The International Dimensions of the Right to Development: Enabling Poverty-Reduction in Domestic Legal Orders by a Reformed International Legal Order

The right to development can only be fully realized if we take into account the interdependency of States, and if we take seriously the duty to reshape the global environment in which they operate. Such international obligations include both extraterritorial obligations imposed on States as regards their unilateral actions or omissions, insofar as such actions or omissions can affect people or situations outside their territories and/or jurisdiction; and global obligations, which concern States acting collectively in global and regional partnerships. This report clarifies the normative content of these international obligations. It first lists a number of areas directly relevant to the realization of the right to development in which, in recent years, States have achieved a broad consensus, and it notes the advances achieved in general international law to improve the coherence of global governance, by building bridges between the different regimes. It then provides a conceptual framework, emphasizing in particular the status of the obligation of States to cooperate with one another with a view to adopting new international agreements. It then then applies the conceptual framework to six key areas in which the international environment should be improved in order to enable domestic poverty-reduction efforts at domestic level: the management of the foreign debt, which requires in particular that loans take into account the impact of adjustment programmes on the right to development and that States act against vulture funds; the elimination of illicit financial flows, by strengthening the fight against tax evasion and transfer pricing within multinational groups; the improvement of the effectiveness of development cooperation policies; the design of trade and investment policies so as to further the realization of the right to development; and the establishment of universal social protection floors. The report closes, finally, with a proposal to build on the mechanisms established to ensure policy coherence for sustainable development in order to institutionalize the assessment of the extraterritorial human rights impacts of measures adopted by States, as well as of the positions they take in international negotiations