A/HRC/33/45 I. Introduction 1. The Working Group on the Right to Development was established pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 1998/72, with a mandate to monitor and review progress made in the promotion and implementation of the right to development, as elaborated in the Declaration on the Right to Development, at the national and international levels, providing recommendations thereon and further analysing obstacles to its full enjoyment, focusing each year on specific commitments in the Declaration; to review reports and any other information submitted by States, United Nations agencies, other relevant international organizations and non-governmental organizations on the relationship between their activities and the right to development; and to present for the consideration of the Commission a sessional report on the deliberations of the Working Group, including advice to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on the implementation of the right to development and suggesting possible programmes of technical assistance at the request of interested countries, with the aim of promoting the implementation of the right to development. 2. In its resolution 30/28, the Human Rights Council decided to convene a two-day formal meeting of the Working Group, after the seventeenth session, to consider the report of the Chair-Rapporteur containing standards for the implementation of the right to development (A/HRC/WG.2/17/2). 3. The Working Group convened its seventeenth session in Geneva from 25 April to 3 May 2016. II. Organization of the session 4. In her opening statement,1 the Deputy United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights noted that, although the thirtieth anniversary of the Declaration on the Right to Development was overshadowed by many crises facing the world, there were also signs of hope. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement on climate change gave new impetus to the realization of the right to development, for which the international community had to be made accountable. Despite record economic growth, millions of people had been left behind or left out. The progress made towards the realization of the right to development was uneven. Persistent poverty and deepening inequalities were major threats to development, human rights and peace and security. Violence – in the Syrian Arab Republic, Iraq, Burundi, Ukraine and Yemen – was destroying the hard won gains of development, killing hundreds of thousands of people and forcibly displacing millions from their homes. This was an issue that also fell within the reach of the right to development, a right that offered much-needed prevention; it could address root causes, and help to meet structural challenges at all levels, including at the international level, where some of those challenges originated. The year 2016 was a special one, as the international community celebrated both the thirtieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development and the fiftieth anniversary of the International Covenants on Human Rights. The Declaration was a milestone in reuniting the rights contained in the two covenants, in underlining the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and interrelatedness of all human rights. Central to the right to development was also the full realization of the right of peoples to self-determination, a 1 The full text of the statement is available from www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Development/Pages/17thSession.aspx. 3