A/HRC/21/28 North Africa. Participants in the discussions also stressed the need to mainstream the right to development and human rights-based thinking into development policymaking, to move to an empirical framework and towards development-centred globalization. 14. In December 2011, OHCHR gave a presentation on the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development at an event organized jointly by the Australian Council for International Development and the United Nations Information Centre in Canberra. The OHCHR representative highlighted the topicality of the Declaration and the need to analyse the economic crises from that perspective. She pointed to the need to include human rights considerations when assessing progress in development, and drew particular attention to the challenges for realizing the right to development in the Pacific. 15. The global commemoration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development included a statement made by the Secretary-General,9 who called on world leaders to respond to the demands of people who seek to build their own future.10 16. The second seminar on the promotion and strengthening of the rights of people of African descent in Central America, organized by OHCHR in February 2012, devoted a day to a discussion on the issue of people of African descent and the right to development. During the discussion, ideas were exchanged on how to integrate a human rights-based approach to development for people of African descent in Central America and the Caribbean. 17. In March 2012, the Office organized a lecture on the right to development for professors and students of universities in the Russian Federation, who visited OHCHR within the framework of the human rights orientation programme of the OHCHR Human Rights Masters Programme. This is an example of numerous presentations, briefings and lectures that OHCHR continues to deliver at civil society gatherings, academic institutions and universities and to the general public on the right to development. 18. In March 2012, the Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights participated in the special high-level meeting with the Bretton Woods Institutions, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and UNCTAD on the theme “Coherence, coordination and cooperation in the context of financing for development”. Attention was drawn to the human rights dimension of this issue. Participants in the meeting stated that human rights establish minimum standards and provide criteria for prioritizing. Human rights policy coherence was therefore particularly important, for States as much as for the United Nations and other international actors, to ensure a credible and coherent response to economic and social challenges, with human rights as the baseline and yardstick. 19. OHCHR co-sponsored a side event during the special high-level meeting on the theme “People-centred development: creating an enabling environment for productive investment and decent jobs”. Attention was particularly drawn to the need to avoid social disruption as a result of budget cuts to the detriment of human rights, to the need to shift macroeconomic policies towards people-centred development, and to assess economic policy using the ethical lens of human rights standards. The Office placed a web-story on that occasion on its website.11 9 10 11 6 See www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Development/Pages/DevelopmentIndex.aspx. See also www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=40608&Cr=sustainable+ development&Cr1=. See www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/PeoplecentredDevelopmentWhattheArabSpringtaughtus.aspx.