Right to economic development

One serious thing was omitted in the recent World Economic Forum in the Middle East and North Africa meeting, held on the shores of the Dead Sea, as well as in all previous WEF meetings, including the annual ones held in Davos, Switzerland, and that was the mention of the proposition that economic development must be “rights based”.

By that I mean pursuing economic and social development in all their dimensions, particularly with human rights in mind.

A glance at the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1976 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) shows that member states are called to observe a certain set of rules and guidelines as they formulate, adopt and implement their short-, medium- and long-term developmental plans.

Article 22 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone... has the right to social security and is entitled through national efforts and international cooperation... to the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his [her] dignity and the freedom of his [her] personality”.

Articles 23, 24 and 25 of the same international instrument spells out in more details what these broad rights are all about.

Article 23 speaks of the right to work free of discrimination and to receive just remuneration to ensure for a person and his/her family an existence worthy of human dignity.

Article 25 may have summed up these basic rights by stipulating that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social security”.

ICESCR spelled out these generic rights in even more detail. In the third perambular paragraph of the covenant, there is a mention of the “ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from fear and want [which] can be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights, as well his [her] civil and political rights”.

It would have been in order for WEF, and the right thing to do, to at least recognise these basic parameters for development and their conditionality on the respect for the basic human rights, be they civil, political, economic, social or cultural.

Failure to even make reference to the need to have economic, social and cultural developments “rights based” is an unfortunate omission that future WEF gatherings will want to address.