GENEVA (3 December 2013) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay will tomorrow (Wednesday) launch a ground-breaking publication on the right to development at an event also featuring former High Commissioner Mary Robinson.

The book, entitled Realizing the Right to Development , aims to advance understanding and, ultimately, realisation of the right to development. In her Foreword to the publication, the High Commissioner set out the importance of the right to development in addressing many of the crises of our times, from the global financial and economic crisis to the food, energy and climate crises.

“Our institutions of governance, at both the global and national levels, have been at best negligent, and at times complicit, in this onslaught,” Pillay wrote. “As a result, in both North and South, the opening years of the twenty-first century have been marked by growing poverty, inequality, hunger, desperation and social unrest. The call now is for accountable and democratic economic and political governance under the rule of law - at both the national and international levels.”

The event will be held at the UNOG Library Events Room B-135 from 13h00 to 15h00 on Wednesday, 4 December. The book launch will be preceded by an Author Roundtable from 9h00 to 12h30.

The authors will discuss the following issues:

• The way forward in realizing the vision of the Declaration on the Right to Development for transformative development;
• The potential of the right to development in addressing interconnected multiple challenges (global regimes for trade, investment, finance, technology sharing, intellectual property, labour, climate, environment);
• Strengthening international cooperation; and
• Awareness raising and full integration of the right to development in human rights and development related education, enhancing civil society engagement for implementation of the right to development in practice.

The book will also be launched at an event at the UN Headquarters in New York on 9 December 2013

ENDS

More details can be obtained from: Ravina Shamdasani (+41 22 917 9169 / rshamdasani@ohchr.org  ) or Cécile Pouilly (+41 22 917 9310 / cpouilly@ohchr.org )

Learn more about the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: http://www.ohchr.org

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