Description:

Subtitle: Uniting Human Rights and Development

In this thought-provoking book, Jean-Pierre Chauffour argues that freedom in all its economic, civil, and political dimensions is the only internally consistent and mutually supportive way of thinking about development and human rights.

When freedom advances, prosperity and human rights progress. When freedom is threatened – especially economic and civil liberties – fundamental human rights are violated and economic development suffers.

Yet although connection between rights and development has long been recognized, practice has not followed principle. Human rights advocates and economic development experts rarely engage each other and often work at cross purposes. Moreover, the proposition that freedom plays a central role in both agendas challenges a number of human rights and development orthodoxies as well as practices developed over the last 60 years.

Proponents of international human rights often peddle formulas with a high moral ground that ignore economic principles and, because they set up an assortment of positive claims on other individuals, undermine basic human rights. Taking the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development as his object of examination, Chauffour thus explains why the right to development, once seen as a powerful paradigm for lifting people out of poverty, has remained a controversial intellectual construct with little practical application.

Development experts often advocate incoherent approaches to development. The author shows how top-down poverty-reduction and growth strategies supported by aid agencies tend to eclipse the fundamental role of freedom in development and end up breaching basic rights, including personal choice, thereby promoting inappropriate institutions and policies.

A reconciliation of the human rights and development communities is possible. It requires highlighting the role that freedom plays in both. Rights advocates must recognize economic liberty as an essential component of human rights, and development experts must recognize the broad range of institutions and economic policies consistent with human rights. With his engaging style, Chauffour makes clear that empowering people with economic freedom, civil rights, and political liberties is the best way to ensure development and respect for the individual. This book provides major lessons to meet the challenges of securing freedom, peace, and prosperity.