World leaders must reject an aid-based model of development and instead
pursue an approach that puts human rights and justice at its core, 18 non-governmental
organizations urged ahead of a High-Level Panel report to the UN
on the future of sustainable development.
The post-2015 framework must at the very least respect and
reflect pre-existing human rights legal norms, standards and political
commitments to which governments have already voluntarily agreed. If it is going to incentivize progress while
also preventing backsliding and violations, human rights principles and
standards must go beyond the rhetorical, and have real operational significance
this time around. Amongst other things, anchoring the post-2015 agenda
in human rights for current and future generations implies that the framework:
- Upholds all human
rights for all.
- Stimulates transparency and genuine
participation in decision-making at all levels
- Integrates
meaningful institutions and systems to ensure human rights accountability
of all development actors.
- Ensures that the
private sector, at the very least, does no harm.
- Eliminates all forms of discrimination
and diminishes inequalities, including socioeconomic inequalities must be
priorities.
- Specifically and
comprehensively supports women's rights.
- Enable the
currently disadvantaged and commonly discriminated against and excluded
groups to be effective agents of their own development.
- Upholds the legal
obligation to fulfil the minimum essential levels of
economic, social, and cultural rights, without retrogression, which would
imply a focus on “getting to zero” through the provision
of social protection floors, universal health coverage, food security, and
other floors below which no one anywhere will be allowed to live.
- Tackles
structural drivers of inequality, poverty and ecological devastation at
the global level.
A first draft of this statement was prepared by the Securing Human
Rights for All work session of the Advancing the Post-2015 Sustainable
Development Agenda global civil society conference in Bonn, Germany (March
2013). The statement is being circulated for endorsement by interested
organizations. To get involved, please email Niko Lusiani, CESR at nlusiani@cesr.org.
Signatories so far include:
- Amnesty
International
- Arab NGO Network for
Development (ANND)
- Association for
Women’s Rights in Development (AWID)
- Center for Economic
and Social Rights (CESR)
- Center for Women’s
Global Leadership at Rutgers University (CWGL)
- Center of Concern
- Egyptian Center for
Economic and Social Rights (ECESR)
- Equilibres &
Populations (EquiPop), France
- European NGOs for
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, Population and Development
(EuroNGOs)
- Global Initiative
for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
- International Centre
of Comparative Environmental Law, or Centre International de Droit Comparé
de l'Environnement (CIDCE), France
- International
Women's Health Coalition (IWHC), USA
- Kepa, Finland
- National Indigenous
Women Federation (NIWF), Nepal
- Realizing Sexual and
Reproductive Justice (RESURJ)
- Social Watch
- Southern Africa Human
Rights NGO Network (SAHRINGON), Tanzania Chapter
- Terre des hommes
Germany
- WASH United,
Germany
Recent popular uprisings around
the world have shown that it is essential that governments acknowledge that
both major categories of human rights - civil and political rights as well as
economic, social and cultural rights - are indivisible and interdependent, the
organizations said. It is my sincerest hope
that on-going global financial crisis does not lead governments and companies in
developed nations to engage with governments of countries with a proven track
record of human rights abuses. In these countries people who face poverty and
deprivation are subjects of rights, should not be objects of development.
Justice Melusi Sibanda
Organising Secretary – ROHR Zimbabwe/Bradford
Branch
No comments:
Post a Comment