A/HRC/12/27 page 12 28. In his above-mentioned working paper (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2004/43) Mr. Dos Santos Alves stated that the need for increasing affirmation of international solidarity arose from the iniquity characterizing international relations, deriving from a certain historical context in which peoples and countries were deprived of the right to development. It was also the result of factors and circumstances that prevented the gap between living conditions in developing countries and those in developed ones from being narrowed. Those factors included policies on subsidies, imposed conditionalities, structural adjustment policies developed by the international financial institutions and policies of domination. B. Questionnaire responses 29. In the view of some respondents to the questionnaire, international solidarity is an indispensable component of the efforts of developing countries to realize the right to development and the promotion of the full enjoyment of economic, social and cultural rights by their people. The Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action identified increased and sustained efforts of international cooperation and solidarity as necessary for the achievement of substantial progress in human rights. Implementing solidarity would be enhanced by focusing on different sectors. Prioritizing the implementation of existing legal instruments, debt relief and the transfer of technology would improve the protection of human rights. According to several respondents, international solidarity should be the basic principle inspiring relations among developed and developing countries. This view reflects the need felt in the current international context, namely, to ensure that civil society actors should be leading players in development processes, starting from the definition of objectives at the national and international levels. It also provides qualitatively important elements for a defining feature of cooperation for development: the idea of partnership. Creating a partnership for development is, inter alia, one of the objectives for reducing poverty in the Millennium Declaration. C. Globalization, international relations and, inter- and intra-generational equity 30. The interdependence of nations and peoples should be recognized, because economic globalization, primarily through international trade and investment, while promoting interdependence and its positive effects, can also have the opposite effects of disconnection and exclusion, especially for people surviving on the edge of existence. In a world that bears witness to the simultaneous processes of globalization and fragmentation, cooperation for our common future8 is a sine qua non, and require at the same time, a new approach to international relations.9 It requires an ideology based on compromise, globalism and sharing, common interests and 8 In its report “Our common future” (Oxford University Press, New York, 1987), the World Commission on Environment and Development identified poverty as the most basic challenge facing the environment, development and the achievement of sustainable development. 9 K. Hossain, “Sustainable development: a normative framework for evolving a more just and humane international economic order?”, in S. R. Chowdhury, E. Denters, P. de Waart (eds.), The Right to Development in International Law, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht, 1992.