The Human Right to Development and Freedom from Poverty

This work presents a new agenda for the struggle against poverty, and adds a new dimension to the right to development in international human rights jurisprudence. It probes the nature of poverty, its roots and extent, and the impact that a human rights approach could have on alleviating it. In particular, it examines the conceptual and practical implications of transforming the right to development from a political aspiration into a possible vehicle for the alleviation of poverty and its eventual eradication. The practical implications at international and national levels are dealt with in two case studies. The first examines current World Bank development operations and explores the possibility of integrating the right to development within the Bank’s programmes aimed at reducing poverty, as a legal entity separate from its member states. The second examines the possibility of implementing the right to development in Nepal, one of the poorest countries of the world.