Human rights in EU development cooperation

Abstract

The present chapter provides a comprehensive overview of how and why human rights became an integral part of the European Union’s (EU’s) policies for international cooperation. It describes the EU’s regulatory framework for global human rights promotion and critically assesses the Union’s financing and implementation instruments to deliver upon those commitments. In doing so, it describes various forms of human rights conditionality in the allocation of EU aid, as well as the EU’s dedicated programmes and financing mechanisms for human rights and democracy promotion. Finally, it assesses more recent approaches such as human rights mainstreaming and the application of a Rights-Based Approach to EU development cooperation.