The first article of the text of the Declaration on the Right to Development succinctly puts forward the concept of the right development. It states, “The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in and contribute to and enjoy economic, social, cultural, and political development in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised”. First, there is a human right that is called the right to development, and this right is ‘inalienable’, meaning it cannot be bargained away. Then, there is a process of “economic, social, cultural, and political development”, which is recognised as a process in which “all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised”. The right to development is a human right, by virtue of which, “ every human person and all peoples are entitled to “participate in, contribute to and enjoy” that processes of development.

Subsequent articles in the Declaration clarify the nature of this process of development further and elaborate on the principles of exercising the right to development. For example, Article 1 recognises that not only ‘every human person’ but ‘all peoples’ are entitled to the right to development. Article 1, clause 2, even explicitly refers to the right of peoples to self-determination. But that does not mean that ‘peoples’ rights’ can be seen as countering to or in contradistinction from an individual’s or ‘every human person’s’ right. Article 2, clause 1 categorically states that it is ‘the human person’ who is the central subject of development, in the sense of the “active participant and beneficiary of the right to development”. Even if ‘peoples’ or collectives of ‘human persons’ are entitled to some rights, such as full sovereignty over the natural wealth and resources in terms of territory, it is the individual human person who must be the active participant in and beneficiary of this right.

The process of development, “in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised,” would lead to, according to Article 2, clause 3, “the constant improvement of the well-being of the entire population and of all individuals, on the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and in the fair distribution of benefits resulting there from”. Article 8 elaborates this point further by stating that the measures for realising the right to development shall ensure, “equality of opportunity for all” in their access to basic resources, education, health services, food, housing, employment and in the fair distribution of income. The realisation of the right would also require that women have an active role in the development process, and that “appropriate economic and social reforms should be carried out with a view to eradicating all social injustices”.

To realise this process of development to which every human person is entitled by virtue of his right to development, there are responsibilities to be borne by all the concerned parties; ‘the human persons’, ‘the states operating nationally’, and ‘the states operating internationally’. According to Article 2, clause 2, “all human beings (persons) have a responsibility for development individually and collectively,” and they must take appropriate actions, maintaining “full respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as their duties to the community”. Human persons thus are recognised to function both individually and as members of collectives or communities and to have duties to communities that are necessary to be carried out in promoting the process of development.

But “the primary responsibility for the creation of national and international conditions favourable to the realisation of the right to development” is of the states, as Article 3 categorically suggests. This responsibility is complementary to the individual’s responsibility as mentioned above, and is only for the creation of conditions for realising the right and not for actually realising the right itself. Only the individuals themselves can realise the right. The actions of the states needed for creating such conditions are to be undertaken at both the national and the international levels. At the national level, Article 2, clause 3 points out that “states have the right and the duty to formulate appropriate national development policies,” and Article 8 says that states should undertake...“all necessary measures for the realisation of the right to development,” and again, “should encourage popular participation in all spheres”. In addition, the states are required by Article 6, clause 3, to take steps “to eliminate obstacles to development resulting from failure to observe civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights,” because the implementation, promotion and protection of these rights would be essential for realising the right to development as “all human rights and fundamental freedoms are indivisible and interdependent”. (Article 6, clause 2) The states are also expected to take resolute steps to “eliminate the massive and flagrant violation of human rights” resulting from apartheid, racial discrimination, colonialism, foreign domination and occupation, etc, (Article 5).

In regards to the obligation of the states operating at the international level, the Declaration emphasises the crucial importance of international cooperation. First, the states have a duty “to cooperate with each other in ensuring development and diminishing obstacles to development...and fulfill these duties in such a manner as to promote a new international economic order based on sovereign equality, interdependence, mutual interest...” (Article 3, clause 3). This has been further reiterated in Article 6, which states that “all states should cooperate with a view to promoting, encouraging and strengthening universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms”. Indeed clauses 2 and 3 clarify conditions required to fulfill the realisation of fundamental freedoms and human rights as mentioned in Article 1. “All human rights and fundamental freedoms are indivisible and interdependent” and the “implementation, promotion, and protection of civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights deserve equal attention (Article 6, clause 2). And failure to observe civil and political rights as well as economic, social, and cultural rights may result in obstacles to development that the states are responsible to eliminate” (Article 6, clause 3).

