The Millennium Development Goals and human rights-basedapproaches: moving towards a shared approach

Guido Schmidt-Traub�

Formerly of the Millennium Project, United Nations Development Programme, New York

TheMillenniumDevelopment Goals (MDGs) have become the international community’sshared framework for development. Since the Goals focus on national averages and do notrefer explicitly to human rights, a long debate has ensued since the adoption of theMDGs in2001 on whether the Goals are consistent with the progressive realisation of human rights.This paper reviews the history of the MDGs and outlines how developing countries canachieve the Goals. It shows that the MDGs are consistent with Human Rights BasedApproaches. Yet, efforts aimed at integrating Human Rights Based Approaches intostrategies to achieve the MDGs have primarily focused on normative questions. Toolittle progress has been made in applying Human Rights Based approached to informthe day-to-day decisions that development practitioners and Governments need to make.In response, the paper outlines a practical approach for how Human Rights BasedApproaches could be systematically integrated into five common stages involved in thedesign and implementation of national development strategies to achieve the MDGs.The five stages cover: (i) the choice of interventions to meet the MDGs; (ii)establishment of corresponding coverage targets and an explicit monitoring framework;(iii) the programming of public expenditures; (iv) the prioritisation and sequencing ofinterventions over time; and (v) the design of supporting policy frameworks. For eachstage, the paper outlines how Human Rights-Based Approaches can inform the choicesand decisions that policymakers need to make.

Keywords: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); human rights based approach;development

Introduction

The Millennium Declaration, from which the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs orthe Goals) derive, was adopted by all member states in September 2000. The Goals havesince become the shared framework for development supported by the entire UN system,governments, a growing number of private corporations and most major civil society organ-isations. They have been reaffirmed at key international summits, including the 2002Monterrey Conference on Financing for Development and the World Summit on Sustain-able Development, the 2005 World Summit, and also the Group of Eight Summit inGleneagles (UK). As a result, the Goals are seen today as a critical indicator of the inter-national system’s ability to set and follow through on practical targets for a partnershipfor development and as a lynchpin for global security.1

ISSN 1364-2987 print/ISSN 1744-053X online

# 2009 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13642980802532374

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�Email: Gschmidttraub@gmail.com

The International Journal of Human RightsVol. 13, No. 1, February 2009, 72–85

Yet, at the mid-point between the adoption of the Millennium Declaration and the 2015timeline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, the world remains off-track toachieve the MDGs (Figure 1).2 While many countries, particularly in Asia, have madetremendous progress in reducing income and non-income poverty, challenges remain,

Figure 1. MDG progress chart 2007Source: ,http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/mdg2007-progress.pdf..

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particularly in health, gender equality and environmental sustainability. The crisis is mostsevere in sub-Saharan Africa, where not a single country is on track to achieve the MDGsby the target date. Instead the number of extreme poor on the continent continues to rise –albeit at a decelerating rate compared to the 1990s – and progress on all human develop-ment indicators remains too slow. Unless progress is accelerated rapidly in the poorestcountries the world faces the very real prospect of not achieving the Goals in countrieswhere they are most needed.

The MDGs have also generated an unprecedented and much-needed dialogue betweenthe human rights and development communities on how their approaches towards definingand achieving rights and objectives can become mutually reinforcing. A lot of ink has beenspilt on the question of whether the MDGs are human rights goals and whether a humanrights based approach (HRBA)3 that focuses on upholding human rights standards4 andprinciples5 can be a complement or ought to be a substitute to the more ‘instrumental’and evidence-based approaches employed by development professionals. While significantprogress has been made in understanding the two approaches and reconciling them, somepalpable frustration remains on both sides of the argument, and few people believe that ashared understanding has been reached on how the HRBA and the ‘instrumental’ develop-ment approaches can mutually reinforce each other effectively.

This paper aims to develop some practical suggestions for how an HRBA can comp-lement and reinforce efforts under way by development professionals to operationaliseand realise the Millennium Development Goals. Written from the perspective and withthe knowledge of a development professional it cannot resolve some of the outstandingconceptual and legal issues,6 and instead focuses on the practical difficulties that have sofar hampered a fuller integration of the HRBA into development strategies. As onecentral challenge this includes finding a common language that will underscore the comple-mentarity of both approaches. It is hoped that in this way the paper will make a modest con-tribution towards moving beyond the conceptual and analytical debates to allow proponentsof the ‘instrumental’ and human rights-based approaches to roll up their sleeves and jointlyfocus on tackling the tremendous operational, political, and advocacy challenges that needto be overcome to halve extreme poverty in the poorest countries by 2015.

