The CSO Partnership for Development Effectiveness (CPDE) advocates the human rights-based approach (HRBA) in development, and concrete HRBA policies to empower the people (as rights-holders) to hold the various development stakeholders (as duty-bearers) accountable.

 

International human rights instruments and standards, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, must guide all development cooperation and programming in all sectors and in all phases of the programming process. Development actors must in particular follow the UN Common Understanding of a Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation.

 

CPDE calls for mainstreaming HRBA at all levels of development policy and encourages the implementation of independent human rights complaints mechanisms that would provide means of redress or individuals and groups adversely affected by donor-funded development programs.

 

The CPDE calls on development stakeholders to endorse the OECD-DAC Principles for promoting and integrating human rights in development practice. It recommends that the new binding framework for the post-2015 agenda should reaffirm the spirit of the 1986 Declaration on the Right to Development, and should be based on three fundamental principles: 

 

(1) mutual accountability — donors and partners are equally accountable for development progress; 

(2) democratic ownership of partner countries — alignment of donor countries to policy objectives set by developing countries, through inclusive and democratic processes; and 

(3) inclusive partnerships — participation of different varieties of development stakeholders, and of State and non-State actors.

 

For further details about CPDE’s recommendations, click here.