Finally, according to Article 4, the states have the duty, individually and collectively, to formulate international development policies to facilitate the realisation of the right to development. It recognises that sustained action is required to promote rapid development of developing countries and then declares, “As a complement to the efforts of developing countries, effective international cooperation is essential in providing these countries with appropriate means and facilities to foster their comprehensive development”.

The Vienna Declaration of 1993 to which we have referred to above and which established the consensus about the right to development as a human right reaffirms the solemn commitment of all states to fulfill these obligations in accordance with the charter of the UN (para 1); that states should cooperate with each other in ensuring development and eliminating obstacles to development, and that the international community should promote effective international cooperation for the realisation of the right to development (para 10); that progress towards the implementation of the right to development requires effective development policies at the national level, and a favourable as well as equitable economic environment at the international level (para 10), and that the international community should make all efforts to alleviate specific problems such as the external debt burden of developing countries to supplement the efforts of the governments of these countries.

The covenants on civil and political rights and on economic, social, and cultural rights both call for international cooperation. But the Declaration on the Right to Development talks about that cooperation in the most concrete terms and places squarely on the international community the obligation to cooperate to make a success of the process of development together with appropriate policies and measures adopted by the national players. Furthermore, combining the implementation of the right to development with the other rights and a manner of exercising it which is consistent with fundamental freedoms envisions an approach to development which elevates the process of its realisation to the exercise of a human right.

The last point can be illustrated by referring to a specific right and the progress in its treatment in any programme for the realisation of the different rights. For example, the right to housing was recognised as an element in the right to adequate standard of living in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of 1948. It was incorporated almost in the same form as Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights of 1966. Since a covenant has the status of an international treaty, this was a clear step forward from the Universal Declaration. The Article 11 in the covenant states, “ The state parties to the present covenant recognise the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing, and to the continuous improvement of living conditions. The state parties will take appropriate steps to ensure the realisation of this right, recognising to this effect the essential importance of international cooperation based on free consent.”5

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which has been the treaty body established by the ECOSOC to monitor and interpret the implications of the different components of the covenant, examined the right to (adequate) housing in their general comments. It stated that the right, “should be seen as a right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity...which should be ensured to all persons irrespective of income or access to economic resources... (article 11.1) must be read as referring not just to housing but to adequate housing, (which means) adequate privacy, adequate space, adequate security, adequate lighting and ventilation, adequate basic infrastructure and adequate location with regard to work and basic facilities – all at a reasonable cost.”6

This interpretation is no doubt a further advance from the formulation in the covenant about what is meant by adequate housing. But it falls short of the standard of the right to development. The second part of the general comments lays down the characteristics of adequate housing, but even if the supply of such housing expanded substantially, it will not be fulfilling the right to development unless the individual persons have the freedom to choose what they want from among them. The first part of the comment sets forth that this right should be seen as a right to live somewhere in security, peace and dignity, (even if it is granted that it could be practically ensured to all irrespective of income or access to economic resources). But who decides what is that ‘somewhere’ that an individual can live in security, peace and dignity? For realising the right to development, that freedom to choose, through participation in decision-making, transparently and with accountability, with equality of access, and have a fair share in the benefits, would be just as important as the supply of the housing at reasonable cost through an appropriate policy of development. In a real world situation, that freedom to choose may have to be exercised carefully, within the overall constraints of resources and appropriate, democratically arrived at procedures of maximising the choice in the presence of the possibility of disagreement among the different potential claimants. But that freedom must be there in exercising the right to housing as a part of the right to development. The state or any other authority cannot decide arbitrarily where an individual should live just because the supplies of such housing are made available.

The problem of realising the right to development, viewed from this perspective, would not appear to be just designing a set of national and international policies to implement the elements of economic, social and cultural rights, as enunciated in the covenant together with civil and political rights, but also in exercising the human rights approach of respecting the fundamental freedom of individuals to choose the lives they want to live, and exercising the rights they want to claim, transparently and accountably, through participation, with equal access, and with fair share of the benefits. The process of free exercise of the right to development is as important as the increase in the supply of means or resources that facilitate the enjoyment of those rights.

Internationally, the states other than where the rights – claimants reside if they are party to the international agreement recognising those rights would also have the obligation to do everything possible to help in delivering those rights. The Declaration on the Right to Development and the Vienna Declaration have spelt out the international obligations to cooperate for realising these human rights which belong to individuals as human beings irrespective of their residence, citizenship, nationality, or religion. But even without these relatively recent declarations, the charter of the UN enjoins upon them the duty to cooperate in fulfilling human rights. They are supposed to adopt international policies and set aside resources for the purpose of realising these rights.

