Human rights impact assessments as a new tool for development policy?

Development policy affects human rights in manifold ways. For example, trade agreements can have an adverse impact on the rights to health or food by making essential medicines or goods less accessible or available. Or large-scale investment projects influence indigenous rights when they entail resettlement programs or the expropriation of traditional lands. Policy-makers have tried to tackle these issues by employing various impact assessment tools. These include, inter alia, the Sustainability Impact Assessments of EU trade agreements, and the impact assessments of projects by development finance institutions, which are commonly based upon the IFC Performance Standards. Traditionally, economic and environmental effects are at the centre of the existing tools, while social effects are only included to a lesser extent. This paper argues that the existing tools are insufficient for reasons that concern their legal status, their methodology and, in particular, their effectiveness. Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIA) promise to cure some of these shortcomings. In the paper, the specific added-value of HRIAs, methodological approaches and challenges, and potential fields of application of HRIAs in development policy will be addressed

Economics for the right to work

This article argues that mainstream economic theory is one of the main reasons why the human right to work, which was recognized by the international community in 1966, appears not to have been taken seriously. In the mainstream discourse, labour is a cost, employment is a second-tier objective, individuals are resources with production specifications, and rights are rigidities. Economics based on human rights and seeking to promote the right to work must construe that right as more than just fighting unemployment, regard full employment as an end in itself and place the individual at the heart of its raison d’être