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26 June 2000
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26 June 2000
United Nations
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Development and Rights: The Undeniable Nexus
Chairperson, Distinguished Delegates,
There has been a revolution in the discourse of development.
Just a few years ago, the language of human rights was unwelcome in the work of development. Human rights were regarded as "political", "provocative", "contentious". On those rare occasions when human rights were raised, it was often in the context of conditionalities, "trade-off" arguments, or vague generalities.
Today, the situation is different. The right to development has been affirmed by States large and small, north and south. A review of the literature reveals that every international development agency, bilateral and multi-lateral, along with each of the leading private and non-governmental aid organizations, has now committed itself to the integration of human rights into its development work. A new dialogue is taking place between development and human rights experts which has brought about convergences and given added depth to the law-based approaches of traditional human rights thinking. It has been enriched by Amartya Sen’s work on capability rights. This approach recognises that human development and human rights are mutually reinforcing in that they expand capabilities by protecting rights. This dialogue has contributed to the development of people-centred sustainable development.
Human rights have been integrated into the UNDAF/CCA framework, and into the UN system-wide Strategy for Halving Extreme Poverty. UNDP has changed its approach to the question, and this year's Human Development Report is entirely devoted to the theme of human rights in development. The World Bank has issued an important statement on its role in development and human rights, and has launched a number of new initiatives broadening local participation, ownership and empowerment.
Coming just a decade after the end of the Cold War, seven years after Vienna and five years beyond Copenhagen, this can only be seen as revolutionary.
Representing as it does the merging of the two heretofore separate, if parallel, movements for human dignity, it must also be seen as long overdue.
There is an unmistakable message coming through from local communities, national movements, development experts, women's groups, indigenous peoples, and human rights activists across the globe. The path to human dignity runs not through imposed technocratic solutions, imported foreign models, or presumed trade-offs between development and rights. Health, education, housing, fair justice and free political participation are not matters for charity--but rather matters of right. This is what is meant by the "rights-based approach" : a participatory, empowering, accountable, and non-discriminatory development paradigm based on universal, inalienable human rights and freedoms.
Like many in this room, and many more who are following these proceedings around the world, I am deeply concerned to see so many fundamental references to human rights at risk of deletion from the draft final outcome document. As High Commissioner for Human Rights I am duty-bound to say, in the name of human development, human dignity and human rights: let us drop the brackets and recognize the undeniable place of human rights in development.
A review of the Copenhagen commitments would be meaningless without substantial reference to human rights. Poverty eradication without empowerment is unsustainable. Social integration without minority rights is unimaginable. Gender equality without women's rights is illusory. Full employment without worker's rights may be no more than a promise of sweat shops, exploitation, and slavery. The logic of human rights in development is inescapable.
There is so much practical benefit to be gained by expressly embracing the right to development, by integrating rights-based approaches to development, and by harnessing the instruments, mechanisms, and norms of the United Nations human rights programme to serve the cause of development.
The right to development, or, in other words, "the right to participate in, contribute to and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development", provides specific normative and operational guidance for the task at hand. It was universally reaffirmed at Vienna in 1993, and again at Copenhagen in 1995. This fundamental right frames 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". We must without hesitation recommit today to promoting the right to development, achieving better clarity and broader consensus on its requirements for implementation, reducing the politicization that has surrounded it in international discourse, and working for its realization by all peoples.
Chairperson, Distinguished Delegates, we have worked hard in recent years to define and promote "rights-based approaches" to development. Simply stated, these are approaches normatively based on international human rights standards, and emphasising accountability, equality, empowerment and participation. They are, in many respects, the operational expression of the link between human rights and development. As I have said, many have now adopted the language of a rights-based approach. But how closely does the rhetoric match the reality?
The catch phrase of the years since Copenhagen may well have been "integration." The focus of the next five must be on "accountability." Committing to human rights in development is undoubtedly important. Actually delivering on that commitment, however, is all the more crucial to the advancement of human dignity. What is needed now is a more critical approach to the integration of human rights into the work of development -- one that asks the hard questions about obligations, duties, and action. In this sense, all partners in the development process- local, national, regional and international--must accept higher levels of accountability.
