Human Rights-Based Approaches of European Donors – a Comparative Perspective

It is well-known that European donors differ significantly with regard to whether and how to apply a human rights approach to development (HRBA). Thus, not only are there differences as to donors’ policy endorsements of HRBA, there are also important differences regarding the different donors’ field practices: For instance, Germany stresses the importance of mainstreaming HRBA whilst focussing on children’s rights, women’s rights and rights of persons with disabilities. The EU also pursues a mainstreaming objective, but its country programming strategies arguably show that HRBA practices are focussed on the ‘soft sectors’ (social matters, gender and child issues), whereas human rights have not been integrated in the country programming strategies in the ‘hard sectors’ (infrastructure, energy and agriculture). Similarly, even though Denmark as recently as 2012 was given a new development strategy with an explicit and strong commitment to HRBA, country programmes indicate that there is less human rights integration in the ‘hard sectors’ than in the ‘soft sectors’.

The paper will compare the application of HRBA by a select number of European donors: Denmark, the European Union, Finland, Germany, Norway, Sweden and the United Kingdom. The pattern of donor implementation will be analysed as succinctly as the data allow, also with respect to how donors measure their HRBA achievements.