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Training Materials - Online Course on the Right to Development and Sustainable Development Goals
Introduction
This compendium of articles comprises the core reading material for the e-learning module on Operationalizing the Right to Development in Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals. The module is conceived, developed, and supported by the Right to Development Section of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in collaboration with the University for Peace (UPEACE). The Module is offered twice a year in the form of an instructor-led and interactive four-week e-learning course by OHCHR in partnership with UPEACE and the United Nations University – International Institute for Global Health (UNU-IIGH). All Chapters in the module are authored by international experts in their individual and voluntary capacity and have been co-edited by Dr. Mihir Kanade (Director, UPEACE Human Rights Centre) and Dr. Shyami Puvimanasinghe (Human Rights Officer, Right to Development Section, OHCHR).
Objective
On 25 September 2015, at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit held in New York, world leaders unanimously adopted a new and ambitious global plan of action for replacing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) which ran their course in 2015. This new global agenda, entitled “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”, seeks to usher in an era in which sustainable development becomes a lived reality for everyone. In order to realize its objectives, the agenda incorporates 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which are accompanied by 169 targets to be achieved by 2030. The adoption of the 2030 Agenda along with the SDGs provide an excellent platform for elevating the right to development (RTD) to a higher threshold in policy making and research, and thereby enhancing its impact in development practice. It also presents a significant impetus in terms of operationalizing this right in the implementation of the SDGs, with a view to realizing both the RTD and the SDGs in a mutually reinforcing manner. The RTD can be a guiding force to ensure that SDG implementation is carried out in accordance with human rights obligations, including the RTD.
The first few years since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda, however, were marked by rapid deceleration in realization of many of its targets and goals. The COVID-19 pandemic has further derailed the Agenda and has exposed the fault-lines in the current world order. Economies across the world have been disrupted and lives have been upended but the most severe impacts are on the weakest countries and societies. In this context, operationalizing the RTD can help ensure better and more equitable recovery from the pandemic and a course-correction in the realization of the 2030 Agenda. The RTD is indispensable to all efforts at building better and more sustainable global and national societies after the pandemic.
Contextualized in the interface between the RTD and the SDGs, the compendium of these chapters aim specifically at providing the knowledge and tools to readers on how the RTD can be operationalized in the implementation of the SDGs. It is intended to contribute to implementing the SDGs, through specific application of the RTD, especially its international dimensions vis-à-vis SDG 17 and global partnership. The Chapters are based on, and rigorous in their application of the text of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development and other international human rights instruments as well as on the text of the 2030 Agenda.
List of Chapters
The Chapters are organized in sync with the structure of the e-learning module which begins with a comprehensive introduction to the origins, history and institutional development of the Right to Development, its normative framework, as well as general linkages with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Thereafter, the Chapters delve into some of the specific themes addressed in the SDGs and explore how the normative framework of the RTD can be operationalized to better realize the SDGs.
The list of chapters included in this compendium are as follows:
- Chapter 1: “The Right to Development: Origins, History and Institutional Development” by Daniel J. Whelan, Mihir Kanade and Shyami Puvimanasinghe
Word / PDF - Chapter 2: “The Normative Framework of the Right to Development” by William F. Felice
Word / PDF - Chapter 3: “The Right to Development and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” by Mihir Kanade
Word / PDF - Chapter 4: “Operationalizing the Right to Development for Realizing Sustainable Development: Eliminating Poverty, Hunger, and Inequality” by Robert Huish
Word / PDF - Chapter 5: “Natural Resources and Sustainable Energy” by Priscilla Schwartz
Word / PDF - Chapter 6: “Climate Change, the Right to Development and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” by Priscilla Schwartz
Word / PDF - Chapter 7: “Gender Equality, the Right to Development, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” by Flavia Piovesan and Melina Girardi Fachin
Word / PDF - Chapter 8: “The Right to Development, the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Children” by Karin Arts
Word / PDF - Chapter 9: “Operationalizing the Right to Development: Health and Well-Being in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” by Obijiofor Aginam
Word / PDF - Chapter 10: “Operationalizing the Right to Development for Sustaining Peace and Sustainable Development” by Mihir Kanade
Word / PDF - Chapter 11: “Implementing the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development: Operationalizing the Right to Development for International Cooperation” by Xigen Wang
Word / PDF - Chapter 12: “The Relationship between Foreign Direct Investment, the Right to Development and the UN Sustainable Development Goals” by Ole Kristian Fauchald
Word / PDF - Chapter 13: “The African Regional Perspectives on the Justiciability and Enforcement of the Right to Development” by Patrice Vahard
Word / PDF - Chapter 14: “From the Means of Implementation to Implementation of the Means: Realizing the SDGs as if they Matter” by Mihir Kanade
Word / PDF - Chapter 15: “Operationalizing the Right to Development: Realizing Global Solidarity, Shared Responsibility and the Duty of International Cooperation in the Fight Against COVID-19” by Shyami Puvimanasinghe and Mihir Kanade
Word / PDF
These Chapters will be periodically updated by the contributors as necessary. Additional chapters may also be added to this compendium.
Profiles of Contributors to the Module
Daniel Whelan, Associate Professor of Politics & International Relations and Chair, Department of Politics & International Relations, Hendrix College, Arkansas, USA
Flavia Piovesan, Member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights; formerly Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
Karin Arts, Professor of International Law and Development, International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Hague, The Netherlands
Melina Girardi Fachin, Professor, Law School, Federal University of Paraná, Brazil
Mihir Kanade, Head of the Department of International Law, and Director of the Human
Rights Centre, University for Peace, Costa Rica
Obijiofor Aginam, Adjunct Research Professor of Law & Legal Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada; formerly Deputy Director, United Nations University-International Institute for Global Health, Malaysia
Ole Kristian Fauchald, Professor, Department of Public and International Law, University of Oslo, Norway
Patrice Vahard, Head of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Guinea Conakry
Priscilla Schwartz, Principal Consultant and Legal Counsel, Schwartz Advisory Limited, Freetown, Sierra Leone; formerly Senior Lecturer and Director of the Energy and Natural Resources Law Programme, Royal Docks School of Business and Law, University of East London, UK
Robert Huish, Associate Professor, Department of International Development Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Shyami Puvimanasinghe, Human Rights Officer, Right to Development Section, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland
Willam Felice, Associate Dean of General Education and Professor of Political Science, Eckerd College, Florida, USA
About the E-Learning Module
The e-learning module on “Operationalizing the Right to Development in Implementing the SDGs” is offered twice a year and is free of cost to the participants. The course is interactive and instructor-led and is delivered over a period of 4 weeks, to around 100 participants including representatives from Governments, the UN system, NGOs, NHRIs, academia, students and others. A dynamic pedagogy involving recorded and webinar lectures by the instructors and guest speakers, required and optional readings, video clips, case studies, and discussion forums for participants facilitated by the instructors, and short quizzes are employed in the course.
Participants successfully completing the module will receive a certificate from the organizers.
The course is intended for staff members of governmental, intergovernmental, and non-governmental organizations, human rights practitioners and defenders, development practitioners, academics, students, and others engaged in realizing of the SDGs.
More information about the e-learning module can be found at https://www.upeace.org/departments/e-course-on-the-right-to-development