Accountable governance is the responsibility of every government, to ensure that rights are protected, freedoms respected, and development resources properly and efficiently utilised.
Accountable aid is the responsibility of every donor, aid agency and international financial institution. This means attention to the impact of projects on human rights, responsiveness to the perspectives and priorities of beneficiaries, and a sustained commitment to progressive realization.
Accountable business practices, particularly in a globalizing world, are the responsibility of the entire private sector. Ultimately, the real bottom line is this: safe, healthy and empowered communities; decent jobs; and clean environments.
Adopting rights-based approaches to development, thereby raising the level of accountability in the development process, and better empowering the intended beneficiaries of development, offers the best hope of sustained progress. In the first instance, States can contribute to this by ratifying the human rights instruments to which they are not yet party, thereby solidifying the international normative framework for development. It is my hope that they will also work together to adopt an optional protocol to the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, an instrument that could be of immeasurable value to the advancement of rights-based approaches to development.
Of course, we must recognize not just the rights-based approach to development, but also the undeniable developmental element of human rights - and the interconnections between different rights. A good example is the right to food. Research has shown the negative links between gender discrimination and violations of the right to food, and the positive correlation between education and adequate nutrition. Work on the right to food thus offers an entry point for addressing some of the most acute, and interconnected, human rights issues, notably discrimination, health and education. We know that:
Higher levels of mothers’ education lead to better nutrition and health in children. The level of education does not even have to be too high: primary schooling alone leads to 20% less malnutrition than for illiterate mothers.
The incidence of low birth-weight babies in families in southern Asia can be explained by the inferior socio-economic status of women within patriarchal societies. This affects the mothers’ food intake and health provisions - clear evidence of the correlation between discrimination and health.
The will to protect human rights must be accompanied by the means to do so. There are crucial resource implications and institutional requirements implicit in all human rights--civil, cultural, economic, political and social. International cooperation aimed at helping poor countries meet these requirements is thus a sine qua non for the realization of the human rights of their people. This certainly implies higher levels of aid than have been evident since Copenhagen. But it also means:
- more international cooperation and stronger north-south solidarity;
- deeper debt-relief, linked more directly to providing for basic economic and social rights;
- insulating human rights protections from the negative impact of structural adjustment;
- more effective approaches to aid, and
- more "rights-friendly" setting of priorities in national budgets.
Rights-based approaches to development emphasize non-discrimination, attention to vulnerability and empowerment. Undoubtedly, women and girls are among the first victims of discrimination, the most vulnerable, and the least empowered in many societies. The majority of people living in poverty are women, who also account for 2/3 of the illiterate adult population of developing countries. Women are often excluded from decision-making processes that effect their lives. Access to resources, ownership of land, and even women's personal security are generally controlled by men. How then can women, in the language of the Declaration on the Right to Development, "participate in, contribute to, and enjoy" development?
Securing the full, active, free and meaningful participation of women in development means recognizing women's rights as human rights - in law, policy and practice. It means promoting gender equality - in the civil, cultural, economic, political and social fields, and eradicating gender-based discrimination. Development must promote women's empowerment, and must help to combat violence against women - in the home and in the community. It means going beyond superficial approaches and digging deeper, by disaggregating development data, and by employing safeguards to ensure that "local ownership" does not merely reinforce pre-existing power imbalances between women and men.
Perhaps no social phenomenon is as comprehensive in its assault on human rights as poverty. Poverty erodes or nullifies economic and social rights like the right to health, to adequate housing, to food and safe water, and the right to education. The same is true for civil and political rights, like the right to fair trial, to political participation, and to security of the person. While the privileged may debate the relative value of one set of rights over the other, the poor, denied access both to health care and to justice, deprived both of economic security and political power, are acutely aware of the indivisibility of rights. The rights to food, water, health, education, housing, personal security, justice and dignity itself are, for the poor, as equal and inter-dependent as they are elusive.
The rights-based approach provides a better understanding of, and a better response to the continuing challenges of poverty. Most by now agree that traditional, more narrow income-based definitions have not been adequate. Many aspects of poverty, some of which are crucial to a human rights analysis, are simply not reflected in the statistical indicators. Foremost are the critical vulnerability and subjective daily assaults on human dignity that accompany poverty.
