THE HUMAN RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT: Historical and Contemporary Linkages to Colonialism
Abstract
This thesis concerns the Right to Development (the R2D), which was declared an inalienable human right by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in the non-binding Declaration on the Right to Development (the DR2D) in 1986. It asserts that the R2D was not declared in a realizable manner, explaining the causes of identified doctrinal shortcomings. It explores the emergence of the R2D within the confluence of two post-1945 movements, being decolonization and the international human rights project, asserting that these movements were closely intertwined and substantively influenced by jurists from the Global South. The thesis then examines the political evolution of the R2D within the UNGA, asserting that shortcomings of the DR2D were the result of politicization and resistance to the acceptance of accountability with respect to R2D realization by powerful states, led by the USA. It argues that the R2D ought to be framed as a central component of the binding Right to Self Determination (the R2SD), such that the R2D ought to be interpreted as a binding right to the process of self-determined development. This assertion is illustrated through examination of R2D (non)realization and R2SD (non)observance in the occupied Palestinian Territories, a situation of settler colonization characterized by economic de-development, and deprivations with respect to ‘development as freedom’, a lens suggested by the work Amartya Sen.