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Realizing the Right to Development

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Realizing the Right to Development TO REALIZING DEVELOPMENT THE RIGHT REALIZING THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT In commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the governance; and social justice, especially with regard United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development, to poverty, women and indigenous peoples. Further, this United Nations publication presents for the first time these principles are examined as they are applied to the a wide range of in-depth analytical studies by more than issues of aid, debt, trade, technology transfer, intellectual 30 international experts covering the context, meaning and property, access to medicines, climate change and application of this right and its potential to shape human sustainable development in the context of international rights and development policy and practice. Together cooperation, Millennium Development Goal 8 and the they support the concept of an enabling environment for global partnership for development, including South-South development that would ensure freedom from want and cooperation. Finally, with regard to monitoring, action and freedom from fear for all people. the way forward, the concluding chapters consider the role of international law and national and regional experiences Built around the themes of Situating – Understanding and perspectives as well as provisional lessons learned – Cooperating for – and Implementing the right to and thoughts for renewal, and review the proposals to development, the contributions to this volume not only monitor progress and enhance institutional support for clarify the meaning and status of this right but survey the implementing the right to development in practice. most salient challenges—based on actual development practice—to its transformative potential. These studies Taken together, the contributions to this publication illustrate give specific attention to the context in which this right the far-reaching potential of the right to development and emerged and the principles underlying it, including its relevance more than 25 years after the adoption of active, free and meaningful participation in development the Declaration. They make the case for reinvigorating and fair distribution of its benefits; equity, equality and this right in order to realize its added value to advancing non-discrimination; self-determination of peoples and full human rights, development, and peace and security in sovereignty over natural wealth and resources; democratic an increasingly interdependent, fragile and changing governance and human rights-based approaches world, including in the post-2015 agenda for sustainable to development; international solidarity and global development. Designed and printed at United Nations, Geneva GE.12- 48857– September 2013–2,477 HR/PUB/12/4 United Nations publication Sales No. E.12.XIV.1 USD 49 ISBN 978-92-1-154194-6 www.ohchr.org Realizing the Right to Development Essays in Commemoration of 25 Years of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development New York and Geneva, 2013 Note The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expres- sion of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. * * * Symbols of United Nations documents are composed of capital letters combined with figures. Mention of such a figure indicates a reference to a United Nations document. * * * Opinions expressed in signed articles are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Secretariat. HR/PUB/12/4 UNITED NATIONS PUBLICATION Sales No. E.12.XIV.1 ISBN-13: 978-92-1-154194-6 eISBN-13: 978-92-1-055972-0 © 2013 United Nations All worldwide rights reserved Photo credits: Niklas Hallen/UNDP-India, Mark Garten/UN Photo, Eskinder Debebe/UN Photo (top) Mohamed Elsayyed/Shutterstock, Diana Beato/Shutterstock, John Isaac/UN Photo (bottom) Foreword e live in challenging times. Across the right to development from the conceptual mud and Wglobe, millions are suffering the mer- political quicksand in which it has been mired all ciless, often devastating, effects of the many global these years. crises of our age. The global financial and economic crisis, the food crisis, the energy crisis and the climate We are determined to change that. crisis have converged in a multi-front assault on hu- man dignity. And our institutions of governance, at To do so, we must first take a hard look at the both the global and national levels, have been at best parameters of that debate, as they have evolved negligent, and at times complicit, in this onslaught. throughout the years. This book—the first of its As a result, in both North and South, the opening kind—collects articles produced by a broad range years of the twenty-first century have been marked by of authors and reflecting an equally broad range of growing poverty, inequality, hunger, desperation and positions. Most were generated by or for the many social unrest. successive expert and intergovernmental mechanisms established by the United Nations to study the right to This was not the vision of the Universal Declara- development. Others were specifically written for this tion of Human Rights that gave birth in 1948 to the book. All are valuable to our task of documenting, modern international human rights movement, prom- and advancing, the right to development debate. ising freedom from fear and want, and declaring that “everyone is entitled to a social and international For the coming years, our challenge will be to order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in move beyond the many myths, distortions and mis - [the] Declaration can be fully realized”. understandings that have plagued the right to development since its codification in 1986. Doing And it was not the vision of the Declaration on so begins with the recognition of the simple fact, the Right to Development, the twenty-fifth anniversary affirmed in numerous United Nations declarations of which this publication commemorates. and resolutions, from the 1993 Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action of the World Conference on Since the adoption of that landmark document, Human Rights to the 2000 United Nations Millennium a debate has been raging in the halls of the United Declaration and the 2005 World Summit outcome— Nations and beyond. On one side, proponents of the and, indeed, the mandate of the High Commissioner right to development assert its relevance (or even pri- for Human Rights—that the right to development is a macy) and, on the other, sceptics (and rejectionists) human right. No more, and no less. relegate this right to secondary importance, or even deny its very existence. Unfortunately, while generat- And, because the United Nations recognizes no ing plenty of academic interest and stimulating politi- hierarchy of rights, and all human rights are equal cal theatre, that debate has done little to free the and interdependent, the right to development cannot iv REALIZING THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT correctly be viewed as either a “super-right” (i.e., an eignty over natural resources, as a constituent umbrella right that somehow encompasses and trumps element of the right to development all other rights) or as a “mini-right” (with the status of a mere political aspiration). Equally explicit are the prescriptions provided by the Declaration for the implementation of this right, Nor should we permit the fog of political debate among them: to confuse the identity of the right holder to whom • The formulation of appropriate national and the right to development belongs: as with all human international development policies rights, the rights holders are human beings. Not Gov- ernments, not States, not regions, but human beings— • Effective international cooperation that is, individuals and peoples. And because human • Reforms at the national and international rights are universal, the right to development belongs levels to all people, everywhere—from New York to New • Removal of obstacles to development, includ- Delhi, from Cape Town to Copenhagen, and from ing, inter alia, human rights violations, racism, the deepest forests of the Amazon to the most remote colonialism, occupation and aggression islands of the Pacific. Wherever the accident of their birth, whatever their race, sex, language or religion, • Promotion of peace and disarmament, and all human beings are born free and equal in dignity the redirecting of savings generated therefrom and rights, including the right to development. to development Like all human rights, the right to development Thus, when you enter into the right to develop- also contains a specific entitlement—in this case the ment discussion, when you hear the phrase invoked in right “to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy eco- academic discourse or in political debate or, indeed, nomic, social, cultural and political development”. when you review the contributions to this book, I This basic entitlement, set out with perfect clarity in encourage you to do so critically. Ask yourself these article 1 of the Declaration, includes a number of con- questions: Is this the “right to development” codified stituent elements, enumerated subsequently in the Dec- in the United Nations Declaration? Is the analysis laration. Among them are: grounded in the recognition of the right to develop- ment as a universal human right, with human beings • People-centred development.
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