There is a long history behind the rise of human rights to such a predominant position of influence over government actions. The notion that every human being is entitled to some basic rights was the inspiration behind most of the revolutions in history including the English, American, French, Mexican, Russian, and Chinese. The last half of the 20th century, as noted in the Encyclopedia Britannica, may be fairly said to mark the birth of the international as well as universal recognition of human rights. In the treaty establishing the UN, all members obliged themselves to take joint and separate actions for the achievement of “universal respect for, and observance of, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion”. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) representatives from many diverse cultures endorsed the rights therein set forth “as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations”. And in 1976, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, each previously approved by the UN General Assembly in 1966, entered in force and effect. Indeed, the last half of the 20th century has seen in the words of human rights scholar, Louis Henkin, “essentially universal acceptance of human rights in principle,” such that, “no government dares to dissent from the ideology of human rights today”[Weston 1998: 2].7

Indeed, it is this point that no government now dares to ignore human rights that gives the claims based on human rights such pre-eminence. There is still of course a lot of disagreement about the nature of these human rights; which rights or claims are to be regarded as human rights and which are not, and how such rights are to be realised or implemented.

But once there is a consensus, established through a due process about the nature and identity of the human rights, the governments are obliged to try to deliver them. Whether they succeed or not would depend upon the design of the programmes of implementation, whether the governments command adequate physical, financial, and institutional resources required for this implementation, and whether the governments are able to reconcile or overcome the conflicts between different groups that may arise in the process of implementation. But the obligation to deliver this right becomes a major constraint, if not the binding constraint on the behaviour of the government.

This particular force in the notion of human rights, I submit, is derived from the origins of the human rights movement associated with the principles of social contract theory. This secular theory of social contract reversed the biblical concept of contract such as the one between god and Abraham. And instead of god choosing his people and their governors, people chose their governors who acted according to promises. The natural rights theorists, Hobbes (1588-1679), Locke (1632-1704) and Rousseau (1712-1778) were the principle proponents of this secular theory which was best exemplified by Locke’s claim during the English Revolution of 1688 that certain rights like the right to life, liberty, and property belonged to individuals as human beings because they existed in the state of nature before human beings entered civil society. Upon entering a civil society, those human beings surrendered through a social contract to the state only the right to enforce the natural rights, not the rights themselves. If the state failed to secure these rights, it violated the terms of the social contract and would be liable to be overthrown by a social revolution. A century after the English Revolution, the French Revolution of 1789 was supported by the natural rights theorists again in terms of action against the sovereign breaking the terms of the social contract and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen asserted that the rights of liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression are “natural, inalienable, and sacred.” Among other revolutionaries of the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson claimed that it was not only permissible, but morally required to overthrow tyrannies that violate these principles of “natural equity and justice,” that formed the basis of the legitimacy of the governments. The American Declaration of Independence openly proclaimed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it” [Tuck 1979: 3; Tuck 1986: 13; McKeon 1970: 4].8

The 18th century human rights movements thus established that there existed a set of human rights, which were derived from natural laws or any other generally accepted source of agreement and that the government was the product of a social contract between the people, and the states were instituted to carry out the tasks of governance to fulfil these rights, in accordance with the social contract. There have been serious disagreements about the basis and the nature of human rights and there are very few proponents of the theory of natural rights now. But the basic principles of the notion of social contract are still widely accepted and almost universally accommodated within national constitutions, lending legitimacy to governments. The national constitutions codify the rules and procedures to protect, promote and secure the rights of the individuals either separately or as members of groups or collectives; and national governments are expected to protect and uphold those constitutions. They are liable to be corrected by the rule of law and when necessary overthrown or changed. Internationally, the governments accept contracts with other governments determining their mutual behaviour or interactions through treaties, covenants, and declarations. In other words, the notion of social contracts has now become a universal principle, governing the behaviour of states operating both at the national and at the international levels.

For such social contracts, what is important is the acceptance by all parties of a set of ‘human rights’ which the state parties are obliged to fulfill. In the ultimate analysis, human rights are those rights which are given by people to themselves. They are not granted by any authority, nor are they derived from some overriding natural or divine principles. They are human rights because they are recognised as such by a community of peoples, flowing from their own conception of human dignity, in which these rights are supposed to be inherent. Once they are accepted through a process of consensus building, they become binding on at least those who are party to that process of acceptance.

The right to development when it is accepted as a human right through a legitimate process of consensus building, therefore, becomes a primary claim on resources of a country, – when resources are taken in the broadest sense as being whatever instrument that is necessary to realise certain objectives – physical, financial, or institutional. It also entails a legitimate right of reprimanding the parties which have the obligation to deliver as the counterpart to the holders of rights. The exact process of reprimanding may vary according to circumstances. For a national government, this can be executed through a judicial process of compensation or reparation if these rights which are violated are justiciable. Otherwise, it may follow the route of legislative changes and parliamentary sanctions. It can even take the form of changing or overthrowing the government.

Internationally such reprimand has taken the form of sanctions or international pressures. But more often than not, it has to be executed through public opinion or through the process of international law, compacts, or mutual agreements, especially when the obligation-holders are not just the national governments where the right-holders reside but all other governments who are party to the covenants establishing that right.

The importance of having a social contract around a set of human rights almost in the same form and spirit as in the 18th century was well recognised at the time of the formulation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the third preamble of the declaration, it was stated, “it is essential if man is not to be compelled to have recourse as a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”.9 That is the signal to approaching the problem of realisation of human rights through a legal process or a mutually enforced framework of positive action both at the national and at the international level. The right to development, once it is established as a human right would be entitled to similar treatment as it is meted out to any other universally accepted human right.

Discounting the purely political and cold war reasons for the countries taking their respective positions, the reasons for western countries supporting civil and political rights but opposing economic and social rights as human rights can be summed up as, (a) human rights are individual rights; (b) they have to be coherent, in the sense that each right-holder must have some corresponding duty-holder whose obligation would be to deliver the right and (c) human rights must be justiciable. All these criticisms, if they are valid, would hold against the right to development.

The identification of human rights completely in terms of individual rights would imply total acceptance of the theory of natural rights. As Donnelly puts it, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, “human rights are clearly and unambiguously conceptualised as being inherent to humans and not as the product of social cooperation. These rights are conceptualised as being universal and hold equally by all, that is as natural rights” [Donnelly 1985: 5; Alston 1979: 6; Alston 1988: 7; Sen 1999: 8].9 In that paradigm, human rights are only personal rights, based on negative freedom, such as the right to life, liberty and free speech, whereby the law prohibits others from killing, imprisoning, or silencing an individual who has a claim to such freedoms that the state is expected to protect. Economic and social rights are associated with positive freedoms which the state has to secure and protect through positive action. They are not natural rights, therefore, according to this view, not human rights. Collective rights are more than individual rights and to the extent the right to development is essentially linked to collective rights as well as positive economic rights, it would be disqualified from being regarded as a human right.

All these arguments have been substantially repudiated in literature. The Universal Declaration has many elements going beyond the principles of natural rights. In fact, it is firmly based on a pluralistic foundation of international law with many elements of economic and social rights, considering an individual’s personality as essentially moulded by the community [Alston 1988: 7].10 Indeed, logically, there is no reason to take the right of a group or a collective (people or nation, ethnic or linguistic groups) to be fundamentally different in nature from an individual’s human rights so long as it is possible to define the obligation to fulfil them and duty-holders to secure them. Even personal rights can be taken as rights to be protected by individuals and groups [Taylor 1986: 10; Dyke 1985: 11].11 Furthermore, it is well established that the identification of civil and political rights with negative rights and economic, social and cultural rights with positive rights is too superficial because both would require negative (prevention) as well as positive (promotion or protective) actions. So logically, it is hard to regard only civil and political right as human rights and economic and social and collective rights as not human rights. As we have noted above, it is ultimately for the concerned people to decide what they would regard as human rights and which the states would have the obligation to deliver [Alston 1988: 7].12

The second criticism, which Amartya Sen has described as ‘the coherence critique’ is spelt out as, “Rights are entitlements that require correlative duties. If person A has a right to some X, then there has to be some agency, say B, that has a duty to provide A with X. If no such duty is recognised, then the alleged right, in this view, cannot but be hollow.” This would seem to make it very difficult for many of the positive rights to be treated as rights proper, without identifying ‘agency-specific duties’, such as in the case of “every individual having a right to food, to medicine or to education”.

Sen believes that it is possible to resist the claim that any use of rights except with co-linked perfect obligation lacks cogency. In many legal contexts the claim may indeed have some merit, but in normative discussions rights are often championed as entitlements or powers of immunities that would be good for people to have. Human right are seen as rights shared by all – irrespective of citizenship – the benefits of which every person should have. While it is not the specific duty of any given individual to make sure that the person has his right fulfilled, the claim can be generally addressed to all those who are in a position to help.”13 Sen defines perfect obligation following Immanuel Kant as a specific duty of a particular agent for the realisation of a right, and then describes what Kant himself had characterised as “imperfect obligation”, – “When the claims are addressed generally to anyone who can help, even though no particular person or agency maybe be charged to bring about the fulfilment of the rights involved” [Sen 1999: 8].14

In terms of this approach, the assertion of a human right would require the identification of a set of duty-holders who are in a position to help to deliver the rights and that demands are placed on them that they should try to help. If these claims can be made legal, with appropriate legislation, covenant, or treaty, then such obligation may become binding. Otherwise, they remain a moral standard which may not have a legal sanction, but which in many situations maybe as forceful in persuading all the duty-holders to deliver those rights.

In this perspective, any economic or social right for an individual or a collective can qualify as a human right, provided the moral standard or the ethical assertion of the right is accepted by all people in a particular civil society; and provided it is possible to identify at least a group of possible duty-holders, if not one specific duty-holder, who are in a position to deliver that right and who are willing to accept their obligations to help. From that point of view, the economic, social, and cultural rights according to the international covenant, and the right to development according to the Declaration of 1986 are all human rights. They have been adopted by the international community of states through a legitimate process of consensus building at the UN and they have enumerated the rights and all the duty-holders. Primary among them being nation states complemented by the international community of other states and multilateral agencies. What would be needed is an agreement about the procedures to be followed and the programmes to be implemented by all the duty-holders. In addition, what maybe needed is to formulate a legislative basis for the obligations morally accepted to become legally obligatory.

It will be seen from these discussions that the third criticism that the human rights must be justiciable does not have a decisive force. The sceptics who doubt the appeal and effectiveness of ethical standards of rights-based arguments would not consider a right to be taken seriously unless the entitlements of those rights are sanctioned by a legal authority, such as the state, based on appropriate legislation. As Sen puts it, these sceptics would say, “Human beings in nature no more are born with human rights than they are born fully clothed; rights would have to be acquired through legislation, just as clothes are acquired through tailoring”[Sen 1999: 8].15

This criticism confuses human rights with legal rights. Human rights are based on moral standards on a view of human dignity, and which have many different ways of fulfilment depending  on the acceptability of the ethical base of the claims. This does not of course obfuscate the importance or usefulness of such human rights translated into legislated legal rights. In fact, every attempt should be made to formulate and adopt appropriate legislative instruments to ensure the realisation of the claims of a human right once it is accepted through consensus. These rights would then be backed by justiciable claims in courts and by authorities of enforcement. But to say that human rights cannot be invoked if they cannot be legally enforced would be most inappropriate. For many of the economic and social rights and the right to development, and even for some elements of civil and political rights, the positive actions that are necessary may often make it very difficult to identify precisely the obligations of particular duty-holders to make them legally liable to be prosecuted. Enacting appropriate legislative instruments for any of these rights would often be a stupendous task and it would be often useful and necessary to find alternative methods of enforcement of the obligations rather than through the courts of law.

Finding such monitoring agencies or consultative forums may often be the only way to enforce obligations of the international community, their agencies and governments, to cooperate in fulfilling the rights as envisaged in the right to development. Indeed, justiciability of international commitments must be dealt with differently from the enforcement of national obligations. The world has of course many different agencies of international arbitration of which the international court is only one. These are established institutions and procedures for settling trade and financial disputes. For human rights, however, such agencies may not be useful unless the failure of the obligation can be put in a relevant form admissible to these institutions. The human rights treaty bodies, operating mostly on reporting methods, may be often quite inadequate, even when direct complaint procedures are available. What would be needed in most cases is a forum where international agencies and concerned governments could get together and talk to each other. A transparent consultation mechanism, subject to the democratic pressure of public opinion may often play a much more significant role in enforcing institutional agreements, especially on human rights, than any outside judicial authority.