The poor are subject to daily humiliation, abuse, rejection, exclusion and harassment. The poorest feel the unrelenting agony of chronic hunger, the suffering of untreated disease, and the exposure of inadequate shelter. The fundamental importance of participation and empowerment to effective development strategies must be seen as a further indication of the necessity of a rights-based approach. The social exclusion of the poor, and their lack of power in regard to insensitive local officials, corrupt institutions, and inaccessible development decision makers, all point to the need to create new mechanisms to ensure that their voice is heard, and given authority in development.
Thus, from a human rights perspective, poverty must be viewed not just as a question of low income, but as a human condition characterized by the sustained deprivation of the capabilities, choices, and power necessary for the enjoyment of fundamental civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. A human rights approach is therefore better suited to take account of the myriad of social, cultural and political aspects of the phenomenon.
To sum up: rights-based approaches bring the promise of more effective, more sustainable, more rational and more genuine development processes. In particular, and among others, they offer:
- Enhanced accountability
- Higher levels of empowerment, ownership and free, meaningful and active participation
- Greater normative clarity and detail
- Easier consensus and increased transparency in national development processes
- A more complete and rational development framework
- Integrated safeguards against unintentional harm by development projects
- More effective and complete analysis, and
- A more authoritative basis for advocacy.
In Copenhagen, the international community took an important step forward in emphasizing the crucial nexus between human rights and development. Here in Geneva, five years later, will we take two steps back by denying that nexus, or will we move forward again with a rights-based approach to achieving sustainable development, poverty eradication, full employment and social integration?
Distinguished delegates, the choice--and the responsibility -- are yours. Let us bear in mind the words of Albie Sachs, a judge on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, referring to his country’s experience:
"We have tried to develop the idea of rights to empower people ... to give them a sense of... self affirmation. The language of rights establishes a framework for the allocation of resources. Without the rights rhetoric, I am afraid that we will end up with a totally uncaring market system that will not solve our problems."
Thank you.
United Nations
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
Development and Rights: The Undeniable Nexus
Chairperson, Distinguished Delegates,
There has been a revolution in the discourse of development.
Just a few years ago, the language of human rights was unwelcome in the work of development. Human rights were regarded as "political", "provocative", "contentious". On those rare occasions when human rights were raised, it was often in the context of conditionalities, "trade-off" arguments, or vague generalities.
Today, the situation is different. The right to development has been affirmed by States large and small, north and south. A review of the literature reveals that every international development agency, bilateral and multi-lateral, along with each of the leading private and non-governmental aid organizations, has now committed itself to the integration of human rights into its development work. A new dialogue is taking place between development and human rights experts which has brought about convergences and given added depth to the law-based approaches of traditional human rights thinking. It has been enriched by Amartya Sen’s work on capability rights. This approach recognises that human development and human rights are mutually reinforcing in that they expand capabilities by protecting rights. This dialogue has contributed to the development of people-centred sustainable development.
Human rights have been integrated into the UNDAF/CCA framework, and into the UN system-wide Strategy for Halving Extreme Poverty. UNDP has changed its approach to the question, and this year's Human Development Report is entirely devoted to the theme of human rights in development. The World Bank has issued an important statement on its role in development and human rights, and has launched a number of new initiatives broadening local participation, ownership and empowerment.
Coming just a decade after the end of the Cold War, seven years after Vienna and five years beyond Copenhagen, this can only be seen as revolutionary.
Representing as it does the merging of the two heretofore separate, if parallel, movements for human dignity, it must also be seen as long overdue.
There is an unmistakable message coming through from local communities, national movements, development experts, women's groups, indigenous peoples, and human rights activists across the globe. The path to human dignity runs not through imposed technocratic solutions, imported foreign models, or presumed trade-offs between development and rights. Health, education, housing, fair justice and free political participation are not matters for charity--but rather matters of right. This is what is meant by the "rights-based approach" : a participatory, empowering, accountable, and non-discriminatory development paradigm based on universal, inalienable human rights and freedoms.
