Global Adoption
Achieving Global Adoption of the Human Rights-Based Approach
1997 saw the beginning of a paradigm shift leading to the global adoption of a human rights approach to development. By 1997, Rights and Humanity had spent a decade advocating intensively for adoption of a human rights approach to development. Over the following years there was a rapid adoption of our human rights approach by UN agencies, governments and NGOs.
Adoption by the UK Government of our approach
The British Government’s Overseas Development Administration (ODA) had funded our work to integrate human rights into the World Summit for Social Development. The election of a new UK Government in 1997 saw the ODA renamed the Department for International Development.
In May 1997, Rights and Humanity was invited to prepare a Discussion Paper in preparation of the new UK Government’s first White Paper on International Development. The 260 page Discussion Paper was written by our President, Julia Häusermann, and articulated the human rights approach to development we had pioneered over our first decade. The Secretary of State adopted our approach and our wording explaining the scope of human rights was included verbatim in the White Paper published in November 1997.
Over the next few years, Rights and Humanity was commissioned to advise various sections of the Department for International Development (DFID) on the practical implementation of this approach and to undertake related staff training.
Multiplier Effect
At the request of DFID our Discussion Paper was published as a book in 1998 entitled “A Human Rights Approach to Development”, with a forward by the Secretary of State, Rt Hon Clare Short. DFID became a global advocate for this approach and was highly influential in encouraging other governments to adopt it.
Our book was launched to the human rights community by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs Mary Robinson, during the next UN Commission on Human Rights in April, 1999. Adoption of this approach by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) followed shortly after. The OHCHR is the UN agency leading the global human rights agenda, and this secured immediate global interest.
Our book was formally launched to the development community at a Norwegian Government conference later that year. The conference explored the practical implications of the rights-based approaches prompting wider policy alignment among governments and NGOs.
UN Adoption: the tipping point
At the same time, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, was calling for the integration of human rights into the broad range of UN activities, including in the areas of development and humanitarian affairs.
We had already been working intensively with WHO and UNDP to ensure integration of human rights into their policies and programmes. Rights and Humanity’s book was of immediate benefit to the staff of all UN agencies who were grappling for the first time with understanding how human rights was relevant to their work and led to a rapid adoption of the human rights approach to development across UN agencies.
Over the coming years, we were commissioned to advise on policy and the practical implementation of this approach and to provide training for a wide range of UN agencies in this regard.
Simultaneously, other factors were combining to help build the environment conducive to a human rights approach to development and which influenced its adoption on the international stage.
These include:
- confirmation at the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna, 1993, of the right to development as an inalienable human right
- recognition of women’s rights, including reproductive rights, as an essential basis for development and the strengthened global commitment to ensuring equality between men and women made at the 1994 Cairo and 1995 Beijing Conferences
- establishment of the post of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) with the strengthened mandate to promote the right to development
- the experience of UNICEF in utilising the Convention on the Rights of the Child as a foundation for its policies and programmes.