Sustainable Development and Human Rights: global perspectives (original) (raw)

The Right to Development in the Era of Sustainable Development: A Legal Appraisal

37th IBIMA Conference Proceedings, 2021, Cordoba, Spain, 2021

In the context of globalization, to overcome various economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian dilemmas, the most influential international intergovernmental organization, United Nations has proposed a new interdisciplinary paradigm related to the right to development within the overview of initiatives regarding sustainable development. Precisely United Nations' activities have captivated the interest of legal academics and practitioners to analyze in their scientific demarche, as is done in the current paper, the impact of this new paradigm over its beneficiaries: individuals and the global community. Subsequently to the clarification of the essential concepts like as "development", "sustainability" and "sustainable development", according to the parameters of legal descriptive research, it seems appropriate to bring to attention the relevant legal framework related to the right to development, with references both to the hard law-such as United Nation Charter, International Covenant on Social, Economic and Cultural Rights, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights-and to soft law-such as Declaration on the Right to Development, Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Within the frame of the legal conceptual analyses, the interpretation of the United Nations' regulations offers the perfect reasoning to emphasize, in an innovator approach, the plurality of dimensions of the right to development-social, economic, cultural, politic-which might be revealed by its heterogeneous implementation in different fields of activity, and the principle of interdependence with other human rights, to propose, as personal initiative, the recognition of its sui generis nature and character, thanks to its continuous extension following the evolution of the global community. Based on the same United Nations legal framework and its accordance with current and future desirable moral, political, economical aims, operating with the evaluative method, it is demonstrated that, for satisfying guarantees of promotion and protection of the human rights, generally, and right to development, specifically, States have to be more determined to assume the collective commitments recommended by United Nations and to fulfill intricate duties related to the joint interaction of the right to development with other rights in the context of sustainable development as currently is expressed by and within the global community.

Human Rights Based Sustainable Development: Essential Frameworks for an Integrated Approach

There is a need for a new integrated paradigm that equally regards the social, economic, cultural and environmental pillars as capitals. This paper addresses the theoretical and practical implication that human rights have if placed at the center of sustainable development models. Through an examination of the limits of legal human rights and sustainable economic development, the article offers innovative insights for a rights-based model to implement international sustainable development. The model offers new insights in the discussion of the pillars of sustainability while inspiring a process that is based on responsibilities and rights at the economic, social, environmental, cultural and institutional levels.

The human rights principle for sustainable development governance

Sustainable development is impossible without a continuous care for the implementation of human rights as made explicit in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights-related principles of the Rio and Rio+20 Declarations. However, a full implementation of human rights would not automatically lead to sustainable development. As an exercise in coordinating complex systems of interlinked socio-economic processes in a dynamic of increasing globalisation, fair and effective sustainable development governance will always be troubled by cognitive complexity and moral pluralism. Even if we would all agree on the knowledge base of a sustainable development related problem, then opinions could still differ about the acceptability of solutions. The natural and social sciences can inform us about the character of options, they cannot always clarify the choice to make. Advancing from this rationale, the paper argues that, added to the fields of human rights concerning a fair socio-economic ‘organisation’ of our society, fair and effective sustainable development governance implies the right for every human ‘to contribute to making sense of what is at stake’. In practice, this social justice based concern for human intellectual capacity building translates as a concern for free and pluralist advanced education, inclusive and transdisciplinary knowledge generation and inclusive, deliberative multi-level decision making. The paper concludes with the argumentation that a rights-based approach to intellectual capacity building, supporting ‘the right to be responsible' for every human, is the only way to enable the possibility of global sustainable development governance in a complex and pluralist world.

