, the experience of the past six years also attests to the sustained commitment of OECD member countries and multilateral donors to engage with human rights strategically, as a means for improving the ways they deliver and manage aid and the quality of development co-operation.

Human rights indicators are central to the application of human rights standards in context and relate essentially to measuring human rights realization, both qualitatively and quantitatively. They offer an empirical or evidence-based dimension to the normative content of human rights legal obligations and a provide means of connecting those obligations with empirical data and evidence, and in this way relate to human rights accountability and the enforcement of human rights obligations. Human rights indicators are important both for assessment and diagnostic purposes: the assessment function of human rights indicators relates to their use in monitoring accountability, effectiveness and impact, while the diagnostic purposes relates to measuring the current state of human rights implementation and enjoyment in a given context, whether regional, country-specific or local. This paper offers a preliminary review of the foregoing in the development context, and a general perspective on the significance of human rights indicators for development processes and outcomes. It is not intended to be prescriptive and does not provide specific operational recommendations on the use of human rights indicators in development projects. Nor does it advocate a particular approach or mode of integrating human rights in development, or argue for a rights-based approach to development. This paper is designed to provide development practitioners with a preliminary view on the possible relevance, design and use of human rights indicators in development policy and practice. It also introduces a basic conceptual framework about the relationship between rights and development, including in the World Bank context and surveys a range of methodological approaches on human rights measurement, exploring in general terms different types of human rights indicators and their potential implications for development at three different levels of convergence or integration.

On the occasion of the 60 anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this special issue of the OECD Journal on Development focuses on robust methods and tools for assessing human rights, democracy and governance.

Global Constitutionalism argues that parts of international law can be understood as being grounded in the rule of law and human rights, and insists that international law can and should be interpreted and progressively developed in the direction of greater respect for and realization of those principles. Global Constitutionalism has been discussed primarily by European scholars. Yet without the engagement of scholars from other parts of the world, the universalist claims underlying Global Constitutionalism ring hollow. This is particularly true with regard to East Asia, where nearly half the world's population and a growing share of global economic and military capacities are located. Are East Asian perspectives on Global Constitutionalism similar to European perspectives? Against the background of current power shifts in international law, this book constitutes the first cross-cultural work on various facets of Global Constitutionalism and elaborates a more nuanced concept that fits our times.