The role of human rights in governance assistance

About the Project

The Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights (LBI-GMR) was contracted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to conduct an in-depth study on the role of human rights in democratic governance, in order to identify and promote the added value of integrating a human rights approach into the design and implementation of governance assistance. To this end, the LBI-GMR set up a team of researchers to author the chapters relating to the different focus areas of democratic governance. In addition, an eminent group of renowned international human rights experts was established to form a Steering Committee tasked with providing comments and quality insurance on the draft publication.

To facilitate coordination with the partners from UNDP and agree on the proposed chapter outlines, a first workshop was held in April 2009 in Vienna with the participation of UNDP representatives, LBI-GMR authors and Steering Committee members. The chapters were focussed on the main areas of UNDP’s democratic governance programme: civic engagement, access to information, electoral assistance, public administration, local governance, access to justice, parliamentary development, National Human Rights Institutions and anti-corruption initiatives. The chapters were to emphasise the conceptual dimension of a human rights approach to these areas of governance assistances and include reference to development practice and case studies from countries across the world. Authors therefore established contact with UNDP advisors responsible for the different focus areas to elicit practical examples and feedback.

Based on a first draft, a second workshop was held in Vienna in July 2009, which brought together a diverse range of UNDP experts, LBI-GMR authors and Steering Committee members for a two days ex-change on the content and format of the publication in general and the individual chapters in particular and further procedures to facilitate input from UNDP experts into the second draft. By the end of November 2009, the LBI-GMR had finalised the second draft of the publication, which was submitted to the Steering Committee and UNDP for a final round of review. The comments received were again considered in a revision and a final version was submitted to UNDP at the beginning of March 2010.

Project Data

Country: International
Persons involved: Johanna Lober (Redaktion), Karin Lukas (Projektleitung und -supervision), Manfred Nowak (Projektleitung und -supervision), Patrick van Weerelt (Projektleitung und -supervision – UNDP), Andrea Sölkner (Redaktion)
Group of authors: Margit Ammer, Christina Binder, Marion Kipiani, Julia Kozma, Johanna Lober, Karin Lukas, Alsu Nasyrova, Julia Planitzer, Christine Sommer, Andrea Sölkner, Claudia Sprenger, Fiona Steinert
Steering Committee: Param Cumaraswamy, Dorota Gierycz, Sanji Mmasenono Monageng, Manfred Nowak, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro
Contact persons: Karin Lukas
Lead Organisation: Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights (LBI-GMR)
Project start: 01/2009
Project end: 03/2010
Project completed: Yes
Funded by: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
Programme Line LBI-GMR: Sustainability, Development, Business, Social