Like many in this room, and many more who are following these proceedings around the world, I am deeply concerned to see so many fundamental references to human rights at risk of deletion from the draft final outcome document. As High Commissioner for Human Rights I am duty-bound to say, in the name of human development, human dignity and human rights: let us drop the brackets and recognize the undeniable place of human rights in development.
A review of the Copenhagen commitments would be meaningless without substantial reference to human rights. Poverty eradication without empowerment is unsustainable. Social integration without minority rights is unimaginable. Gender equality without women's rights is illusory. Full employment without worker's rights may be no more than a promise of sweat shops, exploitation, and slavery. The logic of human rights in development is inescapable.
There is so much practical benefit to be gained by expressly embracing the right to development, by integrating rights-based approaches to development, and by harnessing the instruments, mechanisms, and norms of the United Nations human rights programme to serve the cause of development.
The right to development, or, in other words, "the right to participate in, contribute to and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development", provides specific normative and operational guidance for the task at hand. It was universally reaffirmed at Vienna in 1993, and again at Copenhagen in 1995. This fundamental right frames 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". We must without hesitation recommit today to promoting the right to development, achieving better clarity and broader consensus on its requirements for implementation, reducing the politicization that has surrounded it in international discourse, and working for its realization by all peoples.
Chairperson, Distinguished Delegates, we have worked hard in recent years to define and promote "rights-based approaches" to development. Simply stated, these are approaches normatively based on international human rights standards, and emphasising accountability, equality, empowerment and participation. They are, in many respects, the operational expression of the link between human rights and development. As I have said, many have now adopted the language of a rights-based approach. But how closely does the rhetoric match the reality?
The catch phrase of the years since Copenhagen may well have been "integration." The focus of the next five must be on "accountability." Committing to human rights in development is undoubtedly important. Actually delivering on that commitment, however, is all the more crucial to the advancement of human dignity. What is needed now is a more critical approach to the integration of human rights into the work of development -- one that asks the hard questions about obligations, duties, and action. In this sense, all partners in the development process- local, national, regional and international--must accept higher levels of accountability.
Accountable governance is the responsibility of every government, to ensure that rights are protected, freedoms respected, and development resources properly and efficiently utilised.
Accountable aid is the responsibility of every donor, aid agency and international financial institution. This means attention to the impact of projects on human rights, responsiveness to the perspectives and priorities of beneficiaries, and a sustained commitment to progressive realization.
Accountable business practices, particularly in a globalizing world, are the responsibility of the entire private sector. Ultimately, the real bottom line is this: safe, healthy and empowered communities; decent jobs; and clean environments.
Adopting rights-based approaches to development, thereby raising the level of accountability in the development process, and better empowering the intended beneficiaries of development, offers the best hope of sustained progress. In the first instance, States can contribute to this by ratifying the human rights instruments to which they are not yet party, thereby solidifying the international normative framework for development. It is my hope that they will also work together to adopt an optional protocol to the Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, an instrument that could be of immeasurable value to the advancement of rights-based approaches to development.
Of course, we must recognize not just the rights-based approach to development, but also the undeniable developmental element of human rights - and the interconnections between different rights. A good example is the right to food. Research has shown the negative links between gender discrimination and violations of the right to food, and the positive correlation between education and adequate nutrition. Work on the right to food thus offers an entry point for addressing some of the most acute, and interconnected, human rights issues, notably discrimination, health and education. We know that:
Higher levels of mothers’ education lead to better nutrition and health in children. The level of education does not even have to be too high: primary schooling alone leads to 20% less malnutrition than for illiterate mothers.
The incidence of low birth-weight babies in families in southern Asia can be explained by the inferior socio-economic status of women within patriarchal societies. This affects the mothers’ food intake and health provisions - clear evidence of the correlation between discrimination and health.
The will to protect human rights must be accompanied by the means to do so. There are crucial resource implications and institutional requirements implicit in all human rights--civil, cultural, economic, political and social. International cooperation aimed at helping poor countries meet these requirements is thus a sine qua non for the realization of the human rights of their people. This certainly implies higher levels of aid than have been evident since Copenhagen. But it also means:
- more international cooperation and stronger north-south solidarity;
- deeper debt-relief, linked more directly to providing for basic economic and social rights;
- insulating human rights protections from the negative impact of structural adjustment;
- more effective approaches to aid, and
- more "rights-friendly" setting of priorities in national budgets.
