The Politics of Human Rights and Development: The Challenge for Official Donors

Abstract

This article examines the ‘right to development’ and ‘rights-based approaches to development’, highlighting how each defines development and the degree to which they have been adopted by official donors in their policies and programs. The article then focuses on criticisms relating to justice, participation, empowerment and agency that uncover both the conceptual limitations of the rights–development nexus and the limitations of donor capacity to engage with these ‘radical’ critiques. An approach toward resolving these criticisms, drawing on the implications of rights for the political act of public reasoning and transnational ‘citizenship’, is briefly set out in the final section of the article under the broad title of rights-based development.

Notes

¹The Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted 4 Dec. 1986, G.A. Res. 41/128 U.N. GAOR, 41st Sess., at 3, Annex, U.N. Doc. A/Res/41/128 Annex (1987).

²UNCTAD was established in 1964 as a permanent intergovernmental body and the General Assembly's principal organ for dealing with trade, investment and development.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Thomas W. D. Davis

Dr Thomas W. D. Davis lectures in public policy for the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. He has recently completed a major report, World Bank ‘Post-Crisis’ Multi Donor Trust Funds, and has a book (with Brian Galligan) forthcoming on Human Rights in Asia. Tom is also convenor of the University of Melbourne Human Rights Forum.