Why are so many countries off-track to achieving the MDGs?

The 2003 Human Development Report,7 the UN Millennium Project,8 the Africa Commis-sion launched by the UK government9 and many others have analysed reasons for shortfalland issued practical recommendations for how the Goals can be achieved even in thepoorest countries. While there is no single explanation for any individual country’s lackof progress, the UN Millennium Project has stressed four separate fundamental causes,some of which can occur simultaneously.

The first reason is inadequate governance and failure to respect essential civil andpolitical rights. When elites lack the volition to pursue long-term development and realisehuman rights including the rule of law, long-term strategies for achieving the MDGs cannotbe effectively pursued. Many countries with such governance conditions fall into conflict.In such situations a rights-based approach can strengthen development initiatives. In suchsettings, upholding human rights standards and principles becomes a central element of anystrategy to achieve the necessary stability, and focus on achieving development outcomes,transparency and accountability of decision-makers.

A second case is when countries are caught in poverty traps where exogenous factorshamper governments’ efforts to achieve the MDGs.10 Being located in a tropical ecology

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that supports a high disease burden as well as low agricultural productivity represents amajor challenge in realising the MDGs. Likewise, countries with low population densitiesand high transport costs owing to unfavourable geography (e.g. landlocked countries) ormountainous topography face higher per capita costs in realising key social and economicrights than countries that have a good transport infrastructure and higher population density.Since investments in development are subject to increasing returns to scale, countries withsmaller populations are often at a disadvantage relative to larger neighbours whose largermarkets attract capital more easily.

As a result some countries through no fault of their own face obstacles towards achiev-ing the MDGs, which cannot be overcome through a combination of political will, a com-mitment to human rights and domestic resources alone. As illustrated in Figure 2, tropicalsub-Saharan Africa is home to a unique confluence of such challenges,11 which is why evencountries such as Ghana or Tanzania that are well governed with governments committed todevelopment and realising human rights remain woefully off track to meet the MDGs.

Under the stress of extreme poverty, countries also face a higher risk of conflict, forexample when failed rains contribute to food scarcity and tensions are heightened. Childmortality and other development outcomes have been identified as leading predictors ofstate failure, underscoring the frequency with which lack of development – sometimesowing to adverse circumstances, such as an extremely high disease burden – can precipitatea breakdown in institutions leading to instability or open conflict.

To break out of the poverty trap, countries require increased public investments focusedon overcoming these practical challenges. For example, the adverse geography of a

Figure 2. Human vulnerability around the world (1980)Source:World Bank,WorldDevelopment Indicators 2004 (Washington, DC, 2004); CIESIN (Center forInternational Earth Science InformationNetwork), National Aggregates of Geospatial Data: Population,Landscape and Climate Estimates (PLACE) (Palisades, NY: Columbia University, 2002), [http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/plue/nagd/place.html]; A. Kiszewski, A. Mellinger, A. Spielman, P. Malaney,S.E. Sachs, and J. Sachs. 2004. ‘A Global Index Representing the Stability of Malaria Transmission’,American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 70, no. 5(2004): 486-98.

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landlocked country requires investments in improved infrastructure, customs facilitationand transport services. The high disease burden of a country with endemic falciparummalaria requires major investments in disease control. Increased investments are alsoneeded to overcome capacity constraints, such as insufficient human resources, orinadequate management systems. Critically, these investments can only be financed andimplemented with substantial external financing in the form of grants. The HRBA canplay a very important role in guiding these public investments to ensure that humanrights principles are upheld and the Millennium Development Goals can be achieved.For example, the UN Millennium Project has shown how HRBA can help improve childhealth and maternal health.12

A third challenge in meeting the MDGs occurs in countries, particularly middle-incomecountries, where progress has been uneven and regions or groups in society have been leftbehind. In many cases, geographical disadvantages are worsened by the political disempo-werment of groups based on ethnic, religious or cultural grounds. For example, the south-west of Mexico illustrates the confluence of geographic disadvantages coupled with ahistory of discrimination against local communities. Likewise, Vietnam faces significantchallenges in meeting the MDGs in remote mountainous regions that are often inhabitedby minority ethnic groups.13 Achieving the Goals in these communities and ‘pockets ofpoverty’ is possible, but requires high-level political commitment and targeted publicinvestments in people, infrastructure and environmental management that can overcomegeographic disadvantages and longstanding marginalisation.

