ABSTRACT
The UDHR did not provide specifically for the right to development.1 Thus, a specific concept of right to development under international human rights law postdates the UDHR. When the right to development was first recognized in 1986 in the United Nations (UN) Declaration on the Right to Development,2 it appeared as a utopian ‘right of all rights’, encompassing almost all the desirable objectives of human society. Although it was initially championed by the developing countries, it was soon adopted by academics, civil society leaders and also many policymakers from both the developed and developing countries. They all joined the effort to give a precise formulation of this right so that it becomes realizable in the real world. A huge literature built up, and when I was appointed the UN Independent Expert on Right to Development, I was overwhelmed by the complexity of the views often conflicting with each other, and extending over the fields of economics, politics and law, not to speak of the basic philosophical underpinnings of the concept of human rights generally. I was deeply influenced by Philip Alston, who was responsible for some of the major human rights studies at the time, Professor Abi-Saab and Stephen Marks of Harvard University. But the commentators on the subject were many, and although I shall not be referring to them by name here, my previous articles have recorded most of them.3
