Working Better Together in a Team Europe Approach

The EU and its Member States will implement a rights-based approach to development cooperation, encompassing all human rights. They will promote inclusion and participation, non-discrimination, equality and equity, transparency, and accountability. The EU and its Member States will continue to play a key role in ensuring that no-one is left behind, wherever people live and regardless of ethnicity, gender, age, disability, religion or beliefs, sexual orientation and gender identity, migration status or other factors. This approach includes addressing the multiple discriminations faced by vulnerable people and marginalised groups.

New European Consensus on Development, Art. 16

The new European Consensus on Development commits the EU and its Member States to implementing a rights-based approach (RBA) to development cooperation, encompassing all human rights. It thereby reinforces the EU’s commitment to an RBA as outlined in the 2012 EU Strategic Framework on Human Rights and Democracy, the 2014 toolbox A Rights-Based Approach, encompassing all human rights, for EU development cooperation and the respective Council conclusions.

An RBA is a working methodology based on internationally recognised human rights and which aims to promote and protect human rights in practice. It integrates the norms, standards and principles of international human rights law into the plans, policies and processes of development programmes and projects. It applies to all sectors, all modalities, and each step of the project cycle: identification, formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Within the framework of an RBA, target groups are considered ‘rights-holders’ with legal entitlements, and government institutions are ‘duty-bearers’, with the obligation to promote, protect and respect people’s human rights. Applying an RBA to development cooperation should strengthen ‘rights-holders’ to claim their rights and ‘duty-bearers’ to meet their obligations.

Programmes and projects therefore need to assess the capabilities of rights-holders and duty-bearers and develop appropriate strategies to build their capacities. At the heart of an RBA is the recognition that unequal power relations and social exclusion deny people their human rights and often keep them in poverty. The approach therefore puts strong emphasis on people living in marginalised, disadvantaged, and excluded situations.

The RBA methodology also reminds us that development projects can have an unintended negative impact in terms of human rights, such as by disadvantaging certain groups, interfering with participation rights and labour rights or contributing to forced displacement. It is therefore important to abide by the ‘do no harm’ principle and carry out the required analysis and mitigation.

Moreover, the RBA working methodology recognises that pursuing human rights objectives is not, in itself, enough. The way these objectives are achieved is equally important. Programmes therefore monitor and evaluate both outcomes and processes.

The following elements are necessary in order to apply a rights-based approach to development:

• Assessment and analysis to identify the human rights claims of rights-holders and the corresponding human rights obligations of duty-bearers as well as the immediate, underlying and structural causes of the non-fulfilment of rights.

• Programmes and projects to assess the capacity of rights-holders to claim their rights and of duty-bearers to fulfil their obligations and to develop strategies to build these capacities.

The five RBA working principles to follow throughout the programme cycle:

• Applying all rights (legality, universality and indivisibility of human rights) — Human rights are universal, inalienable and indivisible - all human rights, whether economic, political, civil, cultural or social, are of equal validity and importance.

  In practice: Make the link to the human rights system and use its products (reports, concluding observations, recommendations, etc.) to inform programming: How are human rights standards from treaties or laws — and related recommendations — identified in strategies and used to advance the intended project and programme outcomes (or how could they be)?

• Participation and access to the decision-making process — Participation is the basis for active citizenship. Active, free and meaningful participation is both a means and an end in itself.

  In practice: Make sure that participation is more than consultation or a technical step in project preparation. Do rights holders participate in a meaningful way? Are there opportunities for them to influence strategies and the intended outcomes of the intervention?

• Non-discrimination and equal access — Activities must prioritise the people living in the most marginalised situations and avoid contributing to established patterns of discrimination.

  In practice: Who are the rights holders? Have they been taken into account in designing the contribution? Is there unjustified formal or de facto restriction or prevention of particular groups’ access to resources or services or of their participation in decision-making processes? Have efforts been made to include the most marginalised? Is the development intervention accessible for persons with disabilities (in line with the EU’s obligation under Article 32 of the Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities)?

• Accountability and access to the rule of law — Activities must promote accessible, transparent and effective mechanisms of accountability.

  In practice: Who are the duty-bearers? Which powers and capacities do they have (and not have) to advance their human rights obligations? Is the proposed initiative accountable towards the rights-holders? Violations need to be prosecuted and victims have the right to adequate redress.

• Transparency and access to information — Activities have to be transparent, with information made avail- able in accessible formats (i.e. in local languages). Transparency is paramount for ensuring the application of the other working principles; without transparency it is not possible to achieve accountability and participation will not be meaningful.

  In practice: Is information available in an accessible way to all stakeholders (people involved in the activities)? Are rights holders able to participate in meetings and processes where issues that affect them are discussed?

• Following the adoption of the new European Consensus for Development in June 2017, the EU and its Member States are now committed to implementing an RBA. The RBA toolbox¹, including its checklist, provides a comprehensive methodology for ensuring inclusion and mainstreaming across the project/programme cycle.

¹https://ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships/system/files/online-170621-eidhr-rba-toolbox-en-a5-lc_en.pdf