In such settings technical expertise to design and implement the programmes, domesticresources and institutional capacity are available to achieve the Millennium DevelopmentGoals and progressively realise human rights. As a result, HRBA can play an importantrole in directing public policies and investments to address inequalities, ensure effectiveparticipation of communities in decision-making, and hold governments to account fortheir human rights obligations.

Finally, a number of Millennium Development Goals are not being met because policy-makers lack awareness on how to proceed or simply neglect core development priorities.A particularly glaring example is maternal health. Many relatively developed countries con-tinue to experience high rates of maternal mortality, even though access to emergencyobstetric care could straightforwardly reduce these rates. Likewise, environmental manage-ment can be improved and gender biases in public investment and social policies ended ifpolicymakers decide to make these issues priorities. In Vietnam child malnutrition rates arehigh relative to other countries at a similar stage of development, so this challenge warrantsparticular attention from policymakers. Once more, human rights obligations can be aneffective means to draw policymakers’ attention to areas of policy neglect.

How can the MDGs be achieved?

Based on this diagnosis of reasons for shortfall in realising the MDGs, the plan of actionlaid out by the UN Millennium Project stresses the need for (i) a strong political commit-ment to the Goals backed up by sound economic policies and a sound legal framework toachieve human rights; (ii) increased public investments in people (e.g. health and edu-cation), basic infrastructure (e.g. transport, energy, water and sanitation) and environmentalmanagement including infrastructure; and (iii) improved access to international trade as acritical driver of long-term economic development. While the finer points of this plan ofaction continue to be hotly debated its core elements are broadly shared across the devel-opment community, as underscored for example by the recent Global Monitoring Report.14

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In 2005 the UN Secretary-General endorsed the plan of action15 and its central prop-ositions were adopted by member states at the 2005 World Summit, where world leadersresolved to prepare and implement comprehensive national development strategies thatare bold enough to achieve the MDGs and other internationally agreed goals.16 These‘MDG-based’ national development strategies, as they have become known, provide uswith a shared implementation framework that underpins the operationalisation of theMDGs in every country. With support from the United Nations many countries, particularlyin Africa, are currently in the process of mapping out the concrete steps they need to take toachieve the MDGs and are aligning their development strategies, medium-term expenditureframeworks and budgeting processes with these objectives.

Careful analyses show that MDG-based national development strategies can beimplemented and the MDGs can be achieved if existing commitments by member statesof the United Nations are honoured. In middle-income countries the main constraints arepolitical will to mobilise the required domestic resources for the public investmentsneeded to end ‘pockets of poverty’, address areas of ‘policy neglect’ and ensure that allgroups are empowered to pursue their own development. Public advocacy coupled withtechnical cooperation can be very effective in addressing areas of systematic policyneglect, such as high rates of maternal mortality to ensure the realisation of humanrights. Rapidly growing low-income countries such as Vietnam face similar challengesas they also don’t require grants-based development assistance.

In a large number of low-income countries, political will is necessary but by no meanssufficient, since the required investments in people, basic infrastructure and environmentalmanagement are too high to be financed domestically. The UN Millennium Project foundthat a typical low-income country such as Ghana, Tanzania or Uganda will need to invest$125–$160 per capita by 2015. Although these investment levels are small in absoluteterms, they remain well beyond the means of these countries, where GDP per capita isroughly $300. To reach the MDGs, these countries require annual Official DevelopmentAssistance (ODA) of perhaps $70 per capita per year over the coming decade. In aggregate,global ODAvolumes for the MDGs need to reach 0.54 % of rich countries’ national incomeby 2015. After including other investment priorities that are not directly related to theMDGs, such as protecting global fisheries and managing geo-strategic crises, global aidwill need to reach the longstanding target of 0.7 % of the rich world’s income by 2015.17

Common criticisms of the MDGs

As is still common in the development community, this paper has so far made insufficientreferences to human rights and how they relate to the MDGs. So, are the MDGs and humanrights standards compatible? Before we turn to this question a brief excursion is required toaddress some of the most common criticisms levelled by the human rights community andothers against the MDGs.18

According to this first criticism, the MDGs are incomplete goals and do not includereferences to some key social and economic rights, such as access to reproductivehealth;19 core infrastructure services, such as energy and transport that are vital to develop-ment; or civil and political rights including the need for sound governance. While this pointis of course correct, the broad outcomes mapped out by the Goals require the effectiverealisation of many of these rights if they are to be achieved. For example, the UN Millen-nium Project has shown that universal access to sexual and reproductive health services isrequired if extreme poverty is to be halved, maternal mortality rates reduced by three-quarters and gender equality be achieved. Hence universally recognised economic, social

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and cultural rights – while not explicitly listed among MDG targets – are part and parcel ofany practical approach to achieving the Goals. 20

Second, the MDGs have been accused of lacking in ambition for focusing on a ‘mere’halving of extreme poverty by 2015. However, as underscored in the Millennium Declara-tion itself, the quantitative development objectives to be achieved by 2015 mark a mid-pointtowards ending extreme poverty in all its forms. This approach is consistent with theprogressive realisation of human rights obligations, and countries are urged to aim formore ambitious targets if they can. For example, Vietnam has adapted the MDGs tobecome the VDGs (Vietnam Development Goals), setting more ambitious benchmarks inseveral key areas.

