Human Rights and the Millennium Development Goals in Practice: A review of country strategies and reporting (UNHCR,m 19 Aug 2010)

In Claiming the Millennium Development Goals it was recommended that States should align MDG
targets and indicators with international human rights standards. There was strong emphasis on aligning
them closely with the relevant economic and social rights obligations, and on ensuring that the
targets and indicators address the human rights of women and excluded groups. It noted that countries
could adopt additional human rights-related goals and pointed to the example of Mongolia, which had
adopted a ninth goal on democracy and governance. Such adjustment is supported in principle by
UNDP and the World Bank, which argue that the global Goals were always intended to be adapted to
the national context.

The new OHCHR publication reviews the extent to which and how human rights are reflected in national MDG-based strategies and reports in a number of Asian and African countries.

It is guided by the analytical framework provided by OHCHR in a previous publication from 2008, Claiming the Millennium Development Goals: A human rights approach. It also builds on a series of country and thematic background studies commissioned for the regional “Dialogues for Action: Human Rights and MDGs” in Johannesburg and Bangkok in 2008, which were part of a collaborative undertaking with UNICEF and the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights.