Abstract
With the UN report ‘Renewing the United Nations: A Programme for Reform’ of 1997 UN specialised agencies, funds and programmes were asked to consider human rights as a cross-cutting issue and to mainstream human rights in their respective policies, programmes and activities. A decade later, the results of mainstreaming human rights are uneven, ill explored and the whole process is still little understood. Some organisations (such as UNDP and UNICEF) record significant progress, while others – in particular international financial institutions and ‘technical’ UN agencies – still display ignorance and rejection when it comes to mainstreaming human rights. This article traces the experiences of UN specialised agencies, funds and programmes in mainstreaming human rights and records their achievements and failures as wells as the challenges ahead.