Human Rights and Development: How far have we gone?

The very person of each human being shall be respected. This is not only a moral obligation of every
single person in this world but a legal obligation as well.
The United Nations (UN) recognizes that the human person is the central subject of the development
process and that development policy should therefore make the human being the main participant and
beneficiary of development. Development is a comprehensive economic, social, cultural and political process,
which aims at the constant improvement of the well-being of the entire population and of all individuals on
the basis of their active, free and meaningful participation in development and in the fair distribution of
benefits resulting therefrom.1
The interrelationship between human rights and development was established in the 1970s, and
recently, an important achievement in establishing the relationship between human rights and development
is the so-called “Millennium Development Goals’ (MDGs)”.2 The MDGs are eight goals that all 191 UN member
states have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015; these are to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, to
achieve universal primary education, to promote gender equality and empower women, to reduce child
mortality, to improve maternal health, to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, to ensure
environmental sustainability, and to develop a global partnership for development.3
Even if there are signs of greater recognition of the legal dimensions of human rights in development
(Dañino, 2006: 30), the trend across policies of development agencies continues to evidence a ‘separability’;
the tendency even among ‘bridging policies’ is to assimilate human rights in principles, perspectives or
considerations rather than obligations, and to leave them without definite anchorage in laws and treaties.4
In the Philippines, the government made a guideline called “Human Rights Based Approach to
Development Planning” to facilitate mainstreaming the principles of human rights in the Medium-Term
Philippine Development Plan (MTPDP) and the Medium Term Regional Development Plans (MTRDP) for the
period 2010-2016. However, in the current administration, there have been reports of human rights abuses in
the form of extrajudicial killings among other things. Despite of such, according to the World Bank’s latest
edition of Global Economic Prospects, Philippines is among the world’s 10th fastest growing economy in the
world in 2017.5
All in all, there may or may not be a linkage between human rights and development. Regardless, both
must be given importance, jointly and separately, for the promotion of social and international order.

WORD COUNT: 498

1 UN General Assembly. (1986). Declaration on the Right to Development (A/RES/41/128).

2 HUMAN RIGHTS AND DEVELOPMENT, available at http://www.humanrights.is/en/human-rights-education-project/human-
rights-concepts-ideas-and-fora/human-rights-in-relation-to-other-topics/human-rights-and-development (last accessed Feb. 23,
2018).
3Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), available at http://www.who.int/topics/millennium_development_goals/about/en

(last accessed Feb. 23, 2018).

4 Siobhán McInerney-Lankford, Human Rights and Development: a Comment on Challenges and Opportunities from a Legal

Perspective, available at https://academic.oup.com/jhrp/article/1/1/51/2188613 (last accessed Feb. 24, 2018).

5 Panos Mourdoukoutas, Duterte's Philippines Is The 10th Fastest Growing Economy In The World, available at

https://www.forbes.com/sites/panosmourdoukoutas/2017/06/20/dutertes-philippines-is-the-10th-fastest-growing-economy-
in-the-world/#6a4a92ec5887 (last accessed Feb. 24, 2018).