Rights-based approaches to development emphasize non-discrimination, attention to vulnerability and empowerment. Undoubtedly, women and girls are among the first victims of discrimination, the most vulnerable, and the least empowered in many societies. The majority of people living in poverty are women, who also account for 2/3 of the illiterate adult population of developing countries. Women are often excluded from decision-making processes that effect their lives. Access to resources, ownership of land, and even women's personal security are generally controlled by men. How then can women, in the language of the Declaration on the Right to Development, "participate in, contribute to, and enjoy" development?
Securing the full, active, free and meaningful participation of women in development means recognizing women's rights as human rights - in law, policy and practice. It means promoting gender equality - in the civil, cultural, economic, political and social fields, and eradicating gender-based discrimination. Development must promote women's empowerment, and must help to combat violence against women - in the home and in the community. It means going beyond superficial approaches and digging deeper, by disaggregating development data, and by employing safeguards to ensure that "local ownership" does not merely reinforce pre-existing power imbalances between women and men.
Perhaps no social phenomenon is as comprehensive in its assault on human rights as poverty. Poverty erodes or nullifies economic and social rights like the right to health, to adequate housing, to food and safe water, and the right to education. The same is true for civil and political rights, like the right to fair trial, to political participation, and to security of the person. While the privileged may debate the relative value of one set of rights over the other, the poor, denied access both to health care and to justice, deprived both of economic security and political power, are acutely aware of the indivisibility of rights. The rights to food, water, health, education, housing, personal security, justice and dignity itself are, for the poor, as equal and inter-dependent as they are elusive.
The rights-based approach provides a better understanding of, and a better response to the continuing challenges of poverty. Most by now agree that traditional, more narrow income-based definitions have not been adequate. Many aspects of poverty, some of which are crucial to a human rights analysis, are simply not reflected in the statistical indicators. Foremost are the critical vulnerability and subjective daily assaults on human dignity that accompany poverty.
The poor are subject to daily humiliation, abuse, rejection, exclusion and harassment. The poorest feel the unrelenting agony of chronic hunger, the suffering of untreated disease, and the exposure of inadequate shelter. The fundamental importance of participation and empowerment to effective development strategies must be seen as a further indication of the necessity of a rights-based approach. The social exclusion of the poor, and their lack of power in regard to insensitive local officials, corrupt institutions, and inaccessible development decision makers, all point to the need to create new mechanisms to ensure that their voice is heard, and given authority in development.
Thus, from a human rights perspective, poverty must be viewed not just as a question of low income, but as a human condition characterized by the sustained deprivation of the capabilities, choices, and power necessary for the enjoyment of fundamental civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. A human rights approach is therefore better suited to take account of the myriad of social, cultural and political aspects of the phenomenon.
To sum up: rights-based approaches bring the promise of more effective, more sustainable, more rational and more genuine development processes. In particular, and among others, they offer:
- Enhanced accountability
- Higher levels of empowerment, ownership and free, meaningful and active participation
- Greater normative clarity and detail
- Easier consensus and increased transparency in national development processes
- A more complete and rational development framework
- Integrated safeguards against unintentional harm by development projects
- More effective and complete analysis, and
- A more authoritative basis for advocacy.
In Copenhagen, the international community took an important step forward in emphasizing the crucial nexus between human rights and development. Here in Geneva, five years later, will we take two steps back by denying that nexus, or will we move forward again with a rights-based approach to achieving sustainable development, poverty eradication, full employment and social integration?
Distinguished delegates, the choice--and the responsibility -- are yours. Let us bear in mind the words of Albie Sachs, a judge on South Africa’s Constitutional Court, referring to his country’s experience:
"We have tried to develop the idea of rights to empower people ... to give them a sense of... self affirmation. The language of rights establishes a framework for the allocation of resources. Without the rights rhetoric, I am afraid that we will end up with a totally uncaring market system that will not solve our problems."
Thank you.