human rights are an important aspect of development policy and pro gramming. The 1993 Vienna World Conference on Human Rights, the 2000 Millennium Summit, and the 2005 and 2010 World Summits all recognized that development and human rights are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. In the 2010 World Summit Outcome document, UN member states affirmed: that peace and security, development and human rights are the pillars of the United Nations system and the foundations for collective security and well being. We recognise that development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing. We reaffirm that our common fun damental values, including freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for all human rights, respect for nature and shared responsibility, are essential for achieving the Millennium Development Goals. The UN system has been actively engaged in the process of human rights mainstreaming since 1997 and, in 2003, agreed on an interagency Common Understanding of a Human Rights–Based Approach to Development Pro gramming (“UN Common Understanding”). This definition highlights: • The relationship between development cooperation, the Universal Dec laration of Human Rights. and international human rights instruments • The relevance for development programming of human rights stan dards and principles derived from those instruments (e.g., equality and nondiscrimination, participation and inclusion, accountability and the rule of law) • The contribution that development cooperation can make to building the capacities of “duty-bearers” and “rights-holders” to realize and claim rights. xxx Overview This study, first commissioned and published in 2006 by the DAC Net work on Governance (GOVNET), reviews the approaches of different donor agencies and their rationales for working on human rights. It identi fies the current practice in this field and draws together lessons that form the core of the current evidence on the contribution of human rights to development. It discusses both new opportunities and conceptual and practical challenges to integrating human rights. Those challenges arise in the development partnerships between donors and partner countries, as well as in the institutions and processes of the international aid sys tem more broadly. This second edition, commissioned by the Nordic Trust Fund of the World Bank, identifies developments and trends from the past seven years.