A Research Report by Oxfam America and CARE USA.

The failure to respect, protect, or fulfill human rights is a fundamental and leading obstacle to economic development and social justice. Practically speaking, however, we are still struggling to understand what this major organizational shift means. The term rights-based approaches (RBAs) has become so familiar that we tend to assume that it is well-understood and that it is a foregone conclusion that rights-based approaches offer more potential for sustainable impact.

This report presents the findings of a collaborative Learning Project between CARE USA and Oxfam America, who compared RBA projects with non-RBA projects and identified best practices and lessons that could be used to improve the application of rights-based approaches in programming. In doing this they confirmed that rights-based approaches strengthen development work.

This work will be invaluable for field-based staff, partners, and other development practitioners working on the design and implementation of rights-based projects.