Human Rights in German Development Policy

The evaluation aims to study the content and implementation of the human rights strategy paper and the Guideline on Incorporating Human Rights Standards and Principles for Technical and Financial Development Cooperation, and the effectiveness of the German human rights-based-approach (HRBA) in partner countries. To achieve this the evaluation has been split into two parts, the respective findings of which will be published in separate reports. In part one the evaluation will first study the content of the strategy paper and its implementation within the BMZ and in the implementing organisations. After that, part two will look at the effectiveness of the approach in partner countries. This will include a focus on the realisation of human rights in the field of sustainable economic development in partner countries, as the BMZ believes this sector holds major potential for realising human rights through development cooperation as well as human rights risks of development cooperation.

Overall the evaluation intends to support learning by identifying potential improvements for effective implementation and further refinement of the strategy paper and the HRBA it explicates. By studying the implementation and effectiveness of Germany's HRBA the evaluation will also enhance the accountability of the responsible bilateral, civil society and private-sector actors of development cooperation.

According to the BMZ, human rights should be a guiding principle of German development cooperation and should be included in all strategies, programmes and projects. This principle is implemented through an HRBA that encompasses the whole of German development policy. Germany's HRBA pursues the goal of supporting improvement of the human rights situation in partner countries. The conceptual foundations of the HRBA are defined in the strategy paper Human Rights in German Development Policy (BMZ, 2011), and concretised in Guidelines on Incorporating Human Rights Standards and Principle in German Technical and Financial Cooperation (BMZ, 2013).

Given the different areas of interest of the two parts of the evaluation, their respective methods also differ.

Part one follows the approach of a strategy evaluation. It conducts an empirical comparison between the positions, objectives and areas of action contained in the human rights strategy paper and the guideline (the intended strategy), and their actual implementation by the actors involved (the executed strategy). It then seeks to explain possible discrepancies between the two.

For this purpose, qualitative interviews were conducted with the actors responsible for implementing specific fields of action. For particularly important fields of action, specific additional methods were applied. These include a survey of human rights institutions in partner countries, content analyses of project documents, expert interviews, and portfolio and allocation analyses.

The starting point for investigating the effectiveness of the German HRBA in part two of the evaluation will be a so-called programme theory. A programme theory sets out how one or more interventions should contribute towards objectives and results. Given the high degree of complexity of the programme theory to be investigated, the evaluation will methodologically rely on approaches that empirically 'track' and verify individual steps of results chains. One example of such an approach is that of process tracing.

The data for part two of the evaluation will be collected in case studies in the partner countries. Where appropriate, quantitative secondary data will also be used. The final design and the methods used will be determined during the inception phase of this part of the evaluation.