04-05-2025
Strathclyde professor helps create human rights 'toolkit'
Professor Alan Miller is one of the four lead authors of the Human Rights-Based Approach (HRBA) to Development Programming Toolkit.
The toolkit outlines how a human rights-based approach can act as a "problem-solving" method to tackle global development issues and help achieve the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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It is intended to serve as a guide for UNDP Country Offices, helping them enhance their execution of development programmes and their pursuit of the SDGs.
The document introduces a framework called PLANET (Participation; Link; Accountability; Non-discrimination and equality; Empowerment and capacity development; Transparency) for implementing the human rights-based approach.
Professor Miller, who serves as a senior independent expert with the UNDP Crisis Bureau, said: "A human rights-based approach involves a 'whole of society' approach, where different interests around the table all have a stake in the matter, and you establish the framework in which sometimes competing sets of rights and interests are reconciled with one another.
"As a problem-solver, the toolkit can help to find an agreed way forward to enable sustainable development.
"It can also have a preventative role where things happening in a country could give rise to conflict, huge poverty or displacement of individuals and communities if the problems are not addressed."
The toolkit is linked to a matrix of recommendations made to member states following the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of each UN member state's human rights record.
Professor Miller is collaborating with the Scottish Government to devise proposals which may include the matrix as a component of a 'tracker tool'.
This tool would assess performance in fulfilling international human rights obligations, as well as the possibility of linking these to relevant policy areas and SDGs.
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In their co-written forward, UNDP Assistant Secretaries-General Shoko Noda and Marcos Neto, stated: "Utilising HRBA in development programming can help UNDP improve how it delivers for populations and governments around the world.
"It can be an enabler of progress, engaging whole of societies, systems and unpacking development challenges whilst providing solutions pathways and helping us to anticipate, prevent and manage risks.
"At UNDP, we believe that human rights can be a preventive, protective and transformative force, guiding societies towards stability, prosperity and equality."
Professor Miller's co-authors of the toolkit are UNDP officials Julie van Dassen, Sarah Rattray, and Seán O'Connell.
Arifur Rahman and Brian Migowe provided coordination and research support.
