Implementation Of The Right To Development At The National Level

It has been over25years since the adoption of the Declaration on the Right toDevelopment by the United Nations General Assembly. In general, this period can beseen as a time when the right to development has been progressively mainstreamed.At the international level, many influential international human rights instrumentshave reiterated that the right to development is an inalienable, fundamental anduniversal human right after the Declaration on the Right to Development, includingthe1993Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action, the2000United NationsMillennium Declaration, and the2010outcome document of the High-level PlenaryMeeting of the sixty-fifth session of the General Assembly of the MillenniumDevelopment Goals. At the regional level, the right to development has beenarticulated by two binding human rights charter, namely the1981African Charter onHuman and People’s Rights, and the2004Arab Charter on Human Rights.Within the United Nations system, the efforts of the human right bodies to recognizeand promote the right to development have been constant. The United Nations hasestablished a series of mechanisms to support the right to development, namely theWorking Group of Governmental Experts on the Right to Development (1981-1989),the Working Group in the Right to Development (1993-1995), the IntergovernmentalGroup of Experts on the Right to Development (1996-1997), and the current open-ended working group (1998-2012) in its capacity of reviewing the implementingprogress of the right to development, along with an independent expert (1998-2003)and a high-level taskforce on the implementation of the right to development(2004-2010).1These working groups and the independent expert release reportsalmost every year, therefore, the right to development has been an issue discussedannually since it first entered the resolution of the human right commission in the1970s. Additionally, the General Secretary and the High Commissioner for HumanRights of the United Nations also frequently write special reports on the right todevelopment, which give greater importance to this newly recognized human right.All human rights, including the right to development, can only be truly meaningful ifthey are fully implemented at the national level. Taking into account that the deadlineof the Millennium Development Goals is coming in three years, there is still a longway to go as to the implementation of the right to development at the national level,especially in the developing world and least developed countries. It is in this contextthat this article tries to explore the main obstacles to the implementation of the right todevelopment. The article is divided into three parts:Part Ⅰ aims at clarifying the concept and the value of the right to development. This isnecessary in order to determine what is the right to development, who enjoys thisright, and who shall guarantee its implementation, questions must be answered priorto identifying the obstacles to its implementation. In the academic community, threetypes of definition on the right to development have been drawn: the individual rightto development, a collective right to development, and a state’s right to development.This article accepts the position of the Declaration on the Right to Development, andargues that the right to development belongs to every individual and all peoples, andthat every individual and all peoples are entitled to meaningfully participate in thedevelopment process, and equally enjoy the benefit of the development process.However, there are still some countries and scholars who deny the existence of a human right to development. Therefore, the last section analyzes the value of the rightto development, for example, placing an equal emphasis on the two generations ofhuman rights, attracting more resources from the international financial anddevelopment institutions, and helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.Part Ⅱ gives analysis to the obstacles to the implementation of the right todevelopment at the national level. Due to the close links between the level ofeconomic growth and the degree of implementing this human right, this part dividescountries into developing groups and developed groups. In the former groups, a caseof historic value-Endorois minority community v. Kenya has been selected, as is thefirst time that the right to development has been successfully applied in the legal area.In this case, the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights ruled the Kenyaviolated the community’s right to development by depriving them of their ancestralland to build national park without the community’s informed consent and withoutproviding compensation. Starting from this case, this part identifies the main obstaclesto the implementation of the right to development in developing areas. They includethe limitation of the available resources, the negative impact of the globalization, anda lack of the official assistance from the international community. Meantime, it is thisarticle’s opinion that the human right to development is not only a necessary right forindividuals and peoples living in developing world, it is also a beneficial human rightof those in developed countries, who are threatened by economic crisis and terrorism.The last part focuses on looking for a better channel for the implementation of theright to development in China. Although China has made great progress inguaranteeing this right, there is more that can be done by gaining experience from, forexample, the Wukan Event. This article believes good governance is one of the bestways to implement the right to development in China.There are several creative points in this article. First of all, the only legal caseinvolving the right to development–the Endorois case is a study to draw conclusions on the developing groups. Secondly, unlike most of the official discussions andacademic writings, this article firmly believes that the right to development is also anecessary human right of individuals and peoples in developed world, in that there issuffering from economic crisis, poverty, joblessness, and terrorism. Finally, thisarticle suggests that the right to development should be reinforced by goodgovernance in China from the perspective of its three basic elements: namelystrengthening citizen participation, improving public service delivery and combatingcorruption.