This text considers the issues of world poverty and global justice, addressing the ability of people in poor or developing countries to have enough food, or clean water, or access to basic healthcare. It draws on international law aimed at the protection and promotion of human rights.

This Article advances an account of the right to development as a legal instrument that holds the international legal order accountable for its role in the production and reproduction of global poverty. It first distinguishes moral conceptions of human rights, as instruments that protect universal features of humanity, from legal conceptions, which tie their existence to their specification in international instruments promulgated in compliance with international legal norms governing the creation of legal rights and obligations. Despite textual ambiguities in the various instruments in which it finds expression, the right to development vests in individuals and communities who have yet to benefit from development. It imposes internal obligations on states in which they live to address conditions that contribute to their plight. The right also imposes external obligations on international legal actors, including developed states and international organizations, to assist developing states in poverty reduction. The right's external obligations are negative and positive in nature. Its negative dimensions require states and international institutions to fashion rules and policies governing the global economy in ways that do not exacerbate global poverty. Its positive dimensions require states and international institutions to provide assistance to developing states in the form of development aid and debt relief. Both drawing on and departing from debates about global justice in contemporary political theory, it justifies these obligations by linking the purpose of the right to development to international law's engagement with colonialism and economic globalization.

This book conducts a comparative legal study from two analytical points of view. First, it accounts for the legal dimensions of the fight against poverty and the right to development as seen from the perspective of domestic legal law. It examines the domestic legal tools, such as constitutional law, that aim to contribute to the fight against poverty and the right to development. Second, the book accounts for the domestic contributions to the international legal framework and examines cross-cutting themes of the contemporary state-of-play on the fight against poverty more broadly and of the right to development. The book consists of several national and thematic reports, which look at these issues from either a national or a thematic perspective. Its first chapter is a general report, which draws on the national and thematic reports to compare, systematize and question the contemporary features at play within the field of the fight against poverty and the right to development.

This book is devoted to the 25th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development. It contains a collection of analytical studies of various aspects of the right to development, which include the rule of law and good governance, aid, trade, debt, technology transfer, intellectual property, access to medicines and climate change in the context of an enabling environment at the local, regional and international levels. It also explores the issues of poverty, women and indigenous peoples within the theme of social justice and equity. The book considers the strides that have been made over the years in measuring progress in implementing the right to development and possible ways forward to make the right to development a reality for all in an increasingly fragile, interdependent and ever-changing world.

The chapters in this volume are based on the papers that were presented at the Calcutta seminar organized in March 1992 by the ILA Committee on Lehal Aspects of a New International Economic Order (NIEO). The conference focused on the right to development, in particular its ideas and ideology, human rights aspects and implementation in specific areas of international law. The volume is accordingly organized in three parts. The chapters cover a vast area of subjects, derived from the UN Declaration of the Right to Development. From the developed and underdeveloped world 33 authors discuss topics including: contents, scope and implementation of the right to development; human rights of individuals and peoples; co-operation between the European Community and the Lomé IV states; current developments in investments treaties; refugee protection; development and democracy; concept of sustainable development; environmental issues; protection of intellectual property; transfer of technology; human rights in international financial institutions; and the legal conceptualization of the debt crisis. Professor Oscar Schachter observes in the first chapter that the Declaration continues to be a `challenging subject for legal commentary' for its `detable legal status, its combination of collective and individual rights, its expansive conception of development and its equivocal obligation'. Apart from support, doubts about the concept to the right to development may also be found in this volume.

This theoretical and practical overview of the international legal architecture between developing countries and advanced nations is divided into two parts, the first providing a theoretical overview of the philosophical implications of international development law principles; the second deals with international financial architecture.

This book explores the right to development in international law. The volume draws on a range of relevant sources to analyze the legal status of international cooperation in contemporary international law, before going on to explore the domestic application of the right to development looking at the example of Pakistan.