Human Rights as a Tool for Sustainable Development

CEFAGE-UE Working …, 2009

In poor as much as in rich countries there is a fear that environmentally sustainable development might be contradictory to development in general and equitable development in particular. There could be indeed a contradiction between environmental and social sustainability, too much care for the environment eventually leading to forgetting about the people. The purpose of this paper is to explore institutional principles and tools that allow the conciliation between environmental and social sustainability. In this respect we will present human rights based political economy as an institutional tool of this sort. We will show how a human-rights based political economy could at the same time respect ecological sustainability and social equity. One of the reasons for that consists in the fact that within a human-rights based political economy, welfare is not the result of economic growth, as within traditional political economy, but of justice. The main objectives of development will be attained, therefore, not through growth but through redistribution of resources or of access to resources. In this paper more specific aspects will be presented by examining the human right to work and the human right to water. Regarding the human right to work the main aspect which will be stressed is that within a human rights frame full employment becomes disconnected from both growth and labour market deregulation. It will be shown that traditional policies not only do not solve unemployment but are also not environmentally and socially sustainable. The only policy that is not contradictory with either human rights and de-growth is work sharing by decreasing the length of the work day. When properly enforced this policy has, indeed, historically shown to be the only one that has created jobs. Regarding the right to water, the point is that democratic and human rights oriented exploitation and distribution policies of water are both more sustainable and more equitable than those that intend to transform water into a private good as any other and, thus, promote commodification and privatisation of resources. This way of controlling water exploitation and distribution not only may relieve pressure from the resource but also alleviate deprivation of poorer families, conciliating, therefore, environmental and social sustainability.

Assessing the sustainable development goals from a human rights perspective

Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 2016

Though they improve upon the millennium development goals (MDGs), the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) have important draw-backs. First, in assessing present deprivations, they draw our attention to historical comparisons. Yet, that things were even worse before is morally irrelevant; what matters is how much better things could be now. Second, like the MDGs, the SDGs fail to specify any division of labor to ensure success. Therefore, should progress stall, we won't know who is responsible to get us back on track. We won't “end poverty in all its forms everywhere” without an agreement on who is to do what. Third, although the SDGs contain a goal calling for inequality reduction, this goal is specified so that the reduction need not start till 2029. Such delay would cause enormous death and suffering among the poor and enable the rich to shape national and supranational design in their own favor.

Human Rights and Sustainable Development Goals: A Pathway to Fulfill the Compulsion of Human Rights

ELCOP Yearbook of Human Rights 2018: Human Rights and Digital Age, 2018

The catchphrase of Sustainable Development Goals 'Leave no one behind' is a symbol of hope and aspiration in attaining justice against inequality, discrimination, expulsion and sufferings. This paper intends to show the in-depth connection between sustainable development goals and human rights. Human rights deal with the right of the individuals whereas, the SDGs work with the establishment of such rights in a collective manner. Therefore, this paper also advocates that in order to fulfill the commitment of establishing human rights, SDGs will show the pathway in a easier way to achieve them. Human rights have emerged as a major theme from the UN-led process and debate to set a 2030 development agenda. The perspective of peace and security, good governance, rule of law and gender equality are of a particular importance in setting the future targets and goals which are also relevant with the human rights agenda in different international and regional treaties. It is essential to include in the 2030 development agenda a requirement for national governments and international stakeholders to frame their apaproach to economic and social development with clear commitments to with time realization of human rights for mankind and with strengthened systems of participation, transparency and accountability. The human rights commitments should include plans for improving gender equality, health, education, nutrition, good governance, water and sanitation, land and housing.

Right to Sustainable Development as One of the Rights of Humanity

Studia Iuridica, 2020

Right of humanity to development is described within the global search for responses to the planetary challenges. The idea of the rights of humanity is an attempt to propose the new approach to human rights protection, based on global interdependency. The article offers analysis of soft law documents on human right to development, as well as regional instruments for protection of human and peoples’ rights. It is argued that right to sustainable development viewed as a right of humanity may create a broader mechanism of protection both for individual human being and humanity in general.

Strengthening the Sustainable Development Goals through integration with human rights

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics

This paper discusses the relationship between the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the long-standing human rights system of the United Nations. Thematically, these two modes of global governance strongly overlap. Several SDGs are in line with human rights obligations. At the same time, the SDGs and human rights are based on divergent logics and constructed very differently. After capturing the key characteristics of the two governance modes, this paper highlights the differences between the SDGs and human rights and introduces a novel conceptualisation to enhance our understanding of the relationship between rights-based and goal-based approaches. Against this backdrop, we assess this relationship and argue that human rights have the potential to strengthen and reinforce the SDGs. In particular, we sketch some future pathways to better integrate the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development with existing human rights instruments to enhance accountability, review, and participa...