By Otto Spijkers

This is the last of three posts on the human right to development. In the first part I introduced this human right and the way it should be implemented into global policy. In Part 2, I tried to find out whether the international community actually agreed on this interpretation of the law and the method of implementation. In Part 3, the current post, I will look at future developments. The Human Rights Council, somewhat plagued by credibility issues at the moment, may play an important role in the future. This newly established Council was mandated by the UN General Assembly to enhance "the promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development" (emphasis added). Indeed, in an address to the Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan suggested that perhaps the Council’s most important task was to "mak[e] the "right to development" clear and specific enough to be effectively enforced and upheld". A Working Group on the right to development, previously established by ECOSOC but now working for the Human Rights Council, distributed a report in which it links Millennium Development Goal 8 (on a global partnership for development) with the realization of the universal human right to development. The future of the human right to development depends to a large extent on what will happen with the ideas of the Human Rights Council’s Working Group referred to just now. There are some less promising signs. In 2002, the US Government made a very controversial reservation to a declaration on food (p. 32 of this report). According to the US Government, "the attainment of the right to an adequate standard of living is a goal or aspiration to be realized progressively that does not give rise to any international obligation." However, the idea that everyone has a human right to development is gaining popularity and support. New York professor Thomas Pogge, in arguing for the existence of such a human right, refers to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and subsequent resolutions, but one may also refer treaties binding on (almost) all nations, such as the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, in order to make a convincing case. To term the debate on development in human rights language is already successful, and with the shift in focus from the state to the individual that is emerging in all fields of international law, this may very well be the natural course to take. Everybody’s right to development demands a global institutional order which does not violate this right, but rather guarantees it in accordance with principles of global social justice. Charles Darwin (see picture above), the champion of natural selection and the survival of the fittest, rightly remarked that: "If the misery of our poor be caused not by laws of nature, but by our own institutions, great is our sin." – Otto