The Human Rights Strategy of The Netherlands

The Netherlands seeks to protect and promote human rights worldwide, and in so doing to strengthen the freedom, justice and dignity of every individual. To achieve this, it helps to formulate specific norms. Since the Second World War, it has devoted its efforts to building the international array of human rights instruments. It also promotes the monitoring of those instruments. It supplies human resources and expertise to the UN's Human Rights Committee and special rapporteurs while fostering worldwide application of the universal human rights norms, where possible by encouraging positive trends in that direction and calling countries to account whenever they fall short in this regard.

‘Human dignity for all’

It will require extra investment in human rights policy across the board to protect and promote human rights throughout the world. At the same time, the Netherlands will make strategic choices in response to developments in the world around us, choosing issues where our input is most needed, and developing a vision of how we can achieve results on those issues.

In November 2007, Minister of Foreign Affairs Maxime Verhagen presented a new human rights strategy for foreign policy,   “Human dignity for all”. The strategy places human rights at the centre of Dutch foreign policy and explains how The Netherlands intends to implement it. Policy priorities vary from striving for the abolition of the death penalty, an absolute ban on torture and championing women’s and children’s rights to advocating freedom of expression, preventing discrimination and promoting human rights in connection with security policy and counterterrorism.

The Netherlands has a special human rights ambassador. This position was created in late 1999 to strengthen the human rights component in foreign policy and make it more coherent.

The Netherlands in India

The Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in New Delhi actively contributes to the realization of the Dutch  human rights strategy. This is done, for example, by providing financial support to small-scale human rights projects from the Dutch human rights fund. The Embassy also participates in the yearly human rights dialogue held between the EU and India and works to implement the  EU guidelines on human rights defenders.