UNODC and Human Rights

The mission of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) is to contribute to global peace and security, human rights and development by making the world safer from drugs, crime, corruption and terrorism by working for and with Member States to promote justice and the rule of law and build resilient societies.

The UNODC Strategy 2021-2025underscores the Office's commitment to human rights across its various mandate areas. The Strategy embeds human rights as a cross-cutting theme into all its programmes, spanning normative and policy work, research and technical assistance delivery. Moreover, the Strategy underscores our commitment to human rights, gender equality and the empowerment of women, as well as the protection of children and harnessing the transformative power of youth. It lays out a people-centred approach to achieving sustainable improvements in the lives of the most vulnerable, including people with disabilities.

In implementing its mandates and supporting States to address crime, corruption, drugs and terrorism, and in coordination with the entire United Nations system, we work systematically in upholding human rights through our programmes and activities throughout the world. We work with justice institutions and other actors in the criminal justice system, while paying particular attention to adherence with human rights.

Many forms of crime have direct implications on the enjoyment of human rights, and for this reason States have an obligation to put in place mechanisms to prevent and respond to them. There is also a risk of committing human rights violations in the name of responding to drugs and crime challenges. In this context, UNODC promotes a holistic approach in its obligation to respect, protect and promote human rights.

All UNODC activities aim to be in line with international human rights law and related policies of the United Nations and are based on the principles of equality and non-discrimination, participation and inclusion, and accountability and the rule of law.

Evaluation and Human Rights

Integrating human rights and gender equality in all evaluations is of utmost importance to all members of the United Nations Evaluation Group (UNEG), including UNODC.

TheUNODC Evaluation Policyof 2022 is aligned with the Charter of the United Nations, humanitarian principles, a commitment to human rights and gender equality, and the principle of leaving no one behind. It is also aligned with the requirements of the 2020 quadrennial comprehensive policy review of operational activities for development of the United Nations system and those of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol. The Policy provides that human rights must be integrated and effectively mainstreamed into all stages of the evaluation process, and reflected in evaluation terms of reference, evaluation reports, and meta-synthesis reports. As it is the responsibility of evaluators and evaluation managers to ensure that human right values are respected, addressed and promoted in all evaluations, all evaluators in UNODC should have substantive knowledge of human rights, and be aware of the main components and methods of human rights mainstreaming for human rights responsive evaluations.

In line withUNEG Evaluation Norms and Standardsand the 2030 Agenda, all UNODC independent evaluations are guided by the principles of human rights and leaving no one behind, with one dedicated section on human rights and the whole evaluation process fully incorporating human rights considerations. At least one in each evaluation team should further have expertise in human rights and gender equality. Moreover, evaluation tools and guidance have been adapted to specifically address marginalized, disabled, hard-to-reach and vulnerable populations, especially important in the context of a pandemic or other crises.

Resources on evaluation

Relevant documents by theIndependent Evaluation Sectionthat might have relevant information relating to human rights:

• All UNODC evaluations followIES guidelines and templateswith instructions related to Human Rights mainstreaming, which is also enshrined in theUNODC Evaluation Policy.
• IES developed a dedicatedGuidance Note for Evaluators on Human Rights Mainstreaming,which supports the evaluation team members in mainstreaming human rights throughout the evaluation process from the inception phase to the data collection phase and the analysis and report writing phase. This document provides guidance on mainstreaming of human rights in the desk review, human rights mapping of the operational context, the development of a human rights-sensitive evaluation methodology, the inclusion of human rights-related questions for each evaluation criterion, and conducting a risk assessment in order to apply the "do no harm" principle.
• In addition, IES has developed dedicated guidance notes for evaluators – onGender Responsive Evaluations,which provides practical guidance on mainstreaming a gender perspective throughout the various stages of the evaluation process, and onInclusive Evaluations,which aims to strengthen the inclusion of marginalized and/or underrepresented groups, in particular persons with disabilities and youth, in all IES evaluation processes and deliverables. All guidance notes can be found on a dedicatedIES webpage on Human Rights and Gender Equality in evaluations at UNODC.
• TheEvaluator Toolkit for Evaluating Interventions on Preventing and Countering Crime and Terrorismfurther fully mainstreams human rights aspects, referencing materials and resources to guide evaluators in this regard.
• Dedicated sections with aggregate findings related to human rights are included inIES-led evaluation syntheses,including in the latestmeta-synthesesof UNODC evaluation reports for2019 to 2021,in theevaluation-based meta-synthesis of UNODC evaluation results on crime preventionand in the first ever joint system-widemeta-synthesis of work under the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy.