A/HRC/26/41 acknowledge that some State-to-State cooperation aimed at achieving these ends already takes place. V. Enhancing efforts to realize the right to development 10. There is little disagreement, if any, within and beyond the Human Rights Council that international cooperation is required to address the basic structural obstacles, such as poverty and underdevelopment, to the realization of many economic, social and cultural rights, as well as certain civil and political rights.6 In this regard, the comparative advantage enjoyed by United Nations human rights bodies, especially the Human Rights Council, lies in the area of finding ways and means to give effect to the right to development both within and between States. 11. Many States agree that the post-2015 development agenda should adhere to human rights principles, including the principle that all peoples are entitled to the enjoyment of the right to economic, social and political development, as set out in, for example, the Declaration on the Right to Development and article 22 of the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights.7 The basic emergent idea here is that the effort to realize the right to development ought no longer to be based primarily on a concept of “charitable giving” but should be founded on the normative entitlement of every human being and society to be free from extreme poverty and deprivation, one that ought to be stoutly supported and enhanced by a system of accountability. Instructively in this regard, in its recent report, the High-Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda8 called on the United Nations, its Member States, regional organizations, civil society and all concerned to make the following “five big transformative shifts": (a) Move from reducing to ending poverty (with no one left behind); (b) Put sustainability at the core of development; (c) Transform economies for jobs and inclusive growth; (d) Build peace, as well as effective, open and accountable institutions for all; (e) Forge a new global partnership, based at least in part on mutual accountability. 12. The prominence and emphasis given to accountability in the conception and articulation of these “five big transformative shifts” reflect the gradual congealing in our time of a new consensus on the ways to advance the development agenda. It is a reflection of this gradually emerging consensus that the Secretary-General, in his report on the post2015 development agenda,9 also called for the entrenchment of accountability in the conception and execution of that agenda. Indeed, at the very least, in paragraph 75 of that 6 7 8 9 6 Z. Kedzia, statement before the Advisory Committee on international cooperation in the field of human rights, Geneva, 13 August 2013; and Human Rights Council resolution 23/3. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Realizing the Right to Development (Geneva, OHCHR, 2013). See A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development, available at www.post2015hlp.org/the-report. “A life of dignity for all: accelerating progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and advancing the United Nations development agenda beyond 2015” (A/68/202 and Corr.1). See also S.P.Marks, ed., Implementing the Right to Development: The Role of International Law (Geneva: FES, 2008), p. 131; and O.C. Okafor, “The status and effect of the right to development in contemporary international law: towards a South-North entente” in African Journal of International and Comparative Law, vol. 7 (1995), p. 865.

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