Measuring a human rights-based approach to development

The Danish Institute for Human Rights (the Institute) in partnership with the French Development Agency has been exploring how development co-operation agencies and Ministries measure progress in their application of a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to development.

The Institute carried out stakeholder interviews with several European ministries and development agencies as part of a rapid assessment to explore current policies and practices in this area.

The rapid assessment revealed that many European Ministries and development agencies have made legal or policy commitments to apply an HRBA to development. There is also a rich body of comparative experience, tools, resources, and lessons learned from implementation. However, the depth of the current engagement on HRBA varies from agency to agency, with new approaches and themes at times overshadowing HRBA commitments. Many describe challenges in implementing the human rights-based approach to development in practice, particularly in ensuring that commitments made in the programme design phase are followed through on during implementation. An overall conclusion was that there is currently a lack of accountability in relation to these commitments and a need to strengthen the systematic monitoring and evaluation of an HRBA approach to development.