Freedom from Poverty and the Right to Sustainable Development: One Goal but Different Rights and International Commitments

Abstract

Over the last decades, the right to development as well as standards of development assistance evolved. Recently, development assistance concentrates its actions on the elimination of poverty. Analysis of the right to development and international regulations of the development cooperation (UN, EU, OECD, WB) proves that on the basis of the development cooperation, the eradication of poverty became an independent purpose of the international community, and it can be treated as a new international legal obligation. Additionally, on the basis of international law, it can be proved that presently we have two different human rights: the right to (sustainable) development and the right to freedom from (extreme) poverty. They cannot be treated in the same way because those rights relate to different subjects and objects. Everyone has the right to development but not everyone lives in extreme poverty. To make development cooperation more effective, global development cooperation agenda should take this distinction into consideration and provide two different groups of development goals—one which will concentrate on areas where the humanity struggles with the elimination of extreme poverty, and second which will concentrate on areas where sustainable development is needed. Such distinction can make development assistance, especially in the developing countries, more coherent, effective, and transparent.