A/HRC/33/21 sum, the right to development was the human rights avatar of the Goals while the Goals were the policy expression and plan of action for operationalizing the right to development. 32. Mr. Khor recalled some of the important elements of the right to development. As a human right, every human person and all peoples were entitled to participate in, contribute to and enjoy development in which all rights and freedoms could be fully realized. It was people-centred, since every person and all peoples were the central subject of development and should be both active participants as well as beneficiaries of development. It gave responsibility to each State to take measures to fulfil its people’s right to development and required sustained action to promote more rapid development of developing countries, including through effective international cooperation. Thus, it implicitly recognized the imbalances and inequities in the existing international order that hindered countries from implementing the right. 33. There were obstacles to the realization of the right to development at the national and international levels, and Mr. Khor encouraged all stakeholders to identify, diagnose and address them. To that end, it was useful to make use of the practical relevance of the right to development and to elaborate on some of the key global issues of the present time and how they affected its implementation. One issue was the crisis in the global economy. Among other factors, economic sluggishness in developed countries, the plunge in commodity prices, fluctuations in the inflow and outflow of funds as a result of speculative capital flows and fluctuations in the value of currencies owing to lack of a global mechanism to stabilize them had adverse impacts on developing economies. Growth rates had fallen in Africa and elsewhere and some countries were on the brink of another debt crisis. 34. There were also challenges in implementing appropriate development policies, including those related to agricultural production: how to ensure adequate livelihoods and incomes for small farmers along with national food security. Countries that aimed to industrialize faced the challenges of climbing the ladder, from starting viable, low-cost industries to establishing labour-intensive industries to moving up to higher-technology industries. There were also challenges to building a range of services, including health and education, water supply, energy and transport, as well as financial and commercial services. The trend towards liberalization, including as a result of loan conditionality, and towards trade and investment agreements also constrained policy space. In particular, investor-State dispute settlement provisions favourable to foreign investors could entail higher costs for States, constraining their policy-making ability. 35. Climate change was the ultimate example of an environmental constraint to development and the right to development. Statistics had shown that it was imperative to cut global emissions as sharply and as quickly as possible. There was a risk that the burden of addressing this issue would be passed on mainly to developing and poorer countries and to the poor and vulnerable within countries. A global agreement and national agreements to tackle climate change had to be environmentally ambitious, socially fair and economically viable. The Paris Agreement of 2015 showed that it was possible to reach a multilateral agreement on an issue that threatened human survival. However, Mr. Khor warned that the Paris Agreement was not ambitious enough to save humanity, and that it did not demonstrate that the promise of transfers of financing and technology to developing countries would be kept. 36. Antimicrobial resistance was another challenge to the realization of the right to development. Some strains of bacteria had become resistant to multiple antibiotics, and a few had become resistant to all antibiotics. The identification of two genes that had the ability to easily spread resistance to other species of bacteria illustrated the level of danger. The actions needed to confront this challenge included better surveillance of the markets for pharmaceuticals; measures to drastically reduce the overuse and incorrect use of antibiotics, 8

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