Third, by focusing on reduced aggregate quantitative objectives the MDGs have beenexposed to criticism that they are blind to inequalities and fail to address the needs of thepoorest and most vulnerable members of society. This criticism overlooks that fact that theGoals set benchmarks for closing the gap in access to the most basic public services andinfrastructure, which in turn requires governments to focus on the extreme poor in theircountries. Moreover, the education MDG explicitly sets universal access as the benchmark,and many others do so implicitly. For example, a three-quarters reduction in maternalmortality rates requires universal access to emergency obstetric care, while the childhealth goals can only be achieved through country-wide coverage of key preventive andcurative interventions.21 Consequently, these Goals embody key human rights principlesand the standard of universality.

Finally, the MDGs are sometimes considered ‘technocratic’ and ‘top-down’. While it iscorrect that the Goals derive from an intergovernmental process – as do most human rightsobligations – their focus on aggregate quantitative objectives should not be confused with a‘top-down’ approach to implementing them. Indeed, a consensus view in the developmentliterature is that community-based and participatory approaches to development are a vitalcomplement to national-level plans in order to ensure appropriate interventions, fullaccountability and transparency, as well as long-term sustainability of developmentresults. If the MDGs are to be achieved then development strategies must incorporateparticipatory processes.

The complementarity of human rights and the MDGs

In his human rights perspective on the MDGs, Philip Alston22 concludes that ‘there is asufficiently clear relationship between the explicit MDG goals and [economic, social andcultural rights] norms that the language of rights can be very appropriately and usefullyused in many relevant contexts’. From the development side of the debate, UNDP,23 theUNMillennium Project24 and many others have come to a similar conclusion, underscoringthe commonality in focus and objectives between universally recognised human rights(e.g. right to education, right to food) and the MDGs. As the 2000 Human DevelopmentReport puts it:

Human development and human rights are close enough in motivation and concern to be com-patible and congruous, and they are different enough in strategy and design to supplement eachother fruitfully.25

In deciding how to use both approaches strategically, it is helpful to reflect on the com-parative advantages that each enjoy from the perspective of practitioners. The MDGs standout as:

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Quantitative and time-bound objectives that concretise the ‘progressive realisation’ ofhuman rights and allow countries to flip the central question underpinning their developmentstrategies. Instead of asking, ‘How close towards the goals/realisation of rights can we getgiven existing resource envelopes and other constraints?’, the new question is, ‘what will ittake to achieve the MDGs?’ In most developing countries – perhaps with the notable excep-tion of the rapidly growing countries in east and south-east Asia – flipping the question inthis way and introducing medium-term quantitative outcome targets into their developmentplanning amounts to a watershed in development planning.

Integrated goals that map out a reasonably comprehensive set of development needs.Since no ‘silver bullets’ exist to achieve the Goals it is important to connect public invest-ments and policy across a broad range of areas in order to achieve sustainable progress inkey development outcomes. Moreover the Goals are pragmatic and adapted to countries’starting points by expressing targeted improvements as percentage change relative to1990 baselines. In this way the Goals take into account the rising marginal cost of providingkey public services to help ensure that the Goals are realistically attainable by 2015.

A single framework of implementation in the form ofMDG-based national developmentstrategies throughwhich the full set of operational, financial and legal issues can be addressedto support an effective scaling up of interventions to achieve the MDGs. In this way theMDGs can help overcome the adverse fragmentation into sector-focused strategies thatlack coherence and are typically not systematically linked to national budgeting processes.

Factoring in resource constraints and focusing on international partnership for develop-ment as a key requirement for achieving the Goals in the many low-income countries thatrequire substantial external finance to achieve the objectives by 2015.

An effective advocacy tool that focuses on practical needs of the poor. In this way theMDGs can serve as an effective platform for mobilising civil society, the general public andgovernments, as well as technical experts.

