Human Rights in German Development Policy. Part 1: The Human Rights Strategy and its Implementation

Abstract

In the strategy paper 'Human Rights in German Development Policy', published in 2011, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) defined human rights as a guiding principle of its work. The strategy paper formulates a human rights based approach (HRBA) for the realisation of this guiding principle. This evaluation comprehensively assesses the HRBA for the first time since it was adopted. The present report, Part 1 of the evaluation, deals with the contents of the human rights strategy and its implementation. According to the findings of this part of the evaluation, the human rights strategy incorporates human rights requirements in its objectives and approaches to action, but only partially implements them in practice. Based on these findings, the evaluation formulates recommendations for the further strategic development and evidence-based strategic management of the HRBA. It also makes the case for piloting new implementation tools, providing more application-oriented support, and building relevant knowledge among the actors involved in implementing the HRBA.