Advancing human rights through the policy approach It’s well known that human rights are underpinned by binding national and international human rights law. This legal attribute elevates human rights above policies and other initiatives, but it also leads to the serious misconception that human rights are mainly about lawyers, courts, and tribunals. Another way to advance human rights is the policy approach, which introduces human rights early in the policy-making process. It helps officials design and deliver effective, evidence-informed, equitable policy objectives. By reinforcing robust and fair policies, the policy approach helps to immunise the government from legal and other challenge. The policy approach to human rights is already present to one degree or another in some policy making in Aotearoa but, regrettably, the introduction of human rights into policy processes is often a late tick-box legal compliance exercise. Also, some human rights are given attention, but others are not, even when they are highly relevant. In short, the current consideration of human rights in policy processes is often late, patchy, and perfunctory. By way of illustration, in May 2023, the government released 20 Cabinet and other papers on emergency housing.13 Two of the documents mention the New Zealand Bill of 14 Human Rights Commission Rights Act 1990 and the Human Rights Act 1993, one mentions the Human Rights Commission’s human rights analysis of emergency housing, and 17 do not explicitly mention human rights at all. Except for the paper that refers to the Human Rights Commission’s analysis, none mentions the right to a decent home or similar housing-rights formulation.14 Of course, the released papers bear upon important human rights issues such as affordability, homelessness, and transparency, but the absence of explicit human rights framing is very unfortunate because the human rights approach can help policy makers deliver their objectives. Also, the absence of explicit human rights framing tends to mask human rights and drain power away from rights holders to those in authority. The absence of human rights language means only those in authority know whether and when human rights are being considered and, if they are, how they are being interpreted and applied. Obviously, this is very unsatisfactory.