In comparison, human rights focus on principles, standards and obligations withthe following comparative advantages:

. Explicit focus on the poor and inequality that complements the MDGs’ aggregatetargets.

. Identification of governments as duty bearers that are responsible for meeting humanrights standards regardless of whether the services are provided by the private orpublic sector.

. Explicit (human rights) standards that mirror or complement the time-bound quanti-tative objectives included among the MDGs.

. Focus on long-term sustainability of achievements by anchoring them as humanrights and explicit monitoring requirements that compel governments to maintainstandards beyond a target date.

. Ability to transform the content of goals into obligations, which can furtherstrengthen governments’ commitments and responsibility to meet the human rightsstandards or MDGs.

. Additional stakeholder mobilisation by engaging the human rights community tofurther increase legitimacy of development objectives.

. Focus on need for comprehensive national legal frameworks to complement the oper-ational questions of targeting and scaling up public investments to reach the poor.In this way human rights can help ensure that MDG-based national developmentstrategies address the full range of issues required to ensure sustainable progresson reducing extreme poverty in all its forms.

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. Explicit calls for participatory mechanisms to complement and reinforce the analyti-cal finding that participatory processes are required to ensure effective, equitable andtransparent delivery of public services and policies.

Moving towards a human rights-based approach in support of the MDGs

The complementarities between approaches to achieve the MDGs and realise human rightsare evident and broadly shared. Yet somehow assessments of the integration of humanrights into MDG strategies suggest that the two approaches are rarely put together. Forexample, Philip Alston critically reviews several HRBAs and concludes that (i) acommon definition of HRBAs is lacking; (ii) the human rights discourse ‘is likely toseem abstract, untargeted, and untested to the community of development economists’,offering little guidance in concrete situations and not appropriately addressing the ‘com-plexities of real-world decision-making and trade-offs’; (iii) human rights treaty bodiesand special procedures need to spell out more clearly and justify more thoroughly theirrecommendations; and (iv) HRBAs are not sufficiently selective and do not adequatelyset operational priorities.26

While each of these conclusions can be debated, subsequent analyses of HRBAs(e.g. OHCHR 2007) do not challenge the finding that such approaches have yet toeffectively translate into practical guidance for real-world decision-making. This begs thequestion of how the human rights-based approach can be effectively mobilised tosupport the achievement of the MDGs and of course the realisation of key human rightsobligations.

Professor Alston proposes a four-step approach to operationalising the HRBA: (i) overtrecognition of the relevance of human rights obligations; (ii) ensuring an appropriate legalframework; (iii) encouraging community participation but doing so in a realistic and tar-geted way; and (iv) promoting MDG accountability mechanisms. All of these elementsshould avoid being too prescriptive. Instead, what is needed is faith in the dynamism andself-starting nature of the rights framework once it is brought inside the gates.27

These principles are sensible on their own, yet they do not provide the practical gui-dance that countries need on how the HRBA can be applied to strengthen their developmentstrategies. What should be done?

The practical next step in operationalising the HRBA is to apply human rights principlesand standards to every step in design of national development strategies to achieve theMDGs. Following the UN Millennium Project28 and Bahadur et al.’s MDG Handbook29

the identification and programming of the public investments and policies needed toachieve the Goals can proceed in five stages. At each stage human rights standards and prin-ciples can be applied to the results obtained to ensure that the resulting developmentstrategy incorporates a rights-based approach. UN Millennium Project 2005 provides apowerful illustration of how this approach can be applied to strategies for improvingchild health and maternal health.

In a first step, governments identify the interventions – defined loosely as goods,service and infrastructure that need to be provided publicly or privately – to achieve theMDGs. For example, to meet the Goal of free and universal primary education, govern-ments need to ensure an adequate supply of teachers, schools, textbooks and other learningmaterials, the provision of gender-sensitive latrines, electricity, and other supply-side inter-ventions. Additional demand-side interventions may be required, including targeted subsi-dies to allow girls from poor families to attend schools or adequate access to secondary

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education to encourage students and their families to complete the full cycle of primaryeducation. In other cases special interventions are required to meet the particular educationneeds of populations (e.g. mobile schools or boarding schools for non-sedentary nomadicpopulations, schooling in refugee camps). Moreover, a number of interventions are requiredoutside the education sector, such as adequate provision of access to water supply andenergy services so that young children do not need to spend their time collecting waterand fuel wood for their families and can instead focus on their education.

Similar inventories of interventions have been prepared by the UN Millennium Projectand others.30 They need to be adapted to the specific context and challenges of each countryand be vetted through consultative processes.

