No development without human rights.

• Author: Dias, Clarence J.
• Position: RightsWatch

Human rights and development are, and ought to be, complementary. Development, especially sustainable human development, is a key strategy for achieving the progressive realization of human rights, notably the right to an adequate standard of living. Processes and activities of development that do not respect human rights (e.g. by inflicting environmental harms or forced resettlement) are indeed perverse development. Hence, the UN Charter sets out three closely interrelated goals of peace, development and human rights. Without peace, of course, there can be no development, and systematic violation of human rights inevitably leads to conflicts and breach of peace.

Despite the obviousness of the above, development as it has been practised during the first four development decades has in many parts of the developing world overtaken poverty as the single largest cause of human rights violations. In recognition of this fact, the UN General Assembly in 1986 adopted a landmark Declaration on the Right to Development. In the years since then through the nineties, at a series of UN global conferences, from Rio to Rome, it has been repeatedly reaffirmed that the right to development is a "universal, inalienable right and an integral part of fundamental human rights".

This article seeks to examine the relationships between human rights and development, analyze the content of the Declaration on the Right to Development, and reassess the role of human rights in development, especially within the current context of rapid economic globalization. The reason for doing so stems from the adoption in late 1998 by the United Nations Development Programme of its policy on integrating human rights with sustainable human development and the efforts made over the past year by the entire UN family to effectively implement such policy.

As stated before, human rights and development are complementary and interrelated. Typical activities in conventional sectors of development contribute to the advancement and realization of economic, social and cultural rights, such as the right to work, the right to health, the right to food, the right to education, the right to adequate housing and, indeed, to securing that most precious freedom--freedom from want. Moreover, civil and political rights, such as freedom of speech, association and assembly, ensure the transparency and accountability of development processes and are key to a meaningful participation in such processes and...