Human rights create opportunities
The Danish Institute for Human Rights' annual report to the Danish Parliament has been released. The report provides a status of the human rights situation in Denmark as well as highlighting some of the results we have achieved through our international work. In our international activities, we cooperate with key decision-makers in governments, public authorities and the business community abroad, and we encourage them to take action where appropriate.
In 2016, and the years to come, we supplement our focus on obligations and accountability with arguments concerning economic rationales and stability. We want to become better at encouraging politicians, investors and business leaders to regard human rights as fundamental for creating opportunities for all and hence achieving inclusive economic growth.
Creating opportunities
One example is the extensive use of our toolkit for National Action Plans. The action plans are based on the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. By outlining activities to support better business practices, this improves conditions for workers and communities and creates opportunities for doing more responsible business. As of 2016, our expertise in this area has been put to use in around 20 countries, including Mexico, Chile, Niger, Zambia, Germany and Japan.
A precondition for human rights to play a constructive role and thus create opportunities, is having strong public institutions. In the past year, DIHR have further expanded our cooperation with Tunisia by signing acooperation agreement with Tunisia’s ombudsman Abdessattar Ben Moussa. With this newagreement in place, the institute now works in cooperation with the most important public actors within the field of human rights in Tunisia. Our goal is for our Tunisian partners to have the capacity to carry out the task of securing and defending human rightsin accordance with their legal obligations.
Exploring new territories for human rights
Our focus on opportunities has also made us curious. For this reason, we have embarked upon a new project, which aims to investigate the connection between human rights and economic growth. We have completed an initial analysis of links between the observance of civic rights and economic growth. The preliminary results of the analysis indicate that, over a 10-15-year period, there is a positive link between freedom and participation rights and economic growth. Simultaneously, the analysis demonstrated that no such link exists the other way round, i.e. from economic growth to civic rights.