A/HRC/42/38 103. Governments should conduct human rights impact assessments 9 from the very beginning of a development project or policy formulation in order to inform the design or programming of that project or policy. The assessments should ensure that the concerns of affected communities are taken into account and should be repeated periodically in order to monitor change and evaluate progress. Specifically: (a) States should only allow development projects to go ahead if it has been demonstrated that the human rights impact assessment conducted has been taken into account; (b) Governments should specifically evaluate the right to development in their impact assessments in order to understand the broader picture of a project’s or a policy’s impact (for example, its effect on individuals, groups, nations and peoples; the impact of international dimensions of equality, the fair distribution of benefits and the impact on the environment; and the processes of participation, inclusiveness, non-discrimination, indivisibility of human rights and equality of opportunity) rather than solely the impact of the policy or project on a narrow subset of individual rights; (c) States should transparently disclose the results of human rights impact assessments to the public; (d) Communities that are consulted as part of a human rights impact assessment process should play a role in the implementation of the assessed project; (e) Government officials should be trained to perform human rights impact assessments and to apply a right-to-development lens; (f) Governments that have successfully implemented human rights impact assessments should share that knowledge with other Governments so that they can learn from prior practice. 104. Governments should conduct human rights impact assessments when planning and implementing austerity measures. 10 The practice of conducting human rights impact assessments, including in areas like trade and finance, 11 should be further developed. 105. States should promote research and development on evaluation processes; human rights principles should be mainstreamed into evaluation trainings. 106. States, individually and collectively, should develop the capacity of and provide support to communities and other actors in the establishment of monitoring and evaluation mechanisms. This will enable communities to conduct evaluations of development programmes and produce relevant independent reports. 107. Governments and international organizations should ensure that evaluations are a multi-stakeholder endeavour and that they are implemented before, during and after development programmes have been executed. States should ensure that the right to development is monitored at all levels of government, including by subnational government bodies. 9 10 11 poor quality of work, the threat of violence, and living in areas that are environmentally hazardous, among others.” See https://ophi.org.uk/policy/multidimensional-poverty-index/. A human rights impact assessment is an instrument for measuring the effects of a policy, piece of legislation, programme or project on human rights. World Bank, Human Rights Impact Assessments: A Review of the Literature, Differences with Other Forms of Assessments and Relevance for Development (February 2013), p. 1. The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights address the need to assess the human rights impacts of business activities as “human rights due diligence” (A/HRC/17/31, annex, principles 4 and 17–21). See the guiding principles on human rights impact assessments of economic reforms developed by the Independent Expert on the effects of foreign debt and other related international financial obligations of States on the full enjoyment of human rights, particularly economic, social and cultural rights (A/HRC/40/57). See, e.g., the ex ante human rights impact assessment commissioned by the Economic Commission for Africa, the Friedrich-Ebert Stiftung Geneva office and OHCHR, The Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) in Africa: A Human Rights Perspective (2017). 13