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RIO + 20 DEVELOPMENT CONFERENCE - NO
GLOBAL GOALS WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY - APPEAL BY 22 UN EXPERTS
The
experts: Olivier De Schutter (food), Catarina de Alburquerque (water and
sanitation), James Anaya (indigenous peoples), Chaloka Beyani (internally displaced
persons), Kamala Chandrakirana (Working Group on discrimination against women
in law and in practice), François Crépeau (migrants), Virginia Dandan
(international solidarity), Calin Georgescu (toxic waste), Anand Grover
(health), Rita Izsak (minority issues), Margaret Jungk (Working Group on human
rights and transnational corporations), Maina Kiai (freedom of peaceful
assembly and of association), Frank La Rue (freedom of opinion and expression),
Cephas Lumina (foreign debt), Rashida Manjoo (violence against women), Najat
Maalla N’jid (sale of children), Raquel Rolnik (adequate housing), Magdalena
Sepúlveda (extreme poverty), Margaret Sekaggya (human rights defenders), Farida
Shaheed (cultural rights), Gulnara Shahinian (contemporary forms of slavery),
Kishore Singh(education).
GENEVA (19 March 2012) – In an open letter* to world Governments, a group of 22 UN independent human rights experts called on States to incorporate universally agreed international human rights norms and standards with strong accountability mechanisms into the UN Rio+20 sustainable development conference’s goals, as the Rio+20 first round of informal-informal negotiations began today in New York.
“Global goals are easily set, but seldom met,”
the rights experts warned, raising the bar for what the conference can and
should achieve. “A real risk exists that commitments made in Rio will remain
empty promises without effective monitoring and accountability,” they stressed
less than a hundred days before the conference starts.
The second Rio Summit, Rio+20, is expected to lay the foundations for a set of
global Sustainable Development Goals to complement and strengthen the UN
Millennium Development Goals created in 2000.
“Learning from the mistakes of the Millennium Development Goals, the new
sustainable goals must integrate the full range of human rights linked with
sustainable development, and human rights must be the benchmark for whether or
not inclusive, equitable and sustainable development is occurring,” the
independent experts said
Twenty years after the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de
Janeiro, and ten after the World Summit on Sustainable Development in
Johannesburg, the mounting effects of climate change and environmental
degradation have raised the stakes further. Both the Goals and the means of
reviewing progress must be based on human rights from the start.
“Human rights have guided sixty-plus years of progress by providing a legal
baseline for political actions,” they said. “Human rights must now be the glue
in Rio: they must bind countries to the commitments they make. States have an
opportunity in Rio to create the transformative changes needed or else fare no
better than in previous global attempts in this regard.”
A double accountability mechanism
The experts suggested that Rio+20 could establish an international
accountability mechanism similar to the Human Rights Council’s Universal
Periodic Review, which subjects each country’s human rights record to a
State-led peer review on the basis of information submitted by the country
concerned, UN entities, civil society and other stakeholders.
At the national level, Governments should establish their own national
accountability mechanisms, including independent monitoring and civil society participation,
in order to evaluate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development
Goals.
This double accountability mechanism would help to ensure that these goals are
more enforceable than previous international ones, and to enable the full realization
of human rights, including the right to development. Human rights mean
prioritizing the most marginalized and vulnerable in pursuit of the Sustainable
Development Goals. It means that action can be corrected when progress is
uneven or is achieved at the expense of certain groups. The fulfillment of
human rights is the litmus test for whether or not sustainable development is
occurring.
“Science tells us that we are reaching a set of environmental tipping points.
We must therefore make Rio+20 the political tipping point. Our futures and
planet are at stake, and we have three months to shape the ideas and political
consensus that this huge task requires.”
(*) Read the open letter sent to Governments: http://www-stage.lan.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/Pages/OpenLetterRio20.aspx
The experts: Olivier De Schutter (food), Catarina de Alburquerque (water and
sanitation), James Anaya (indigenous peoples), Chaloka Beyani (internally displaced
persons), Kamala Chandrakirana (Working Group on discrimination against women
in law and in practice), François Crépeau (migrants), Virginia Dandan
(international solidarity), Calin Georgescu (toxic waste), Anand Grover
(health), Rita Izsak (minority issues), Margaret Jungk (Working Group on human
rights and transnational corporations), Maina Kiai (freedom of peaceful
assembly and of association), Frank La Rue (freedom of opinion and expression),
Cephas Lumina (foreign debt), Rashida Manjoo (violence against women), Najat
Maalla N’jid (sale of children), Raquel Rolnik (adequate housing), Magdalena
Sepúlveda (extreme poverty), Margaret Sekaggya (human rights defenders), Farida
Shaheed (cultural rights), Gulnara Shahinian (contemporary forms of slavery),
Kishore Singh (education).