ABSTRACT
The Charter of the United Nations (UN's) emphasizes three interdependent and interrelated goals: peace, development, and human rights. Environmental degradation very often leads to human rights violations. Development, as it has come to be practiced over the past fifty years, has itself become a cause rather than a cure of human rights violations. The human right to development, set out in the General Assembly Declaration, reaffirms that development is an inalienable human right of every person and all peoples to exercise full and complete sovereignty over all their natural wealth and resources in pursuit of their economic, social, and cultural development. In 1991, the UN Commission on Human Rights endorsed the appointment by the Sub-Commission of a Special Rapporteur on Human Rights and the Environment. The Rapporteur, Ms. Fatma Zohra Ksentini, submitted a series of reports culminating in a final report in 1994 which detailed the many interlinkages between human rights and the environment.
