Overview of United Nations mechanisms on the right to development

The United Nations has played a key role throughout in the emergence and progressive development of the right to development both prior to and following the adoption of the Declaration on the Right to Development. It has supported a series of expert mechanisms: the Working Group of Governmental Experts on the Right to Development (1981-1989), with a mandate to study the scope and content of the right to development and the most effective means to ensure the realization of economic, social and cultural rights (during its first nine sessions the Working Group played an active role in drafting the Declaration, which was eventually amended and adopted by the General Assembly); the open-ended Working Group of Governmental Experts on the Right to Development (1993-1995), with a mandate to identify obstacles to the implementation and realization of the Declaration and to recommend ways and means towards the realization of the right to development by all States; and the Intergovernmental Group of Experts on the Right to Development (1996-1997), with a mandate, inter alia, to elaborate a strategy for the implementation and promotion of the right to development and to elaborate concrete and practical measures for the implementation and promotion of the right to development.

Related Subject(s): Economic and Social Development