The right to development

Author(s):  
Stephen McCloskey

This chapter discusses international development and the social, economic and cultural rights most closely associated with it. It critical assesses the contrasting approaches of two development agendas that emerged in the 1980s: (a) the idea of human development as the enhancement of human rights, civil liberties and individual freedoms as encapsulated in the United Nations’ Human Development Report (UNDP, 2000) and economist Amartya Sen’s Development As Freedom (1999); and (b) neoliberalism’s determination that human development, economic and social rights would directly result from the unfettered activities of the market. The chapter discusses the correlation between neoliberalism, austerity and a weakening of social and economic safeguards and development practice. It concludes by asking if the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can help to push back the neoliberal economic model that undermines rights and impedes development.

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elsje Fourie

The past decade has seen a gradual convergence between the modernizing, top-down development agendas associated with “new donors” to Africa and the human development agenda more commonly linked to traditional donors. But while instruments such as the Sustainable Development Goals now demand both industrialization and empowerment, donors still struggle to reconcile these competing expectations. This article uses a variety of qualitative data to examine one such project: the attempted transfer of Japanese management techniques (or kaizen) to workplaces across Ethiopia as part of Japanese official development assistance. Asking why and how the Japanese and Ethiopian governments pursue these aims, the article finds an intervention that is low modernist in design: its goals and logics are modernist but tempered by a respect for local knowledge and a preference for evolutionary over revolutionary change. The fact that Japan is the donor to promulgate such a paradigm is no coincidence, I find, given the historical origins of kaizen and Japan’s long-standing hybrid role in international development debates. Low modernist interventions such as Ethiopian kaizen demonstrate the utility of moving beyond dichotomies (China/West, growth/equity, efficiency/empowerment). But in both Ethiopia and the Japanese aid apparatus, powerful centrifugal forces still make low modernism a difficult balancing act to achieve.


Author(s):  
Marks Stephen P ◽  
Han Alice

This chapter examines the evolution of sustainable human development as central to health governance, drawing on international human rights norms and standards to establish a human rights-based approach to development. The progression of economic development theories and the international development agenda has led to a discernible paradigm shift in considering development to be a human right. This right to development holds promise in contributing to global health and influencing the Sustainable Development Agenda—positing a rights-based approach to international development cooperation. Bilateral and multilateral development policies and practices have begun to make some progress in implementing a human rights-based approach to development, but the mutually reinforcing goals of health, human rights, and development must be integrated in governance. Global health governance stands to benefit from applying a human rights framework for sustainable human development, yet obstacles remain in realizing the health-related Sustainable Development Goals and advancing the right to development.


Author(s):  
Andrew Harmer ◽  
Jonathan Kennedy

This chapter explores the relationship between international development and global health. Contrary to the view that development implies ‘good change’, this chapter argues that the discourse of development masks the destructive and exploitative practices of wealthy countries at the expense of poorer ones. These practices, and the unregulated capitalist economic system that they are part of, have created massive inequalities between and within countries, and potentially catastrophic climate change. Both of these outcomes are detrimental to global health and the millennium development goals and sustainable development goals do not challenge these dynamics. While the Sustainable Development Goals acknowledge that inequality and climate change are serious threats to the future of humanity, they fail to address the economic system that created them. Notwithstanding, it is possible that the enormity and proximity of the threat posed by inequality and global warming will energise a counter movement to create what Kate Raworth terms ‘an ecologically safe and socially just space’ for the global population while there is still time.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bingsheng Liu ◽  
Tao Wang ◽  
Jiaming Zhang ◽  
Xiaoming Wang ◽  
Yuan Chang ◽  
...  

AbstractAchieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a long-term task, which puts forward high requirements on the sustainability of related policies and actions. Using the text analysis method, we analyze the China National Sustainable Communities (CNSCs) policy implemented over 30 years and its effects on achieving SDGs. We find that the national government needs to understand the scope of sustainable development more comprehensively, the sustained actions can produce positive effects under the right goals. The SDGs selection of local governments is affected by local development levels and resource conditions, regions with better economic foundations tend to focus on SDGs on human well-being, regions with weaker foundations show priority to basic SDGs on the economic development, infrastructures and industrialization.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Geanderson Ambrósio ◽  
Dênis Antônio Da Cunha ◽  
Marcel Viana Pires ◽  
Luis Costa ◽  
Raiza Moniz Faria ◽  
...  

AbstractInternational frameworks for greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation usually disregard country-specific inequalities for the allocation of mitigation burdens. This may hinder low developed regions in a country from achieving development in a socioeconomic perspective, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of eradicating poverty (SDG1) and hunger (SDG2). We use observed data (1991–2010) of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) emissions and a sub-national human development index (MicroHDI, range [0, 1]) for Brazilian microregions to design a framework where regional mitigation burdens are proportional to the MicroHDI, without compromising national mitigation pledges. According to our results, the less developed Brazilian regions have not been basing their development in emission-intensive activities; instead, the most developed regions have. Between 2011 and 2050, Brazilian cumulative emissions from the sectors most correlated with MicroHDI are expected to be 325 Gt CO2eq, of which only 50 Gt are associated with regions of MicroHDI < 0.8. Assuming a national GHG mitigation target of 56.5% in 2050 over 2010 (consistent with limiting global warming to 2 ºC), Brazil would emit 190 Gt CO2eq instead of 325 Gt and the 135 Gt reduction is only accounted for by regions after reaching MicroHDI ≥ 0.8. Allocating environmental restrictions to the high-developed regions leaves ground for the least developed ones to pursue development with fewer restrictions. Our heterogeneous framework represents a fairer allocation of mitigation burdens which could be implemented under the concepts of green economy. This work could be an international reference for addressing both environmental and socioeconomic development in developing countries at sub-national level as emphasized by the SDGs.


2018 ◽  
pp. 24-42
Author(s):  
MARÍA DALLI

In 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the first international text recognising universal human rights for all; the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 25 recognises the right to an adequate standard of living, which includes the right to health and medical care. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Declaration, this article presents an overview of the main developments that have been made towards understanding the content and implications of the right to health, as well as an analysis of some specific advancements that aim to facilitate the enforcement thereof. These include: a) the implication of private entities as responsible for right to health obligations; b) the Universal Health Coverage goal, proposed by the World Health Organization and included as one of the Sustainable Development Goals; and c) the individual complaints mechanism introduced by the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (adopted on the 10th December 2008, 60 years after the UDHR).


2016 ◽  
pp. 1147-1165
Author(s):  
Bogusław Sygit ◽  
Damian Wąsik

The aim of this chapter is describing of the influence of universal human rights and civil liberties on the formation of standards for hospital care. The authors present definition of the right to life and the right to health. Moreover in the section it is discussed modern standards of hospital treatment under the provisions of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: availability, accessibility, acceptability and quality. The authors discuss in detail about selected examples realization of human rights in the treatment of hospital and forms of their violation. During the presentation of these issues, the authors analyze a provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and use a number of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights issued in matters concerning human rights abuses in the course of treatment and hospitalization.


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