New stimuli in the pilot countries Kenia and Guatemala
The project gave advice to programmes of German development cooperation in the pilot countries Kenia and Guatemala to orient their strategies systematically towards human rights. This process evidenced that many elements of current practice already strengthened human rights. However, also unused potentials were identified. For example, particularly marginalized groups of society were not sufficiently taken account of. Retrospectively, colleagues valued the human rights-based approach as a useful framework that helps better orient their work to overcome the structural causes of poverty and, thus, to achieve sustainable improvements with regard to social justice. Referring to human rights helped them to give advice to the partner countries in diverse sectors such as water or health in a manner that diminished discriminations in the access to basic services and that stakeholders had a better say.

According to colleagues, one advantage of the human rights-based approach as compared to other concepts of development policy is that it is based on legally binding obligations. Thus, population and civil society groups can measure accomplishments of governments and state structures against non-negotiable minimum standards and claim improvements.