Human Rights-Based Evaluation in German and International Development Cooperation: Literature Review

This literature review aims to summarise current knowledge on a human rights-based approach (HRBA) to evaluation and improve the basis for further conceptual discussions on this approach. To this end, we reviewed strategies and (publicly available) guidelines of multilateral and bilateral development actors, relevant tools for human rights in monitoring and evaluation, research articles, and evaluation reports published between 2014 and 2021. Our findings show that while UN agencies have mainstreamed the HRBA in their evaluation policies, strategies, guidelines and standards, most bilateral development actors have not yet fully incorporated human rights principles and criteria in their evaluation systems. Human rights-based evaluation is not an exclusive approach or tool. It can be combined with several evaluation approaches, tools and methods. It is not restricted to the use of participatory qualitative methods and can also rely on rigorous impact evaluation designs and predominantly apply quantitative or – most commonly – mixed methods. Our content analysis of 51 evaluation reports furthermore shows that there is a gap between the comprehensive concept of a human rights-based approach to evaluation and actual evaluation practice. We noticed selective implementation of an HRBA to evaluation in virtually all evaluations we examined. Systematic mainstreaming of an HRBA throughout the evaluation process is not yet commonly practised. Evaluators of development cooperation measures, human rights researchers and monitoring experts face similar challenges in operationalising human rights principles and criteria. Hence, mainstreaming human rights in evaluation could benefit from more dialogue between the human rights and evaluation professional communities.