Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) 2008. "Claiming the Millennium Development Goals: A Human Rights Approach"
- Objective: Proposes how to apply human rights framework to the MDG targets.
- Key characterstics: Focuses on all rights related to the MDGs, incorporating the obligations to respect, protect and fulfill. Emphasis on structural indicators, looking at the commitments made in relation to the MDGs, which affect the process (government efforts) and thus the outcomes.
- Summary:
Framework proposes 1. Aligning MDG goals with human rights by harmonizing indicators with human rights standards; 2. Adopting a transformative, not technocratic approach; 3. Adopting HRBA to empowerment and participation in target-setting, policy-making and implementation; 4. Prioritizing rights by making policy choices and resource-allocation decisions within human rights framework; 5. Enabling claiming of MDGs by ensuring enforceable rights, accountability mechanisms and sustainable strategies.
- Best used for: Identifying how and where gaps in the MDGs can be filled with the application of human rights standards and practices, thus understanding reasons for poor performance, etc.
- Data needed: Human rights principles and standards and MDG targets.
- Tested?: Gives some examples of national MDGs being aligned with human rights, but on the whole, MDGs are entirely separate from a human rights framework.
- Possible disadvantages: This is not a methodological tool, but rather a framework argument for the alignment of development goals with human rights.
- Questions for research: Need for greater dialogue between the human rights community and the development community to ensure that HRBAs are adopted or refined in policy work and in county-level programming.
- Complementary tools: Any tool that examines development indicators from a HRBA - analyzing them from the perspective of fulfillment (e.g, Anderson, Felner/CESR)