Along with world leaders, I have been in New York this week during the opening of the 69th session of the United Nations General Assembly. The week has given me an insight into governments’ hopes and intentions for the post-2015 development agenda.
I have been encouraged to see positive signs from many states, including calls for a framework which “leaves no country and no person behind”; references to human rights, rule of law, poverty elimination, gender equality and women’s empowerment; and a reaffirmed commitment to the programme of action of the International Conference on Population and Development. But there is still a long way to go until the final agenda is decided in September 2015.
As leaders make their grand statements at the general assembly, they must remember that in national and global consultations, people around the world have demanded that the post-2015 framework be built on human rights and the universal values of equality, justice and security. Put into practice those words would change the lives of the women I met in rural Nepal who suffer from uterine prolapse as a result of discrimination and lack of access to health services; the people in the eastern provinces in the DRC who for decades have suffered from conflict fuelled by the quest for natural resources; the tens of thousands of Roma in Europe who are forcibly evicted from their homes every year, and whose children have been placed in segregated schools, condemning them to a substandard education.
Still, having been director of the United Nations Millennium Campaign, I know all too well the challenges which will lie ahead.
The MDGs have achieved a good deal in terms of rallying the world around one unified set of development goals. We have seen states who were once disengaged suddenly competing against their neighbours to meet the targets first. A real culture of purpose has been established.
But the MDGs failed to incorporate the protection and promotion of human rights. Support has not reached the people who needed it the very most — that sizeable proportion of the world who are marginalised from society and systematically denied their human rights by their governments on a daily basis.
One example of how a lack of consideration for human rights has made the goals less than they could be is the target for “a significant improvement in the lives of at least 100 million slum-dwellers”. A lack of protection of their rights actually resulted in many facing an increased risk of forced evictions as governments attempted to meet their targets without paying sufficient attention to procedural safeguards as required by international human rights law.
In order to succeed where the MDGs did not, the post-2015 agenda must integrate and embed human rights across all of its goals. Input must be sought from those most affected by the outcome, and crucially, governments must live up to their responsibility to inform their populations about the promises they have signed up to — because how can people claim their rights unless they know them first?
Effective systems to measure and evaluate human rights goals need to be agreed, both to allow individuals and communities to hold their states to account for their progress, but also to assist states to monitor and improve their own performances. And to really seal the deal: once they know their rights and have the tools to assess them by, people must be able to obtain justice if and when their governments don’t deliver.
Existing human rights treaties and standards give detailed guidance on what is expected of member states in terms of addressing inequalities, ensuring the rights to food, education, health and other fundamental rights, while also guaranteeing crucial participatory rights such as freedom of expression, information, assembly and association.
Full respect for these rights, and access to remedies where these rights are violated, are vital elements in making sure citizens are able to hold their governments to account for their commitments. As negotiations intensify over the coming months, I appeal to world leaders to listen to the voices in their own countries, and to act on their own peoples’ aspirations of living dignity, free from fear and want.
The ‘last mile’ development challenge of delivering real change where it is most desperately needed can only be solved by recognising the crucial role that human rights play in this process. States must not be allowed to continue to shirk the obligations they first agreed more than 60 years ago, through the UN Declaration of Human Rights.
As I head home next week, it is a message I hope the leaders I spoke with take with them.
Salil Shetty is secretary general at Amnesty International. Follow @SalilShetty on Twitter.
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