As a first step in applying the HRBA to development, these interventions should bereviewed to ensure that they address all the goods and services that are required torealise key human rights obligations. For example, if parts of the population experiencediscrimination on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity or religion, additional interventionsmay be required to address their special needs and ensure that they can access publicschools. These may include local adjustments to the curriculum and teaching materialsor special demand-side interventions, such as conditional cash transfers. Additionally,it may be very helpful to prioritise interventions from a human-rights perspective tohelp ensure that the most important ones can be incorporated in a national developmentstrategy.

Once all MDG interventions have been identified, governments proceed in a secondstep to define and concretise targets. While some MDGs offer clear quantitative outcometargets (e.g. halve maternal mortality rates by three-quarters) others need to be concretisedand adapted to a country’s need. For example, no universal definition exists for haltingand reversing the spread of HIV/AIDS, as called for by MDG 6, so this target needs tobe translated into quantitative outcomes that can be monitored over time.

Moreover, governments need to set coverage and performance targets for each interven-tion. For example, goal-based education strategies need to specify the number of requiredschools per 1,000 school-age children, appropriate teacher-student ratios, the number oftextbooks and other equipment per student, and other key coverage and performancemetrics.

In many cases the input-outcome relationship between, say, building better transportinfrastructure and increasing primary school completion rates is not sufficiently known,so the setting of coverage targets may require significant discretion by governments andother stakeholders. It is therefore particularly important that coverage targets for key inven-tions be carefully reviewed from a human rights perspective. Human rights experts whowould like to advise governments on the choice of appropriate coverage and performancetargets can use the suggested targets (or ways to identify targets) summarised in Bahaduret al.31 as a starting point.

In many countries substantial disparities exist in access to essential governmentservices. Therefore interventions and corresponding coverage targets need to be disaggre-gated by urban/rural, gender, ethnicity, administrative region and other key dimensions.HRBA can guide governments in identifying practical ways in ensuring the necessarydisaggregation and corresponding performance measurement of their development strat-egies. Such an analysis may, for example, conclude that some populations requireadditional demand-side interventions to encourage families to send their young girls toschool. In other cases more female teachers may be required to achieve the same objective.

In a third step following the identification of key interventions with associatedtargets and performance indicators, governments need to quantify the human resources,

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infrastructure and associated financing required to meet the MDGs. Several organis-ations have prepared simple Microsoft Excel-based tools to support MDG needs assess-ments32 that many governments are using to perform this essential analysis. To behelpful, the tools should be transparent and adaptable to address the specific needs ofeach country.

Available MDG needs-assessment tools provide a particularly good entry point forreviewing development strategies from a human rights perspective and for issuing practicalrecommendations on how strategies can be better aligned with meeting key human rightsstandards and principles. To this end UNDP has launched a systematic review of needs-assessment tools by experts in human rights, and first results are expected towards theend of 2007. By incorporating the findings of the review into the needs-assessment toolscountries will be supported in systematically applying a human rights-based approach totheir development strategy.

As a critical fourth step in the analysis, governments prioritise and sequence interventions.When implementation capacity is constrained by limited human resources, infrastructure andmanagement systems, governments have to set priorities for implementation. In particular,they need to prioritise and sequence interventions within each area or sector and thenmap out the sequence for rolling out the interventions across the different regions of acountry. Complex and often very political decisions need to be made to support the sequen-cing and prioritisation of interventions. For example, a common challenge in low-incomecountries is whether to prioritise targeted interventions to reach the poor instead of focusingon the more time-consuming approach of (re-)building national systems of service deliveryfor health or education. The first approach can result in rapid improvements for the poor, butmay be less sustainable if it does not support the long-term strengthening and expansionof service-delivery systems. Moreover, an explicit targeting of the poor may deepen and‘institutionalise’ inequities. On the other hand, an alternative approach of building andstrengthening delivery systems to gradually improve and scale up service delivery canrun the danger of first focusing on the needs of the better off before running out ofsteam without reaching the poor.

Governments face the complex challenges of sequencing and prioritising interventionson a daily basis and require better support in making the right decisions. A practical HRBAcan support these decision-making processes by clearly outlining available options foraction and delineating the implications of each approach for the long-term realisation ofhuman rights standards. Moreover, the HRBA can help identify the actions that everygovernment – no matter how poor and resource-constrained – can take right away toimprove the effectiveness and targeting of its policies and investments. Since no one sizecan fit every problem, diagnosis and advice need to be carefully targeted to each type ofproblem and the specific needs of a given country.

