The project supports the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in the implementation of the Development Policy Action Plan that was updated in March 2008 and is valid until 2010.
The ultimate goal is to root the human rights-based approach as a cross-cutting issue in the structures and development policy practice of the BMZ and its implementing agencies – of GIZ itself and KfW Entwicklungsbank.
As a piloting process, the project supports in Guatemala and Kenia as well as in a number of other partner countries German development programmes in focussing on human rights in their work. So far, programmes in sectors such as water, health, education and decentralization have been adviced. The experiences gained will be used by other programmes in the region and taken up in the development of sector strategies.
The project offers workshops and informal technical talks on human rights and helps in making the topic a permanent part of standard trainings for the staff of the different agencies. Furthermore, the project develops orientation tools for daily work, for instance a series of fact sheets on human rights in the thematic priority sectors of German development cooperation.
To root the human rights perspective systematically in the regulatory instruments of the BMZ, the project gives advice to the different divisions of the Ministry in the development of their concepts and in the preparation of government negotiations.
On the international level, GIZ helps German development policy to take a strong stand on „human rights and development“. It represents the BMZ in selected working groups of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UN-Human Rights Council) and in the working group „Human Rights and Development“ of the Development Aid Committee of the OECD (OECD-DAC). There, GIZ support was decisive in developing the DAC policy paper on „Human Rights and Development“. Since 2007, GIZ (former GTZ) has taken over the chairmanship of the OECD-DAC working group "Aid Effectiveness and Human Rights".
In the UN-Human Rights Council, GTZ participated on behalf of the BMZ in the consultations on an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that was adopted by the UN-General Assembly in December 2008. With the adoption of this Optional Protocol, an individual complaints procedure was established regarding economic, social and cultural rights. This means that every person living in a signatory state can call on the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights if he or she has suffered a violation of his or her economic, social or cultural rights and the domestic remedies have been exhausted.
Furthermore, GIZ represented the BMZ in the working group of the UN-Human Rights Council on the right to development. This working group develops criteria and indicators for the right to development for its implementation in practice.
