Is there a human right to development? Comment on the article by Rumu Sarkar
It is uncontested that development is something positive nations should aim at. Postulating a legal right to development is something different though. Firstly, there is little doubt that the HR to development is not enforceable (which is nothing unusual for international law). Under the concept of sovereign equality it is still the states that are addressed by international law and not the individuals as such. So it needs to be stated that it cannot be more than a well-meant guideline anyway. As a next step it is questionable whether this is even a universally excepted guideline, since it is mostly based on European-western concepts.
As Sarkar mentions, the HR as such are mostly an individualistic concept influenced by European philosophers such as Hobbes or Locke. In the developing world however individuals are more likely to be defined and contained by their relationship to larger groups. There seems to be more collective and communitarian thought in African societies. I would thus suggest that the incorporation of western values to international law, for instance in the Banjul Charter that was adopted by African states itself, is unlikely to go frictionless.
Moreover the catalogue of especially social and cultural rights endorsed by the ICESCR is in my opinion to idealistic and too detailed. Expecting from countries that are barely capable of providing electricity to the largest parts of the population to promote the equality of men and women or expensive joys such as universal social insurance is definitely the product of western idealism and lack of contact with reality. Additionally, while there is not even universal agreement on the value of economic development (e.g. the Iranian constitution refusing material wealth) many societies might view the social and cultural rights e.g. equality as something undesirable. Just by ratifying the avowal to respect HR it will still not be easy to actually transfer them from the states that invented them to states with a completely different societal structure and mindset. These norms seem to undermine the credibility of the ICESCR as a whole.
A currently politically disputed issue the text had reminded me of is the discussion whether humanitarian aid should be made conditional by the respect for human rights. From a donor nation’s strategical interest point of view this could be an effective mean of exercising influence on other nations behavior and impose the own superior world view. As for receiving nations I believe it can make sense to receive aid only under the condition of fulfilling certain criteria such as fair and equal treatment in the criminal justice system (which is supported by Sarkar too) which would contribute to their economic development (if they should even receive aid at all). However I can’t see a moral reason why there is a need to impose typically first-world problem views like gender equality on the developing world.