The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has issued a letter to all States Parties calling on them to ensure human rights norms and standards are properly integrated into the post-2015 development agenda. With the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals just two years away, and plans for a successor framework to be hammered out at the MDG Review Summit in New York next year, the Committee’s statement offers a timely reminder of the critical role human rights can and must play in creating a better future for all the world’s people.
The communiqué highlights the particular importance of incorporating standards of participation, equality and non-discrimination into future development plans. Given that a marked absence of meaningful accountability systems has been one of the key factors impeding progress towards current MDG targets, most of which will not be met, it also stresses that this must be rectified in the new framework.
Moreover, the Committee reminds States Parties that they have already committed to these standards through their ratification of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and that development goals should be linked to states’ legal obligations in order to give them force.
The full text of the Committee’s letter can be accessed below:
