How do different types of human rights violations -- physical, political and economic -- shape the extent to which donors restrict foreign aid to recipient countries? Foreign aid restriction is seen as an enforcement tool for countries to behave in specific ways as dictated by bilateral and multilateral donors. Therefore, I broadly hypothesize that if a government or a regime is engaging in a certain type of violation, the international community has the potential to use foreign aid restriction to manipulate the actions of the aid recipient government. Specifically, I theorize that when certain types of human rights violations are increasing, then states will incur restrictions from either one type of donor group or both donor groups. I test this argument by running two-way fixed effect regressions of physical integrity rights repression, civil liberties repression, private liberties repression, and social and economic rights repression on bilateral and multilateral aid restrictions from 25 OECD development assistance committee Western Democracies on 147 lower-to-middle income countries from 2007 to 2017. I find support for my theories, as the models demonstrate, that physical integrity rights violations and political and civil rights violations have an effect on both bilateral and multilateral aid restriction, but only in lower-income countries. This signifies that the international community is more willing to punish lower-income countries when there is an increase in physical integrity rights and political and civil rights repression.

By trying to alleviate poverty abroad, foreign development assistance tries to meet, among other things, basic human needs, which some schools of thought classify as basic human rights. However, because development abroad has often been treated as a tool for the pursuit of donor interests, rather than as an end to itself, it often ends up not only neglecting basic human rights, but making them worse. Bethany Barratt develops this argument by presenting a systematic external examination of the internal documentation of aid rationale in three major donor countries (Britain, Canada and Australia). The book sets the discussion of these documents in the context of the foreign policy process and structure of each donor, and contrasts it with the results of statistical analyses of key factors in aid. It shows that different criteria are applied to the various categories of recipient states, resulting in an inconsistent treatment of recipient rights as an aid criterion. While the book demonstrates important gulfs between rhetoric and reality, between elected policymakers and aid implementing agencies, and between the donors themselves, it comes to relatively optimistic conclusions about the general direction of foreign assistance and its increasingly pure focus on poverty alleviation. This substantive and important book will be invaluable to students, researchers and policymakers in the fields of politics, economics and development.

Assessing Aid determines that the effectiveness of aid is not decided by the amount received but rather the institutional and policy environment into which it is accepted. It examines how development assistance can be more effective at reducing global poverty and gives five mainrecommendations for making aid more effective: targeting financial aid to poor countries with good policies and strong economic management; providing policy-based aid to demonstrated reformers; using simpler instruments to transfer resources to countries with sound management; focusing projects oncreating and transmitting knowledge and capacity; and rethinking the internal incentives of aid agencies.

"This publication contains the 'Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights: Implementing the United Nations Protect, Respect and Remedy Framework', which were developed by the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises. The Special Representative annexed the Guiding Principles to his final report to the Human Rights Council (A/HRC/17/31), which also includes an introduction to the Guiding Principles and an overview of the process that led to their development. The Human Rights Council endorsed the Guiding Principles in its resolution 17/4 of 16 June 2011."--P. iv.