A/HRC/12/27 page 7 B. Right and duty, principle and practice 12. In a working paper submitted to the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (E/CN.4/Sub.2/2004/43), Rui Baltazar Dos Santos Alves argued that if the assumption of international solidarity as a right/duty was always present in spheres such as international humanitarian law, there was no valid reason why it should not also inspire human rights questions. The growing intervention of many players in actions to restore social balance, including United Nations entities, non-governmental organizations, transnational companies, human rights defenders, trade unions and private individuals, are all more or less inspired by the right or duty of international solidarity. 13. Instruments of law and policy encompassing international solidarity and cooperation are practically implemented by numerous acts of international cooperation that constitute evidence of State practice in line with belief, or opinio juris. States participate collectively within the framework of numerous global, regional and subregional organizations with multilateral and bilateral arrangements, again demonstrating solidarity in principle and practice. Further, there is a preponderance of practices of other stakeholders that together with State practice, constitute a formidable body of actual practice, consonant with conviction, of an implicit or explicit recognition of international solidarity as a principle of international law. 14. While most of the arrangements that guide cooperation practice belong to the realm of soft law (lex ferenda and international public policy rather than lex lata), there is clearly a supreme value of solidarity and a related value system that can inform the progressive development of international law, legal development at the regional and national levels towards an integrated and cohesive principle of international solidarity, as well as an emerging right of peoples and individuals to international solidarity. 15. In his paper, Mr. Dos Santos Alves stated that the right to health (art. 25 of the Universal Declaration), for instance, faced with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, was leading to a broad movement of international solidarity, and it had even forced other rights (such as patent property rights) to yield before a greater and more global interest that posed a threat to humanity. He added that similar examples could be drawn from the debates and the measures taken in areas as different as world trade, the debt of third-world countries, the protection and defence of the environment, the struggle against hunger and poverty, the initiatives to create solidarity funds and the debates about the role of international financial institutions, the transfer of technology, how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and the fight against terrorism. In such a context, he concluded, the right/duty of international solidarity as an essential factor in attaining human rights could not be called in question and should be a cornerstone in the reconstruction of international relations in the twenty-first century. C. Sources of international law 16. The recognition of solidarity as a principle is consonant with article 38 (1) of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, which enumerates the sources of international law as (a) international conventions, whether general or particular, establishing rules expressly recognized by the contesting States; (b) international custom as evidence of a general practice accepted as law; (c) the general principles of law recognized by civilized nations; (d) subject to the provisions of article 59, judicial decisions of the most highly qualified publicists of the