IV. DANISH DEVELOPMENT OBJECTIVES AND PRACTICE
In relation to current Danish assistance, one of the key questions is whether
activities within the socio-economic sphere are considered part of a human
rights effort. Certain changes are evident here. In 1993, in the so-called
democracy package, the group Danida took perspectives for human rights
and democracy into consideration for the first time.33 Danida emphasized
political and civil rights as a prerequisite for economic and social development,
whereas it did not give much weight to economic, social, and cultural
rights. In the recent midway evaluation of its present strategy, the current
attitude, however, is expressed thus:
It is a basic Danish viewpoint that civil and political rights are closely
connected with economic and social rights and that they mutually support each
other. Progress in one area can never justify or legitimize regression in another.
A guarantee of economic and social rights for as many people as possible forms
the basis of Danish development aid’s poverty orientation.34
These formulations link for the first time Danida’s major goal of poverty
orientation with economic, social, and cultural human rights.
Yet it is uncertain to what degree this integration is real. Complementarity
rather than integration seems to characterize Danida’s practical efforts in
relation to human rights and development activities. Danida’s 1996 annual
report stresses that human rights and democratization are important elements
in the effort to fight poverty in developing countries. However, in the
list of activities that follows (carrying out elections, building an independent
judiciary, instituting an ombudsman, and decentralizing), it is quite difficult
to confirm the establishment of this relationship.35 Danida conveys the
impression that it prefers to work with human rights as a complement to the
other aid efforts; It provides support for elections or strengthens the
judiciary, or it works with more traditional capacity-building and resource
transfers within sectors such as health, education, or infrastructure.
It is also difficult to see how human rights have been used as a crosscutting
consideration in development assistance since 1994. In its midway
evaluation of this assistance, Danida itself stresses that to a great extent it lacks the necessary tools and methods to work with cross-cutting considerations
in development assistance36.
Thus it is far from certain that the human development paradigm, actor
orientation, and a broader understanding of democratization will strengthen
an integration between human rights and development. The risk is that these
intentions apply only to the higher level of setting goals, while the practical
implementation continues as before. The status of human rights remains
uncertain, and they are only seriously included in connection with projects
in the legal sec