Human Rights Day 2006

Every year on December 10 the International Community observes Human Rights Day, commemorating the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly.

According to Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights "Today, poverty prevails as the gravest human rights challenge in the world. Combating poverty, deprivation and exclusion is not a matter of charity, and it does not depend on how rich a country is. By tackling poverty as a matter of human rights obligation, the world will have a better chance of abolishing this scourge in our lifetime...Poverty eradication is an achievable goal."

In the past, human rights have not been naturally associated with development which was understood in purely economic terms. But more recently in 2003 a number of core U.N. agencies issued a "Common Understanding on a Human Rights-based Approach to Development Cooperation," which was later incorporated by the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) into operational guidelines for UN country teams when preparing country assessments and UN development assistance frameworks. In 2005 the UN General Assembly's World Summit, recommended mainstreaming human rights into national development policies. The recent creation of a Permanent UN Human Rights Council places human rights squarely alongside security and development as a third key institutional pillar of the UN system.

When asked about the Bank's position on human rights, Ana Palacio, Senior Vice President and General Counsel in the World Bank Group, provided the comprehensive summary that follows.

"Human rights now constitute defined legal standards of the international constitutional order with respect to a core of civil and political as well as economic, social and cultural rights" she said. "How this body of law and principle relates to the work of the World Bank is an issue ripe for analysis, in light of the evolving connection between human rights and development."

It is now widely recognized that human rights have relevance for several other international goals, including development. These linkages are evident in the 2003 UN Common Understanding on a Human Rights-Based Approach to Development Cooperation, in the 2005 UN Millennium Project Report and more recently, in the Secretary General's 2005 Report In Larger Freedom . Each of these highlighted the relevance of human rights to development, and the latter affirmed the connections between these two areas and security.

The Bank's Legal Framework for Human Rights: The World Bank has a significant role in helping its Members in the substantive realization of their human rights obligations in areas that fall within its mandate, and while respecting the legal limits imposed by its Articles of Agreement.

It is clear that the Bank can, and sometimes should, take human rights into consideration as part of its decision-making process. The following considerations may help us to clarify how these legal concepts should be specifically incorporated into the work of the Bank in order to further its mission of sustainable and equitable development:

1. Many areas of Bank activity have a human rights dimension . The Bank contributes to the realization of human rights in these different areas, even though this has never been the explicit or deliberate intention of its policies, programs and projects;

2. There is a need for recognition of the role of human rights as legal principles , which may inform a broad range of activities, and which may enrich the quality and rationale of development interventions, and provide a normative baseline against which to assess development policies and programming;

3. There are circumstances in which human rights generate actionable legal obligations ; actionable under international treaties regimes, or national laws. Here the Bank's role is to support its Members to fulfill those obligations where they relate to Bank projects and policies;

4. The Bank has to better develop and explore the internal and external dimension of this important issue. From an internal perspective, the Bank's analytical work can benefit from a systematic inclusion of human rights considerations and the broadened range of legal analysis these require. Areas such as governance or the legal empowerment of the poor are particularly relevant in this respect.

"The concept of governance is widely acknowledged to be indispensable to sustainable development" says Ana Palacio. "Human rights offer a clear conceptual and legal framework for connecting the supply and demand sides of governance in terms of its basic correlative notions of rights and duties. In addition, as an institution focused on fighting poverty and helping the poor, the legal empowerment of the poor must be addressed at a number of levels."

From the perspective of the Bank's mandate, the international human rights framework can help inform a broad and comprehensive interpretation of legal empowerment of the poor that encapsulates both poverty reduction and governance initiatives.

Palacio concludes, "From an external perspective, this approach requires us to strengthen collaboration with our partners in the broader UN family and with other international actors, including bilaterals, who have a comparative advantage in this area and that have explicit commitments to human rights, including, in some cases, monitoring and enforcement roles and capabilities. These are all partnerships we should continue and strengthen."

By World Bank