Finally, the fifth and final step in this schematic sequence for preparing MDG-basednational development strategies focuses on the identification of supporting policy frame-works and legal standards. The effective provision of public services and infrastructuredepends in large measure on effective supporting policy and legal frameworks spellingout the ‘how’. Governments need to determine the level and nature of decentralisingservice delivery and accountability mechanisms; legal and regulatory frameworks;economic, fiscal and monetary policies; financing mechanisms including policies for costrecovery, and so forth.

Once more, the HRBA can help by supporting governments in choosing the right policyframework. Due to the breadth and complexity of policy alternatives, it would be particu-larly helpful for practitioners to have a concise documentation of ‘best practice’ at their

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disposal that analyses the strength and weaknesses of different policy mechanisms from ahuman-rights based approach.

By systematically working through each step of the strategy-formulation process andsubjecting the options to a careful analysis, the HRBA can go beyond the normative prin-ciples and develop very practical guidance to inform the choices of governments and holdthem accountable for the realisation of key human rights standards. Such an approachshould guide (i) the choice of interventions to meet the MDGs; (ii) establishment of corre-sponding coverage targets and an explicit monitoring framework; (iii) the programming ofpublic expenditures; (iv) the prioritisation and sequencing of interventions over time; and(v) the design of supporting policy frameworks. Since the answers to these questionswill be highly sector-specific and may also differ from country to country, such anHRBA needs to be applied carefully to each MDG investment area or sector.

A powerful example of how the HRBA can be operationalised as part of a developmentstrategy is provided by the work of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Child Healthand Maternal Health. Over the course of three years this group of experts has integratedhuman rights considerations into every step of formulating, planning and implementingstrategies to lower child mortality rates and maternal deaths occurring in pregnancy orfrom complications in childbirth. The resulting report33 and accompanying technicaldocumentation provide detailed policy guidance to practitioners on how the correspondingMDGs can be achieved through an approach that takes full account of countries’ humanrights obligations. More recently, the Office of the High Commissioner for HumanRights has initiated a review of entry points for HRBAs for every MDG, which promisesto address some of the questions posed above.34

It is encouraging that many efforts are under way to go beyond the principles toalign evidence-based approaches to development with the HRBA. Moving forward willrequire breaking down some of the barriers that still separate the human rights discoursefrom evidence-based policy approaches. This work is far from complete and may notalways yield unambiguous and practical advice, but it is important that development prac-titioners and human rights experts engage in this dialogue and shared work with an explicitfocus on the practical challenges that governments are grappling with every day as theystrive to achieve the MDGs. In this way the two communities will make a major contri-bution towards operationalising the MDGs as well as core human rights standards andprinciples.

Notes1. UNMillennium Project, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the Millennium

Development Goals (London: Earthscan, 2005), ,http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/fullreport.htm. (accessed 18 March 2008).

2. United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007 (New York: United Nations,2007). ,http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/mdg2007.pdf..

3. HRBA can be defined as ‘a conceptual framework for the process of human development that isnormatively based on international human rights standards and operationally directed topromoting and protecting human rights. It seeks to analyse inequalities which lie at the heartof development problems and redress discriminatory practices and unjust distributions ofpower that impede development progress. A human rights-based approach integrates inter-national human rights standards and principles in development activities.’ See Office of theHigh Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Frequently Asked Questions on a HumanRights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation (New York: OHCHR, 2006). ,http://ohchr.org/english/about/publications/docs/FAQ_en.pdf. (accessed 18 March 2008).

4. Defined as ‘the human rights themselves, reflected in international treaties, and are to define theobjectives of development programmes. For example, the objectives of a food security

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programme can be reformulated explicitly to realise the right to adequate food under theInternational Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on theRights of the Child.’ See OHCHR, Frequently Asked Questions (note 3).

5. Ibid. These are ‘participation, non-discrimination and accountability. They should guide allstages of programming. Other recognised human rights principles are: universality and inalien-ability; indivisibility; interdependence and interrelatedness; non-discrimination and equality;participation and inclusion; accountability and the rule of law.’

6. See for example Philip Alston, ‘Ships Passing in the Night: The Current State of the HumanRights and Development Debate Seen Through the Lens of the Millennium DevelopmentGoals’, Human Rights Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2005): 755–829; and OHCHR, Claiming theMDGs. A Human Rights Approach to the Millennium Development Goals (Geneva:OHCHR, 2007) Mimeo.

7. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Human Development Report 2003: TheMillennium Development Goals: A Compact Among Nations to End Human Poverty(New York: Earthscan, 2003), ,http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2003/. (accessed 18March 2008).