One of the most articulate defender of the third world position regarding collective rights, Georges Abi-Saab, a professor at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, suggests two possible definitions of collective rights. First, as a sum-total of double aggregation of the rights and of the individuals. (If there are n different rights, ri , i= 1,..n, and if there are m different individuals  j = 1,..m, having these rights, the collective rights will be R = Si Sj rij). This, as Abi-Saab says, has the intent of highlighting the link between the rights of an individual and the right of the collectivity. The second definition of collective rights is seen as a right from the collective perspective, “without going through the process of aggregating individual human rights by considering it either in the economic dimensions of the right of self-determination, or alternatively as a parallel right to self-determination.”16

Both these definitions build up on the rights of individuals. Indeed, the right to self-determination gives a nation, “the full sovereignty over all their natural wealth and resources” but that has to be exercised for the benefit of all individuals. In the case of an individual, the rights-holder is also the beneficiary of the exercise of the right. In the case of collective right, such as that to self-determination, the right-holder may be a collective such as a nation, but the beneficiary of the exercise of the right has to be the individual. There may of course be some occasion when the right of a particular individual may come into conflict with the right of a collective. An obvious example would be the closed-shop practices of a trade union conflicting with the right to work of a particular unemployed person. But the beneficiaries of a trade union practice must be all individual workers, and not just the trade union, as an organisation, its management and its treasury. It is also quite possible that different rights or different individuals enjoying a right may come into conflict in some specific situations. It would be necessary to institute some transparent procedures to resolve these conflicts. But such procedural restrictions in dealing with the exercise of a rights does not detract from the nature and importance of the collective right seen as built on individual rights.

It is important to note this point on the integral relationship between the collective and the individual in understanding the human rights approach to development. The Commission on Human Rights in a resolution (No 5 XXXV) as early as in 1975 – well before the declaration on the right to development was adopted – stated that “development is as much a prerogative of nations as of individuals within nations”. Indeed, in many cases individual rights can be satisfied only in a collective context and the right of a state or a nation to develop is a necessary condition for the fulfilment of the rights and the realisation of the development of individuals.

Indeed, most of the demands of the developing countries during the 1970s when the content of the right to development was negotiated can be put forward in these terms. The integrated programme of commodities, the generalised preference scheme, industrialisation, and technology transfers and all the essential components of the New International Economic Orders were the claims made on behalf of the developing countries which were all meant to be preconditions for development of all peoples in those countries. Many of these proposals may not be relevant any more in the changed conditions of the world economy and the developing countries themselves may not put them forward as parts of their development agenda. But during the 1970s and 1980s they were regarded as highly relevant and it is reflected in the wording of the preamble of the Declaration of the Right to Development. However, they were never meant to disregard the primacy of individual rights which used the foundations of human rights theory and which developed over time with collective rights complementing the individual rights. Those who detract from the significance of the right to development by arguing that it is a protection of a collective right of the state or the nation, in conflict with the individual rights foundations of the human rights tradition are more often than not politically motivated.

The third world proponents of the right to development also must take a serious note of the implication of the human rights approach to development as collective rights of a nation or a state. The exercise of those rights must lead to the realisation of the right of all individuals to development, which means a particular process of development where all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realised. We have analysed the text of the declaration to establish that this would imply (a) effective participation of all individuals in the decision-making and the execution of the process of development, which would necessarily require transparency and accountability of all activities; (b) equality of access to resources and (c) equity in the sharing of benefits. These are essential elements of the process of development which make the right to that process a human right and which is the foundation of a right to development – development with equity and justice. Now it must be clear that economic growth and development of a state or a nation does not automatically lead to this process of development. In fact, if very specific policies are not taken to realise such development, the economic growth of a state increasingly often tends to the concentration of income and wealth, making the rich richer, even if not always the poor poorer.

The main motivation behind the developing countries clamouring for the New International Economic Order was the demand for equity in dealing with the running of the international economic system, in all its trade, financial, and technological relationships. The specific methods of such running of the world economy may have changed over time, and the international economic order of today, defining the relationship between the different economies and the rules and procedures of their interactions, are quite different from the international economic order of the 1960s and 1970s. But the basic requirements for equity and justice in the process of development fulfilling the human right to development have not changed. So if a country wants to develop along the path of the right to development, it must ensure the fulfilment of all the human rights consistent with equity and justice.