More than targets: How the EU promotes democracy, human rights and gender equality through Global Europe and beyond
Authors
Amandine Sabourin and Alexei Jones look at how the EU has integrated and mainstreamed democracy, human rights and gender equality into the planning and first stages of implementation of the EU’s financial instrument for neighbourhood, development and international cooperation: NDICI-Global Europe.
This paper is gender responsive. 
Promoting democracy, human rights and gender equality is a joint responsibility of the EU and its member states, who should strengthen the Team Europe approach to raise the EU’s profile on these topics.
Summary
Alongside poverty eradication, promoting democracy, human rights and gender equality are key objectives of NDICI-Global Europe, the EU’s financial instrument for neighbourhood, development and international cooperation.This paper analyses the extent to which the EU has managed to integrate these objectives into the NDICI-Global Europe planning – in the programming documents – and the first stages of implementation.
While preliminary reports indicate that the EU is on track overall to achieve the NDICI-Global Europe targets, these figures only cover part of the picture and need to be translated into concrete actions. Advancing democracy, human rights and gender equality goes beyond NDICI-Global Europe and is largely carried out in the context of the EU’s broader foreign and development policy.
The EU should reflect on how to best combine its various ways of promoting democracy, human rights and gender equality, including through mainstreaming, targeted actions and conditionalities. The EU should also ensure relevant policies and tools – such as its action plans on gender and on human rights and democracy – work in harmony and are more systematically integrated into dialogues with partner countries.
Promoting democracy, human rights and gender equality is a joint responsibility of the EU and its member states, who should strengthen the Team Europe approach to raise the EU’s profile on these topics. Country ownership and buy-in from all stakeholders are also essential and the EU should ensure involvement at all levels to make sure that these principles and values are tackled and implemented in a meaningful and sustainable manner.
Events
On 20 March, the authors will discuss the paper with the Working Party on Development Cooperation and International Partnerships of the Council of the EU. They will also present the paper during the lunch seminar ‘Advancing democracy, human rights and gender equality through NDICI-Global Europe’, organised by the Swedish presidency of the Council of the EU on 23 March – you can register here.
