The past and future of the right to development

The chapter traces the history of the right to development since its genesis, as an idea, in the early 1970s, to the proclamation of the Declaration on the Right to Development in 1986. The attempts thereafter to elaborate and implement the evolving articulation on its normative and operational content in the UN institutional processes. It highlights milestones in this journey and describes the nature of politics and role of major contributors to the debates at the Commission on Human Rights and its various mechanisms. It covers the ground traversed since the turn of Century in some detail. The move towards expediting a draft convention on the right, without fully addressing concerns, imagined and real, emerging from the work undertaken in recent years has brought about a political stalemate. The prospects for breaking it appear bleak. The perspective presented benefits from the first-hand knowledge of authors, having contributed to the right to development mechanisms.