A/HRC/30/22 dispute mechanisms increasingly involved important issues of public policy and often failed to ensure the consideration of fundamental rights such as the right to adequate housing. Those problems had led to important work to assess and clarify issues of corporate accountability, extraterritorial obligations, and human rights in relation to trade and investment agreements. The Special Rapporteur expected to be actively engaged with respect to those emerging issues as they related to the right to adequate housing. 36. In his 2014 report to the General Assembly, the Chair of the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (A/69/318) welcomed the proclamation by the General Assembly, by its resolution 68/237, of the International Decade for People of African Descent starting on 1 January 2015 and ending on 31 December 2024, with the theme “People of African descent: recognition, justice and development”. The Working Group observed that development was considered in two ways: first, in terms of the role that people of African descent had played historically and contemporarily in global development; and second, in terms of the need for a human rights-based approach to all development activities (para. 36). Owing to the special and unique nature of discrimination often faced by people of African descent, in particular in relation to the legacies of colonialism, enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade, the Working Group deemed it appropriate to make a careful distinction between their situation and that of other groups who also faced racial and other forms of discrimination (para. 38). At the sixteenth session of the Working Group, one of its members delivered a statement on reparation and the right to development.9 37. The 2014 report to the Human Rights Council of the Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, on copyright policy and the right to science and culture (A/HRC/28/57), included a number of recommendations relevant for the right to development. The Special Rapporteur recommended that international copyright instruments should be subject to human rights impact assessments and contain safeguards for freedom of expression, the right to science and culture, and other human rights (para. 94). Such instruments should never impede the ability of States to adopt exceptions and limitations that reconciled copyright protection with the right to science and culture or other human rights, based on domestic circumstances. Member States of the World Intellectual Property Organization should support the adoption of international instruments on copyright exceptions and limitations for libraries and education. The possibility of establishing a core list of minimum required exceptions and limitations incorporating those currently recognized by most States, and/or an international fair use provision, should also be explored. The World Trade Organization should preserve the exemption of least developed countries from complying with provisions of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights until they reached a stage of development at which they no longer qualified as least developed countries. 38. In her responses to questions during the interactive dialogue at the twenty-seventh session of the Human Rights Council, the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation addressed the right to development. She pointed out that development and the realization of human rights needed to go hand in hand. Efforts targeted at development must benefit the people, and development and the progressive realization of human rights must be undertaken simultaneously. It could not be assumed that development must be promoted first, while ignoring human rights, and that, when development had been achieved, human rights would miraculously be realized. Experience had shown that certain parts of the population would continue to be discriminated against and left behind unless deliberate measures were adopted targeting them. There was a need 9 Available at www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Racism/WGEAPD/Session16/VereneShepherd.pdf. 9