OPENING STATEMENT OF THE HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS TO THE FOURTH SESSION OF THE OPEN-ENDED WORKING GROUP ON THE RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT

7 February 2003



United Nations

Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights


Room XVII, Palais des Nations, Geneva



Excellencies, distinguished delegates, representatives of international organizations, dear colleagues, friends:

May I begin, Mr. Chairman, both by congratulating you on your election to this important function, and reiterating the commitment of my Office to providing you with all possible support.

I am honoured to address you, the participants in the fourth session of the open-ended working group on the right to development, and to also congratulate you on the progress that you have already made this week.

This working group stands today as the only official global forum on human rights and development in which States, international agencies, financial institutions and NGOs participate annually.

The mandate given to you by the Commission on Human Rights in 1998 is therefore every bit as important as it is challenging. Indeed, this is all the more true in the wake of the Millennium Declaration commitment made by every state represented in this room to “make the right to development a reality for everyone.”

I join you today in full cognizance of my own explicitly mandated duties to “promote and protect the realization of the right to development and to enhance support from relevant bodies of the United Nations system for this purpose.”

I do so, as well, in full knowledge that, in this field, our success, and our failures, matter.

Progress matters because the General Assembly, the World Conference on Human Rights, the Commission on Human Rights and every single member State of the United Nations has declared that “the right to development, as established in the Declaration on the Right to Development, is a universal and inalienable right and an integral part of human rights.”

Most of all, progress matters to the hungry, the excluded, the destitute, the voiceless and the persecuted.

It matters because, to each of these, “the right to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development” has been denied.

Distinguished delegates, progress in this working group matters because today, seventeen years after the adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development, there are more than a billion people scraping by on less than a dollar a day, denied the essentials of human dignity, human security and human equality. 113 million children do not attend school.

Two thirds of the world’s illiterate people are women and one of every 48 women in developing countries dies in child birth. 11 million children die each year before the age of 5, mostly from preventable illnesses. Nearly a billion people lack access to safe drinking water, and twice that number lack basic sanitation. And forty million people are living with HIV. These are sobering statistics, staggering in their enormity. Here, in Geneva, the problems our world faces may seem remote. We must fight that risk.

Progress in all these areas matters urgently because it is our job to promote and protect universal human rights.

And as the member States of this Organization declared: The right to development is a universal human right.

A simple phrase, perhaps, but one that contributes much to advancing conceptual clarity on the question of the right to development.

Because as a “universal human right” it can only belong to people. People living in the North and in the South, in industrialized countries and in developing countries alike. All people. Everywhere.

Neither can a human right exist without corresponding duties and obligations. Thus, the right to development, like the right to a fair trial, the right to food, or the right to be free from torture imposes obligations on particular people and institutions. In the first instance, this means individual states in which people live. But neither can the international community shirk its collective responsibility for effective international cooperation in promoting and protecting the right to development.

The international community has resolved and reiterated on many occasions that the right to development has a specific content, the essence of which is the right to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development. That it implies permanent sovereignty over natural resources, popular participation, equality of opportunity, and the advancement of adequate conditions for the enjoyment of other human rights. That it can only be advanced through better governance at the national level and better cooperation at the international level.

Let us mobilize all our skills, as diplomats, lawyers, economists, advocates and aid workers, to finding ways to make that right a reality for everyone.

This debate is often a passionate one. Human rights deserve passion. And it is no surprise if the political sometimes overshadows the substantive in this forum. Multilateral deliberations are by definition political undertakings. This is hard work, marked more by incremental progress than by dramatic leaps. But neither can we allow this reality to stifle meaningful progress for too long. In the end, and with a commitment consensus, conceptual clarity and concrete proposals, I have no doubt that this Working Group will continue to register progress on its vital mandate.

Of course, we can and will assist you, by providing the highest level of Secretariat support to this working group and its independent expert.

At the same time, and outside the context of the working group, we have continued our work on advancing the right to development. My report, which you have discussed this week, provides information about the activities of my Office to support the right to development. I do not want to repeat what has already been said, but let me stress once again that we will continue our efforts to mainstream this right across the UN system, as we have done in the case of the UNDG and other parts of the United Nations. We will provide advice and assistance to developing countries seeking to strengthen human rights protection. We will advocate stronger international cooperation and more equitable international relations. All these things we have done and will continue to do as priority activities of my Office.

Today my Office is also engaged with the World Bank in seeking ways to better integrate human rights into poverty reduction. We are working with the UNDG to ensure that human rights are advanced through the CCA and the UNDAF. We are working with the UN Staff College to promote these approaches in agencies across the system and in UN country teams around the globe.

And we are implementing technical cooperation programmes with countries across Africa, Latin America, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

More can be done, to be sure. Your consensus advice would be particularly helpful in designing our work.

Excellencies, distinguished delegates, representatives of international organizations, dear colleagues, friends.

The open-ended working group has struggled long and hard with the difficult issues surrounding the right to development, and should be congratulated for its resolve in this regard. Meanwhile, important progress has been made in a number of countries in collecting experience on ways and methods of the implementation of the right to development. The Working Group may wish to further examine this experience and analyze good practices on the ground. This may help in testing the right to development elements of promising new instruments and proposals, like CCA and UNDAF, CDF and PRSP, NEPAD, and creative new national models.

Distinguished delegates, the work of this group matters very much indeed. I look forward to working in solidarity with you to advance the right to development in the coming days and months.

I wish you success in your deliberations, and I thank you.



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