Human development and human rights mutually essential

In a world of widespread want and growing national and international inequalities, an inclusive and fair system of governance is needed at both domestic and global levels for the realization of human rights and human development, according to the UNDP’s Human Development Report 2000.

by Chakravarthi Raghavan

GENEVA: Human development is essential for realizing human rights, and human rights essential for full human development, with poverty as much a human rights issue as arbitrary arrest, according to the Human Development Report 2000.

The torture of one person causes outrage, while the deaths of more than 30,000 children every day from preventable causes go unnoticed, the annual flagship publication of the UN Development Programme, which this year focuses on “Human Rights and Human Development”, points out. The 290-page report was released on 29 June.

The advances made in the 20^th century on human rights and human development, the report says, are unprecedented, but there is still a long way to go.

There has been much progress in achieving freedom from want and improving the standard of living: malnutrition has been reduced from 37% to 27% between 1980 and 1999; the percentage of those in rural areas with access to safe water has increased from 13% to 71%; and there has been spectacular progress in some countries in reducing income-poverty - such as in China, from 33% in 1978 to 7% in 1994.

Yet many deprivations remain worldwide - more than one billion are income-poor, living on less than $1 a day; more than a billion in the developing world lack access to safe water, while more than 2.4 billion lack adequate sanitation.

Many impressive gains have been made around the world with regard to civil and political liberties, with many ugly regimes giving way to democracies. “But the growing national and international inequalities threaten to erode the hard-won gains,” the report warns.

Global inequalities in income have increased in the 20^th century by orders of magnitude out of proportion to anything experienced before. The gap in income between rich and poor, which stood at about 3 to 1 in 1820, rose to 35 to 1 in 1950, 44 to 1 in 1973 and 72 to 1 in 1992.

Data on world income distribution shows a sharp increase in inequality, with the Gini coefficient deteriorating from 0.63 in 1988 to 0.66 in 1993 (0 signifies perfect equality, and 1 perfect inequality). The gap between rich and poor is widening in many countries - rising by more than 16% between 1987-88 and 1993-95 in Sweden, the UK and the US - and remains very high in much of Latin America. Meanwhile economic growth has stagnated in many developing countries, and the average annual per capita income growth between 1990-98 was negative in 50 countries, only one of which was an OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the “’rich countries’ club”) country.

Bold new measures

Bold new measures are needed, says the HDR, and every country needs to strengthen its social arrangements for securing human freedoms, with norms, institutions, legal frameworks and an enabling economic environment. Legislation alone is not enough.

The fulfilment of all human rights requires a democracy that is inclusive - protecting the rights of minorities, providing separation of powers and ensuring public accountability. Elections alone are not enough.

Poverty eradication is not only a development goal but a central challenge for human rights in the 21^st century. A decent standard of living, adequate nutrition, healthcare, education, decent work and protection against calamities are not just development goals, they are also human rights.

And of the many failures of human rights, the denial of these economic, social and cultural rights is widespread: some 90 million children worldwide are out of primary school, about 790 million are hungry and food-insecure, and about 1.2 billion live on less than $1 a day. “Even in the OECD countries 8 million people are under-nourished. In the US alone some 40 million are not covered by health insurance, and one adult in five in the US is functionally illiterate.”

Human rights in an integrated world, HDR-2000 says, requires global justice, and the state-centred model of accountability must be extended to the obligations of non-state actors and to the state’s obligations beyond national borders.

Actions of individual states have significant consequences for people’s lives outside their national borders; the WTO, the Bretton Woods institutions, global corporations, global NGO networks and global media all have significant impacts on the lives of people around the world; and more and more global rules are being developed in areas ranging from human rights to environment and trade - but developed separately, and with potential for conflict. There is little in the current global order binding states and global actors to promote human rights globally.

Global corporations have an enormous impact on human rights - in their employment practices, impact on the environment, support for corrupt regimes or their advocacy for policy changes. “Yet international laws hold states accountable, not corporations.”

Small and poor countries generally participate little in global economic rule-making. Just as nations need an inclusive democracy to guarantee respect for human rights, so the system of global governance needs to be transparent and fair, giving voice to small and poor countries, and releasing them from their marginalization from benefits of the global economy and technology.

Human rights and human development cannot be realized universally without stronger international action, especially to support disadvantaged people and countries and to offset growing global inequalities and marginalization, the report advocates. (SUNS4698)              

The above article first appeared in the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS) of which Chakravarthi Raghavan is the Chief Editor.

 © 2000, SUNS - All rights reserved. May not be reproduced, reprinted or posted to any system or service without specific permission from SUNS. This limitation includes incorporation into a database, distribution via Usenet News, bulletin board systems, mailing lists, print media or broadcast. For information about reproduction or multi-user subscriptions please e-mail <suns@igc.org >