Exploring linkages between a human rights economy and the right to development
What: Interactive session, as part of Development Dialogues, organised during the 2024 UN Forum on Business and Human Rights (Geneva, 25 to 27 November).
Where: Room XXVII, Palais des Nations, Geneva
How to participate: In-person, click on the QR code below to register. The session will also be livestreamed.
Background
Our national and international economies have a significant impact on our daily experiences, opportunities and life outcomes, and represent systems that can profoundly affect our ability to enjoy our rights such as the rights to decent work, adequate housing, health care, political participation (Latour 2005). This becomes all the more critical as the environmental crisis calls for a just transition to fossil-fuel free economies, which requires major shifts both from a public sector but also a private sector point of view. As key economic actors, business enterprises also play a role in the enjoyment of human rights.
However, much more needs to be done to unpack the link between human rights and economic policies. Civil society has long called for a shift towards a “human rights economy”, a call which the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has been amplifying and expanding since 2018. Likewise, human rights bodies have been building up a steady stream of recommendations and jurisprudence on economic policy in the last decades. A call for a human rights economy could be an important contribution to re-imagining economic rules to deliver on rights and social justice. This demands a holistic understanding of human rights, to include equally civil, cultural, economic, environmental, social, and political rights, as well as the right to development.
This interactive session aims to review the various concepts and approaches that have been developed, and in particular the links between a human rights economy, the right to development, and the role of corporations.
Moderation: Prof Suyra Deva, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to development
Susana Hernandez Torres, Corporate Regulation Policy Officer at CIDSE will present the case of land grabbing done in the name of development in West Africa (Ghana, Ivory Coast and Nigeria) committed by the Belgian company SIAT.
Contact for additional information about the event: Dr Marianna Leite, Act Alliance (marianna.leite(at)actalliance.org)