Atlantic Community:Open Think Tank Article "Right to Development and Rights-Based Approach to Development"

The MA thesis researches the right to development as a human right. The paper starts the research from the historical background, the evolvement of the right to development going through the adoption of Declaration on the Right to Development till the creation of the Working group and High Level Task Force on the Right to Development and actions in the field. The research then goes further focusing on the Declaration on the Right to Development, the applicability of the articles and implications in the context of international development. The implications mostly refer to the fact that both developing and developed countries violate the right to development in their own way. Developing countries invoke the right to development to justify domination of economic development thus giving it priority over civil and political rights. Developed states, on the other hand, have the issue of providing a favorable atmosphere for the activities of their TNCs in developing countries very often in violation of human rights. The paper seeks to analyze and show that there can be no domination of one set of rights over the others, that all rights are indivisible and interdependent. Further, the research links the right to development to Millennium Development Goals, and Goal 8 in particular, focusing on their interrelationship in the context of development.

The paper then elaborates on a rights-based approach to development cooperation. It makes a focus on the applicable principles and policies within the rights-based approach, and then takes a lead to discussion of development aid and conditionality in the context of development cooperation. The paper debates the concept of conditionality imposed by donor governments on recipient ones, about the advantages and disadvantages of the conditionality concept, coming to the conclusion that conditionality should be replaced by the notion of mutual accountability where there is a responsibility of both donor and recipient governments.

And finally, the paper elaborates on mutual reinforcement of the right to development and the rights-based approach to explore their impacting potential on international development and gives recommendations on its implementation emphasizing the importance of several factors, such as adherence to human rights protection and promotion in development policies, indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights, replacement of conditionality with mutual accountability notion, good governance, participation, etc., which could lay the ground for the implementation of an appropriate international development while incorporating economic growth and social justice.

Anush Hayrapetyan has a Specialist Diploma in the field of International Relations from Russian-Armenian (Slavonic) University and pursues an LLM degree in Public International LAw and Human Rights from Riga Graduate School of Law.

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