Default title

29 June 2000





The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, today warmly welcomed the publication of the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Report 2000 which, for the first time, takes as its theme human rights.

Speaking at the European launch of the document in Paris, the High Commissioner said it was highly significant that the first Human Development Report of the century was focused on human rights. "It establishes once and for all that human rights and economic and social progress are inextricably linked. For far too long we have looked at development and human rights separately. This report demonstrates how they are two sides of the same coin."

Mrs. Robinson predicted that the Human Development Report 2000 will be a reference point for years to come, with its wealth of data, examples and background material on human rights and human development.

She noted some of the Report's conclusions:

- The 20th century's advances in human rights and human development were unprecedented - but there is a long unfinished agenda.

- Bold new approaches are needed to achieve the realisation of human rights in the 21st century, adapted to the opportunities and realities of the era of globalisation, to its new global actors and to its new global rules.

- Human development and human rights are close enough in motivation and concern to be compatible and congruous, and they are different enough in strategy and design to supplement each other fruitfully.

- The parallel movements for human rights and for human development have had distinct traditions and strategies. United in a broader alliance, each can bring new energy and strength to the other.

According to Mrs. Robinson, this balanced report points the way forward. "It shows the futility of the often politically-motivated debate which has in the past pitted countries arguing that civil and political rights are a precondition to development against those which maintained that such rights were the fruit of economic development and could not precede it", she said.

The High Commissioner emphasised that a human rights approach to development gives the highest priority to poverty elimination, to integration of women and vulnerable groups in the development process, to self reliance and self-determination of peoples and governments, including the rights of indigenous peoples. The Declaration on the Right to Development sees development as "a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process, which aims at the constant improvement of the well being of the entire population and of all individuals on the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and in the fair distribution of benefits resulting therefrom."

"The recent news of the first mapping of the human genome underlines the enormous ethical, moral and legal challenges we face in the period ahead," the High Commissioner said. And she called for action to:

- associate fully and actively non-state actors, and first of all the business community, in the promotion, protection and realization of human rights;

- identify the different impacts of international trade relations on the enjoyment of human rights and find ways of taking advantage of the globalisation process to fulfil the human rights of the most deprived and vulnerable groups;

- devise adequate and reliable tools for measuring progress in human rights and comprehensively integrate human rights assistance in development assistance programmes; and

- address and counter the negative impacts of discrimination,inequalities and racism on sustainable human development.

The High Commissioner paid tribute to the report team for an excellent job and to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, Mark Malloch Brown.


* *** *