EU Presidency Statement - Right to Development

EU Presidency General Statement after the Vote on the RIGHT TO DEVELOPMENT, by the UK Mission to the UN on behalf of the European Union, UN General Assembly, Third Committee, New York

Mr Chairperson,

I have the honour to speak on behalf of the European Union. Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Turkey, Liechtenstein, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine, the Republic of Moldova and Iceland align themselves with this statement.

As we reaffirmed at the 2005 World Summit in September, the European Union remains firmly committed to the realisation of the right to development. The European Union believes that Member States must work on as broad a consensual basis as possible if we are to effectively realize this right. The European Union demonstrates its commitment, inter alia, through extensive national, European Community and multilateral initiatives around the world and we will continue to engage actively to improve the implementation of the right to development everywhere.

The European Union would like to emphasize the obligation on the State to work for the fulfilment of the right to development. It is the primary responsibility of States to create the national conditions conducive to the fulfilment of this right. This can best be achieved by applying a human rights perspective to national development plans and global partnerships, which stress the universality, indivisibility, inter-relatedness and interdependence of all human rights. The EU strongly supports the partnership between developed and developing countries set out in the Monterrey Consensus, which states that while 'Each country has primary responsibility for its own economic development …National development efforts need to be supported by an enabling international economic environment'.

The European Union welcomes every opportunity to engage constructively in discussions on the right to development, as demonstrated in the sixth session of the Working Group on the Right to Development as well as at last week's meeting in Geneva of the High Level Task Force on the Right to Development. We also look forward to discussing at next year's Commission on Human Rights, the important conclusions contained in Ms. O'Connor's concept document on the right to development.

With regard to the resolution before us, the European Union has again taken a constructive approach and we made a number of proposals which we believed only served to strengthen the text. The resolution still; however, contains paragraphs that we consider unnecessary or unbalanced. For example, we consider that it is the mainstreaming of all human rights, without differentiation, which should be emphasized. We also consider that the active participation of the human person, the individual, in the process of development and of the realisation of human rights and fundamental freedoms is a fundamental element that should not be overlooked in resolutions on this subject.

The European Union would also like to reiterate its appeal that future texts on this issue be streamlined and should be more narrowly focussed on, and more relevant to, both the Third Committee's human rights agenda and the substantive work on the right to development in Geneva.

Thank you, Mr Chairperson.

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