A/HRC/24/27
12.
OHCHR plans to launch in 2013 a publication entitled, Realizing the Right to
Development: Essays in commemoration of 25 years of the United Nations Declaration on
the Right to Development. This publication presents for the first time a wide range of indepth analytical studies by more than 30 international experts covering the context,
meaning and application of this right and its potential to shape human rights and
development policy and practice. Together the experts support the concept of an enabling
environment for development that would ensure freedom from want and freedom from fear
for all people. The contributions to this publication illustrate the far-reaching potential of
the right to development and its relevance more than 25 years after the adoption of the
Declaration. They make the case for reinvigorating attention given to this right in order to
realize its added value to advancing human rights, development and peace and security in
an increasingly interdependent, fragile and changing world, including in the post-2015
agenda for sustainable development.
B.
Events and initiatives
1.
Support to relevant Human Rights Council mandate mechanisms
13.
In April 2013, OHCHR provided Secretariat support in the organization of the
informal intersessional meeting of the Working Group on the Right to Development and of
the fourteenth annual session of the Working Group which took place from 13 to 17 May
2013. At this session, the Working Group completed the first reading of the draft right to
development operational sub-criteria under attribute 1. The Working Group recommended,
inter alia, continuing, at its fifteenth session, its work on the consideration of the draft
operational sub-criteria with the first reading of the remaining operational sub-criteria.
14.
The opening statement of the High Commissioner recalled the importance that the
Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action placed on the right to development. It
highlighted a number of fundamental challenges confronting the world: climate change,
environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity impacted heavily on the human rights of
present and future generations; rising inequalities still left vast numbers of people in abject
poverty; demographic changes and the changing contours of geopolitical and economic
relations, as well as multiple crises, placed new demands on governance at all levels and
called for coherent and human rights-based policies. The Declaration on the Right to
Development enshrined a comprehensive, human-centred development paradigm that
aimed at the improvement of human well-being for all. It recognized that every human
person was entitled to participate in, contribute to and enjoy a development process in
which all human rights could be fully realized.1
15.
From 1 to 3 October 2012, OHCHR organized the Social Forum of the Human
Rights Council, which focused on people-centred development and globalization. Over the
course of the Forum more than 35 experts and individuals participated in nine panel
discussions and one round-table discussion which covered issues such as sustainable
development, financing for development, social movements, women’s rights, democratic
governance and participatory development. In a video message, Tawakkol Karman, 2011
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, called on people to “make globalization into a positive
phenomenon that could benefit all people” and stated that “there is no peace without justice
and development”. The official proceedings of the Social Forum were supplemented by a
full programme of side events which addressed such themes as youth advocacy, the
solidarity economy and the participation of older persons in society. Discussions
1
For the full text of the High Commissioner’s statement, see
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=13320&LangID=E.
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