Rights in Action publications are listed below in chronological order. For a full list of ODI publications click here

Aid effectiveness and human rights: strengthening the implementation of the Paris Declaration (2006)
Marta Foresti, David Booth, Tammie O'Neil
A framework paper outlining the synergies between the human rights and aid effectiveness agenda and their implications for implementing the Paris Declaration, commissioned by OECD DAC Network on Governance (GOVNET).

Five short illustration papers providing practical examples on how the approach set out in the framework paper can be applied to support the operational implementation of the Paris Declaration's partnership commitments (ownership, alignment, harmonisation, management for results and mutual accountability).

Rights-based Approaches to Humanitarianism: A Review of the Debates (forthcoming 2006)
HPG Research Report
Contact m.bradley@odi.org.uk for details

Human Rights and Poverty Reduction: Realities, Controversies and Strategies (2006)
Edited by Tammie O'Neil
This new publication provides a synthesis of the main debates that emerged during the course of the 2005 ODI meeting series: Human Rights and Poverty Reduction
Listen to the meetings or read the individual meeting reports

Integrating Human Rights into Development: A synthesis of donor approaches and experiences (2005)
Read the Executive Summary
Laure-Hélène Piron with Tammie O'Neil
Report for the OECD DAC Network on Governance (GOVNET)
ODI study on donor approaches and experiences with integrating human rights in development. ODI has recently completed an in-depth review and synthesis of donor policies and implementations of human rights. This study was commissioned by the OECD DAC Governance Network Human Rights and Development Task Team, and presented at a GOVNET meeting in Paris in October 2005. It reviews the current situation in bilateral and multilateral agencies, and identifies a number of forward looking recommendations.

DFID Social Exclusion Review (2005)
Jo Beall and Laure-Hélène Piron
Report for the UK Department for International Development

This report reviews and synthesises experiences of working on social exclusion within the UK Department for International Development (DFID). It also examines the experiences of the UK’s Social Exclusion Unit and other international development agencies. The aim is to support the development of a corporate DFID approach to poverty reduction that incorporates a social exclusion framework.

Public Policy Responses to Exclusion: Evidence from Brazil, South Africa and India (2005)
Laure-Hélène Piron and Zaza Curran
Report for the UK Department for International Development

This paper provides a desk-based review of lessons learnt from public policy responses to tackle exclusion drawing on case studies of Brazil, South Africa and India. It aims to explain how they have arisen, the degree of success they appear to have had and the nature of the obstacles they seem to have encountered.

Human Rights: Promoting Accountable Aid (2005)
Laure-Hélène Piron
ODI Opinion No. 56

Aid Instruments and Exclusion (2005)
Zaza Curran and David Booth
Report for the UK's Department for International Development

The paper focuses on the exclusion themes in the first-round PRSPs, how exclusion was handled in Tanzania and Uganda’s second-generation PRSPs and donor approaches and options. It aims to collect, assess and analyse evidence on the use of new aid instruments and donor agency modalities to address exclusion.

The Role of Human Rights in Promoting Donor Accountability (2005)
Laure-Hélène Piron
Background Paper, Human Rights and Poverty Reduction Meeting Series
Listen to the meetings or read the meeting reports

Operationalising Norwegian People's Aid's Rights-based Approach (2005)
Report for Norwegian People's Aid
Cecilia Luttrell and Laure-Hélène Piron, with Deborah Thompson
ODI

Donor Assistance to Justice Sector Reform in Africa: Living Up to the New Agenda? (2005)
Laure-Hélène Piron
Justice Initiative, Open Society, February

DFID Human Rights Review: A Review of how DFID has Integrated Human Rights into its Work (2004)
Laure-Hélène Piron and Francis Watkins
Report for the Department for International Development (DFID)

Behind the Rhetoric: The Relevance of Human Rights for Development and Humanitarian Action (2004)
Laure-Hélène Piron
ODI Opinions No. 19

Rights-based Approaches to Social Protection (2004)
Laure-Hélène Piron
Background paper to assist DFID in the preparation of a position paper on social protection

Human Rights and Humanitarian Action: A Review of the Issues (2004)
James Darcy
HPG Background Paper

Right to Water: Legal Forms, Political Channels (2004)
ODI Briefing Paper

Making Sense of Governance: Empirical Evidence from Sixteen Developing Countries (2004)
Goran Hyden, Julius Court and Kenneth Mease
Although governance has been the focus of a considerable body of literature on democratic transitions and consolidation, data to support the claim that the concept is a useful one has been lacking. However, this book uses empirical evidence from sixteen developing countries to demonstrate the utility of research on governance. In doing so, it emphasises that human rights is an essential aspect of governance and highlights the importance of a rights-based approach to development.
Further information about this project
Lynne Reinner Publishers

Non-state Justice and Security Systems (2004)
DFID Briefing (preparation supported by ODI)

Humanitarian Protection (2004)
Hugo Slim and Luis Enrique Eguren
ALNAP Guidance Booklet (pilot version)

While a great deal is known about assistance practices, there is relatively little information on whether and how the protection aspect has been implemented in the field. With its Protection guidebook, ALNAP has attempted to promote understanding of the concepts that underpin protection and how key elements can be used to engender a protection focused approach in programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. The guidebook has been designed with a view to helping practitioners make difficult judgements in situations that are complex and sometimes dangerous.

