A/HRC/45/40 I. Introduction 1. In its resolution 39/9, the Human Rights Council decided that its Working Group on the Right to Development, at its twentieth session, was to commence the discussion to elaborate a draft legally binding instrument on the right to development through a collaborative process of engagement, including on the content and scope of the future instrument. The Council also decided that the Chair-Rapporteur of the Working Group was to prepare a draft legally binding instrument on the basis of the discussions held during the twentieth session of the Working Group and the resource material from previous Working Group sessions to serve as a basis for substantive negotiations on a draft legally binding instrument, commencing at its twenty-first session. In the same resolution, the Council requested the Human Rights Council Advisory Committee, while taking into account the views of Member States, to prepare a research-based report on the importance of a legally binding instrument on the right to development and to present the report to the Council at its forty-fifth session. 2. The mandate for preparing the present report was tightly circumscribed to the importance of a legally binding instrument on the right to development. Issues such as content and scope, type and structure, institutional arrangements and compliance procedures of such a legally binding instrument are under consideration in a parallel process of the Working Group on the Right to Development. Accordingly, they are not covered in the present report. 3. At its twenty-second session, held in Geneva from 18 to 22 February 2019, the Advisory Committee was informed of the request to prepare the report. In response, it established a drafting group, currently composed of Lazhari Bouzid, Milena Costas Trascasas, Ion Diaconu, Ludovic Hennebel (Chair), Xinsheng Liu, Ajai Malhotra (Rapporteur), Elizabeth Salmón and Cheikh Tidiane Thiam. 4. The secretariat of the Advisory Committee circulated notes verbales on 21 February 2019 and 17 May 2019, seeking inputs from stakeholders for the preparation of the present report in line with its mandate. Nine replies were received to the notes verbales. 1 Inputs were also provided by participants in Advisory Committee meetings held in Geneva on 23 July 2019 and 19 February 2020, during which the first and second drafts, respectively, of the present report were discussed.2 II. Affirmation of the right to development 5. In its resolution 4 (XXXIII), adopted in 1977, the Commission on Human Rights first explicitly recognized the right to development as a human right and recommended that a study on the international dimensions of that right be undertaken. 6. Adopted in 1981, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights was one of the first to address the right to development at the regional level. In its article 22, it is noted that all peoples are to have the right to their economic, social and cultural development, and that States are to have the duty, individually or collectively, to ensure the exercise of the right to development. 7. A groundbreaking development was the Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by the General Assembly in its resolution 41/128. In the Declaration, the Assembly 1 2 Replies were received from four Member States (Iraq, Liechtenstein, Mexico and Switzerland), the European Union and four non-governmental organizations (Al-Haq, Amnesty International, Association Nationale de Promotion et de Protection des Droits de l’Homme, and Associazione Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII). Statements on the first draft were made by Bolivia (Plurinational State of); China; Cuba; and Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement; as well as the International Human Rights Association of America Minorities. Statements on the second draft were made by Azerbaijan, as Chair of the Geneva Chapter of the Non-Aligned Movement; Cuba; Egypt; India; Namibia; the Russian Federation; and Venezuela (Bolivarian Republic of), on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement; as well as the European Union and Associazione Comunità Papa Giovanni XXIII. 3