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DFID Human Rights Review: a Review of how DFID has Integrated Human Rights into its Work

Author: L-H Piron and F Watkins
Date: 2004
Size: 120 pages (886 KB)

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Summary

What lessons can be learned from the UK Department for International Development (DFID)'s human rights work in a range of sectors and initiatives, particularly at the country level? How can human rights make a contribution to poverty reduction? This paper from DFID's Reaching the Very Poorest Team in the Policy Division documents DFID's human rights activities in a number of domains. It is designed to serve as a reference document, and contains a number of practical recommendations.

Until the end of the Cold War, human rights and development were kept as separate domains. From the late 1990s onwards, a number of international development agencies and non-governmental organisations have attempted to integrate human rights or have officially adopted human rights-based approaches to development. There is now a large body of work integrating human rights into development policy and programmes supported by DFID at the international, national and sectoral/thematic levels and in different country contexts, and an important constituency of DFID staff developing innovative approaches and activities in this area.

DFID's experiences with human rights at central, country and sectoral level show that human rights add value for poverty reduction at several levels:

• Normative: They provide a normative framework at international, national and regional levels and help to hold state and other actors accountable; aim to transform state-society relations and put people at the centre of development processes; make a unique contribution to policy debates and can lead to more effective poverty eradication.
• Analytical: They can help in setting development objectives and identifying the causes and characteristics of poverty; emphasise power relations, participation and related issues; provide a framework for identifying obligations and provide tangible benchmarks to be achieved.
• Operational: They provide standards for framing discussions that can challenge the status quo; highlight the importance of linking supply and demand-side initiatives; can influence the design of aid instruments to gain a sharper focus on gains for the poor; help to put in practice an approach best suited to the local context.

There needs to be greater coherence in DFID's work on human rights. The overall policy framework and DFID's own human rights obligations should be clarified, developing greater consistency of knowledge and application of human rights across the organisation. DFID should also promote an aid coherence agenda across UK government agencies, which puts human rights for all the centre of the impact of UK policies on developing countries. Other specific policy recommendations for DFID are:

• Develop mechanisms to learn better and more systematically from ongoing activities (in particular in relation to country programmes, international organisations and civil society).
• Undertake reviews to synthesise knowledge to date in key areas.
• Undertake work on human rights indicators and other ways of measuring progress.
• Prepare practical guidance for staff (including training, a 'live' resource, effective support to country and policy teams, and ongoing learning with external actors).
• Develop more policy and research around economic and social rights, the link between governance and the realisation of human rights for all and an understanding of experiences with the implementation of conditionality.

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Source: Piron, L-H. and Watkins, F., 2004, 'DFID Human Rights Review: a Review of How DFID Has Integrated Human Rights into its Work', Overseas Development Institute, Report prepared for the Department for International Development
Author: Laure-Helene Piron , lh.piron@odi.org