This article deals examinse the recent trend that human rights, including women's rights are dropping off the donor agenda.

'Give it another two years', said a United Nations official off the record recently, 'and they will have completely disappeared'.

Recent years have seen a marked shift in official development discourse, with less emphasis on a rights-based approach and more on an efficiency approach to gender equality, a tone set by the World Bank's 2006 action plan – 'Gender equality is smart economics' which a number of official development agencies committed funds to resourcing.