Reasons to Be Cautious about Evidence and Evaluation: Rights-based Approaches to Development and the Emerging Culture of Evaluation

Abstract

An evaluation culture is becoming a feature of human rights practice. This article concurs with the prevailing wisdom that more evaluation of such practice is needed. But it also suggests that the lure of evaluation could be extremely damaging if it is embraced in haste or ignorance. In this new venture what is required is an informed approach to the strengths and weaknesses of cultures of evaluation; adaptation to the particularities of the human rights project (it should not solely be driven by what ‘works’); care not to simply repeat the mistakes made elsewhere in the rush to provide gold-standards of success or impact; and monitoring of how evaluation practices feed back into human rights practice. The article charts the reasons why the human rights movement has historically had an ambivalent and inconsistent attitude towards evidence-based justifications and evaluation of its work. It will then examine some initial evaluations of rights-based approaches to development, to see what they tell us about both rights-based approaches and modes of evaluation.