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Aid Effectiveness and Human Rights: Strengthening the Implementation of the Paris Declaration

Author: M Foresti and D Booth
Date: 2006
Size: 76 pages (24.5 KB)

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Summary

How can a human rights perspective be integrated into the aid effectiveness agenda set out in the Paris Declaration (PD)? This paper from the Overseas Development Institute provides an analytical framework for applying a practical human rights framework to the 2005 Paris Declaration of the High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (PD), arguing this would strengthen its implementation and address its shortcomings. In particular, it recommends strategies to integrate human rights thinking into the monitoring and evaluation process of the PD.

The Paris Declaration is a set of action commitments signed by over 100 donor and partner countries and international organisations. Its five areas of commitment are: ownership of development policies by partner countries, alignment of aid based on partner countries’ development policies, harmonisation of donor actions, managing for results and mutual accountability.

Recently, there has been an increased convergence of both rights and development agendas. But in practice, they often remain separate. Advances in theory about the connection between human rights and development are leading to more analytical work using rights principles and standards to investigate the dimensions of development practice. Since donors are increasingly integrating human rights as operational priorities for development programmes, it makes sense to integrate them into the agenda of the PD.

Shortcomings of the PD include a lack of an explicit governance agenda, questionable assumptions on the reality and context within which it is implemented and a narrow, technocratic focus.

A practical application of human rights principles and standards would provide the following benefits to PD implementation:

• Human rights thinking would highlight the relationship between good governance and aid effectiveness. There is empirical evidence that links types of governance (good or otherwise) to development outcomes.
• Mutual accountability would be strengthened by applying the principle of the claiming of rights by citizens, including the right to hold government accountable. There is evidence that claiming of rights produces better development outcomes.
• An emphasis on the relationship of citizens to the state, a basic tenet of human rights, would underscore the importance of citizen-based, not just government-based, ownership of development policies. Robust ownership depends not only on government but on a range of institutions that ensures the legitimacy of the social contract between state and citizens.
• Mutual accountability and ownership could benefit from discussion of "good ownership" based on rights principles, such as the development of social consensus about development goals.
• Harmonisation of donor actions would benefit from a donor-partner dialogue on conditionalities of funding based on rights issues. Rights-based agreement on the boundaries of acceptable political/government behaviour would help improve the predictability of aid flows.
• Results monitoring systems based on rights standards might be more successful in mobilising pressures for better development performance than the technical language of the PD monitoring and evaluation process.

The following are recommended actions to integrate human rights thinking into the monitoring and evaluation process of the PD:

• Elaborate an evaluation framework for the PD;
• Participate in discussions within the Joint Venture on Monitoring of the PD;
• Recommend rights standards and benchmarks to improve the current set of indicators for monitoring PD implementation;
• Consider synergies between efforts to monitor the PD at the national level, so as to assess quality of governance and democratic processes and systems; and
• Engage in discussions about crosscutting issues, such the integration of gender and environment into the aid effectiveness agenda.

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Source: Foresti, M., Booth, D. and O'Neill, T., 2006, 'Aid Effectiveness and Human Rights: strengthening the implemenation of the Paris Declaration', Overseas Development Institute, London
Author: Marta Foresti , m.foresti@odi.org.uk