Integrating Human Rights Into Development Second Edition

This volume 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, programmes, 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.

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.

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.

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.