Forest Law Enforcement and Governance: The Role of Independent Monitors in the Control of Forest Crime (2004)
David Brown and Cecilia Luttrell with Anne Casson, Rex Cruz and Tim Formeté
ODI Forestry Briefing No. 5
Illegal logging is an issue of major national and international concern. Combating illegal logging depends on effective enforcement operations to ensure compliance and identify forest crime. Independent monitors have an important role in ‘monitoring the monitors’ and verifying legality. This briefing paper examines the part that external agencies can play in this work. Drawing on a number of recent experiences, consideration is given to the way in which independent monitoring might be structured, and some of the issues which need to be borne in mind when decisions are made as to what forms of monitoring to deploy.

Learning from the UK Department for International Development's Rights-based Approach to Development Assistance (2003)
Laure-Hélène Piron
Report for the German Development Institute

Independent Evaluation of the Influence of SDC's Human Rights and Rule of Law Guidance Documents (2003)
Laure-Hélène Piron and Julius Court
Report for the Swiss Agency Development and Co-operation (SDC)

Post Offices, Pensions and Computers: New Opportunties for Combining Growth and Social Protection in Weakly Integrated Rural Areas (2003)
John Farrington, N. C. Saxena, Tamsyn Barton and Radhika Nayak
ODI Natural Resource Perspectives No. 87

The Right to Development: A Review of the Current State of the Debate (2002)
Laure-Hélène Piron
Report for the Department for International Development (DFID)
The objective of this report is to assess the relevance of the Right to Development for development policy and practice, and to make practical recommendations to the UK Department for International Development. The Right to Development is a relatively new human rights concept. Its content, nature and status are still contested by academic scholars, and the intergovernmental process aiming to reach a political consensus on its meaning and practical interpretation is highly politicised.

Forestry as an Entry Point for Governance Reform (2002)
David Brown, Gill Shepherd, Kathrin Schreckenberg and Adrian Wells
ODI Forestry Briefing No. 1
Tropical forestry provides a useful entry point for governance programmes. The very factors which make it a challenging sector for development assistance commend it also as a crucible for governance reform: its inclusive focus, linking the global to the national and local; the high levels of income and other benefits which it generates; its local fiscal base; the centrality of issues of tenure and collective rights; and its importance in rural livelihoods, all reinforce the linkages between good governance, public accountability and poverty alleviation. Ensuring that the forest sector fulfils this brief is a major challenge not just to host country governments but also to the donor community.

What's Behind the Budget? Politics, rights and accountability in the budget process (2002)
Diane Elson and Andy Norton
The donor literature on Public Expenditure Management focuses largely on procedural and technical adjustments to policy and budget systems themselves. The review of material presented here suggests that – necessary as this work is – it needs to be accompanied by a broader understanding of the political context, and more emphasis on the spaces and capacities needed for civil society to ask questions of public policy and implementation systems, and the capacity of the disadvantaged to make claims for service outcomes.

Rights and Livelihood Approaches (2002)
Tim Conway, John Farrington, Caroline Moser and Andy Norton
ODI Natural Resource Perspectives No. 78
Over the last decade several donors and NGOs (and more recently some developing country governments) have adopted a livelihoods approach to development. More recently, there have also been efforts to approach socio-economic development through the framework of human rights. Drawing on case studies of rights-based approaches to livelihood development, this paper briefly reviews the main features of these two approaches, and the possibility of integrating them.

Rights, Claims and Capture: Understanding the Politics of Pro-poor Policy (2001)
Craig Johnson and Daniel Start
ODI Working Paper No. 145
Scholars and practitioners of development have become increasingly interested in the ways in which politics and power affect pro-poor policy. An important point of departure in this literature, is the assertion that poor people are generally disadvantaged when it comes to influencing policy and are therefore poorly placed to influence the ways in which states allocate rights and resources within society. This paper considers this dilemma and examines the challenge of implementing coherent policy. It also considers the ways in which mainstream thinking about rights, governance and development has transformed the conditions under which governments and other agents of development design and implement pro-poor policy.

Economic Theory, Freedom and Human Rights: The Work of Amartya Sen (2001)
ODI Briefing Paper
This Briefing Paper reviews the ways in which the Nobel Prize winning economist Professor Amartya Sen has focussed international attention on the significance of fundamental human freedoms and human rights for development theory and practice.

To Claim Our Rights (2001)
Caroline Moser and Andy Norton with Tim Conway, Clare Ferguson and Polly Vizard. This book explores the potential contribution of a human rights perspective to the development of policies and programmes that strengthen the sustainability of poor people’s asset and livelihood security. The authors argue that a rights and livelihoods perspective provides a more concrete understanding of social sustainability and sustainable development. The book concludes with two propositions for analysing social sustainability from a rights and livelihoods perspective.

The Evaluability of Democracy and Human Rights Projects (2000)
Logframe Assessment for Sida
Derek Poate, Roger Riddell, Nick Chapman and Tony Curran
ODI with ITAD

What's Special about Wildlife Management in Forests? Concepts and Models of Rights-based Management, with Recent Evidence from West-Central Africa (1999)
David Brown, Stephen Cobb and Amar Inamdar
ODI Natural Resource Perspectives No. 44
Wildlife consumption is an integral part of the livelihood and trade patterns of many peoples in the developing world, and highly valued by them. Yet to date the dominant models of wildlife management in areas of high and allegedly unsustainable consumptive use have favoured the exclusion of the users from the resource and the denial of its local values. This gives little incentive to rural dwellers to manage wildlife sustainably. Innovative strategies are required to enhance the rights of the resource users and to increase their entitlements to appropriate the benefits of wildlife for themselves. There has been little success in devising these outside areas with high tourist potential, but experience in other natural resource sectors may provide useful pointers.

What Can We Do With a Right-based Approach to Development? (1999)
ODI Briefing Paper

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