A/HRC/4/WG.2/TF/2
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III. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
53.
Having completed a preliminary review of three partnerships and heard the views of the
delegations and other observers at the session, the task force has reached the conclusions and
recommendations that are set out in the paragraphs below.
A. Conclusions
54.
Consistent with its approach to move the right to development from general principles
and political commitments to specific operational tools for development practice, the task force
recognized the value-added of developing concrete criteria based on the right-to-development
framework and applying them to global partnerships for development. The application of these
criteria facilitates current and future partnerships to explicitly factor essential elements of the
right to development into their respective operational frameworks. This effort to operationalize
the right takes into account both the normative human rights considerations and the empirical
evidence that demonstrates the advantages of applying the criteria.
55.
If its mandate is continued, the task force would deepen its work on the criteria, through
both a deeper analysis of the three partnerships examined above and evaluation of additional
partnerships dealing with other domains of international cooperation, as identified under the
Millennium Development Goal 8. Drawing on experience gained from refining and applying the
criteria would be conducive to the elaboration of a comprehensive and coherent set of standards
to assess the implementation of the right to development and to recommend improvements in the
practice of global development partnerships.
56.
Its initial effort to apply the criteria at its third meeting has demonstrated that even the
current broadly worded criteria enabled the task force to assess both the extent to which essential
elements of the right to development are already reflected in the global partnership frameworks
and the value-added that the right to development framework brings to these partnerships.
However, first it is necessary to clarify the identified criteria by relating them to an
implementation checklist. Such an implementation checklist would contain sub-criteria and
performance benchmarks, to be elaborated upon at a later stage and to be agreed upon in specific
partnership contexts.
1. Pilot application of the criteria
57.
The task force recalls that the right to development criteria, as agreed by consensus at the
seventh session of the Working Group, are based on the Declaration on the Right to
Development and, in the spirit of article 9 (1) of that Declaration,1 are indivisible. Therefore, in
applying them to development partnerships, all the criteria are relevant, even though it is
appropriate to take full account of the historical, political, and legal context of each partnership
and of the countries that participate in them.
1
Article 9.1 reads “All the aspects of the right to development set forth in the present
Declaration are indivisible and interdependent and each of them should be considered in the
context of the whole.”
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