International cooperation, and meaningful participation by people, will build stronger development, says Deputy High Commissioner

Dear Vice-President,

Distinguished delegates,

Dear members of the Expert Mechanism,

Colleagues and friends,

It is a pleasure to welcome you, together with Ambassador Macdonal Alvarez, to the eighth session of the Expert Mechanism on the Right Development.

At the outset, I would like to express our appreciation for the work of the Expert Mechanism. Member States, civil society actors, and other stakeholders have benefited from the analysis and recommendations that it provides on a range of policy and structural issues.

The themes that have consistently emerged in virtually all discussions and thematic studies are the importance of international cooperation and full participation of rights-holders.

Dear Experts and Participants,

Development is a human right and central to people’s right to an adequate standard of living. In his opening remarks to the Human Rights Council in September, the High Commissioner reminded us that “development issues underlie almost every challenge we face” [1]

Development based on human rights allows for access to food and to affordable health care. It provides for equal opportunities including in education and economic prospects, with a fair share of resources. Development should come hand in hand with a clean, healthy and sustainable environment and with the freedom to make one’s own choices. Development should provide access to objective information and for the rule of law in all countries.

The right to development is the right to enjoy development allowing for all human rights and fundamental freedoms to be fully realized. When the right to development is not respected, the roll back on hard-won development gains produces both immediate and long-lasting consequences: poverty, hunger, conflicts, instability, afflicting the “left behind”, but in the end, sparing no one as I elaborated last year, in my address to this Expert Mechanism.

Confronting these unprecedented global crises clearly requires unprecedented international cooperation and solidarity. Unfortunately, time and again we face not only inaction, but perhaps even worse, actions and words that take us towards division, undermining the rule of law, and drawing us further away from our common goals and our common agenda.

We must persevere. We will continue to advocate for dialogue, for leaders to take bold decisions and deliver on ambitious actions that steer us toward an equitable political, social, and economic order.

Now is the time to invest in prevention and in human rights’ based solutions, redouble our efforts and commitments to realize all human rights including the right to development. We need to create conditions for active, free, and meaningful participation, at national and international levels. The right to contribute to and enjoy development, like any other human right, is inalienable.

Next month, in December, we will mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. As we approach that commemoration in these troubled times, I urge all of us to recall the inspiring and unequivocal resolve of the Declaration from its first Article, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” to its very last, warning against any activity or act “aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.”

I wish you fruitful discussions during this session.