8. UN Millennium Project, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the MillenniumDevelopment Goals (London: Earthscan, 2005).

9. Commission for Africa, Action for a Strong and Prosperous Africa: Report of the Commissionfor Africa (London: Penguin, 2005), ,http://www.commissionforafrica.org/english/report/introduction.html. (accessed 18 March 2008).

10. Jeffrey D. Sachs, John W. McArthur, Guido Schmidt-Traub, Margaret Kruk, ChandrikaBahadur, Michael Faye and Gordon McCord, ‘Ending Africa’s Poverty Trap’, BrookingsPapers on Economic Activity 1 (2004): 117–216, ,http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/BPEAEndingAfricasPovertyTrapFINAL.pdf..

11. Ibid.12. UN Millennium Project, Who’s Got the Power? Transforming Health Systems for Women and

Children, Report of the Task Force on Child and Maternal Health (New York: Earthscan, 2005).13. UNDP, Human Development Report 2003 (note 7).14. World Bank, Global Monitoring Report 2007: Confronting the Challenges of Gender Equality

and Fragile States (Washington DC: World Bank, 2007), ,http://www.worldbank.org/gmr2007. (accessed 27 February 2008).

15. Kofi Annan, In Larger Freedom: Toward Development, Security and Human Rights for All,Report of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for Decision by Heads of State andGovernment in September (New York: United Nations, 2005), ,http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/. (accessed 18 March 2008).

16. United Nations,World Summit Outcome Document, General Assembly Document A/Res/60/1(New York: United Nations, 2005). ,http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N05/487/60/PDF/N0548760.pdf?OpenElement., paragraph 22a (accessed 10 December 2007).

17. UN Millennium Project, Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieve the MillenniumDevelopment Goals (London: Earthscan, 2005), 252.

18. See also: Philip Alston, ‘Ships Passing in the Night’ (note 6), 755–829; UN MillenniumProject, Investing in Development (note 8); and OHCHR, Claiming the MDGs (note 6).

19. In 2006, the UN Secretary-General proposed to add a new target on reproductive health to theMDGs to explicitly address this human right.

20. See for example: UN Millennium Project, Investing in Development (note 8); UN MillenniumProject, Who’s Got the Power? (note 12); and UN Millennium Project, Public Choices, PrivateDecisions: Sexual and Reproductive Health and the Millennium Development Goals(New York: UNDP, 2006), ,http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/reports/srh_main.htm.(accessed 18 March 2008).

21. UN Millennium Project, ‘Millennium Development Goals Needs Assessment: Background Paperto “Ending Africa’s poverty trap”’, UN Millennium Project Working paper, 2004. ,http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/MP_Background-Paper_BPEA_September3-04.pdf.(accessed 18 March 2008).

22. Philip Alston ‘Ships Passing in the Night’ (note 6), 755–829.23. UNDP, Human Development Report 2003 (note 7).24. UN Millennium Project, Investing in development: A practical plan to achieve the Millennium

Development Goals (London: Earthscan, 2005).

84 G. Schmidt-Traub

25. United Nations Development programme (UNDP), Human Developoment Report 2000:Human Rights and Human Development (New York: Earthscan, 2000). ,http://hdr.undp.org/en/media/HDR_2000_EN.pdf. (accessed 8 December 2008).

26. Philip Alston (note 6), 755–829.27. See for example Philip Alston, ‘Ships Passing in the Night: The Current State of the Human

Rights and Development Debate Seen Through the Lens of the Millennium DevelopmentGoals’, Human Rights Quarterly 27, no. 3 (2005): 755–829; and OHCHR, Claiming theMDGs. A Human Rights Approach to the Millennium Development Goals (Geneva:OHCHR, 2007) Mimeo.

28. UN Millennium Project, Investing in Development (note 8).29. Chandrika Bahadur, Margaret Kruk and Guido Schmidt-Traub, Preparing National Strategies

to Achieve the MDGs: A Handbook (New York: UN Millennium Project, 2006), ,http://www.undp.org/poverty/tools.htm. (accessed 18 March 2008).

30. UN Millennium Project, Investing in Development (note 8), 281–93.31. Bahadur et al., Preparing National Strategies to Achieve the MDGs (note 27).32. See ,http://www.undp.org/poverty/tools.htm#nact. for a list of such needs-assessment

tools. Additional tools are references in Bahadur et al., Preparing National Strategies toAchieve the MDGs (note 27).

33. UN Millennium Project, Who’s Got the Power? (note 12).34. OHCHR, Claiming the MDGs (note 6).

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