Should Human Rights Law Play a Role in Development?

Posner, Eric A.

Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank

关键词: HUMAN RIGHTS LAW;    DEVELOPMENT POLICY;    INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION;    INTERNATIONAL TREATY;    FREEDOM;   

DOI  :  10.1093/wber/lhw008
RP-ID  :  140527

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Many human rights advocates believe thatdevelopment agencies—agencies that define their mission asproviding economic and technical aid to impoverishedcountries should be required to respect and promote humanrights law. This style of human rights imperialism should beresisted. While development agencies should obviously complywith domestic law and try to promote good rather than badoutcomes, there is no benefit in holding them to humanrights law. Human rights law was designed for states, notfor NGOs, and how it would be applied to NGOs is far fromobvious. Because of the ambiguity and vast scope of humanrights law, the practical effect of these proposals would beto add another layer of bureaucracy to development projectswhile subjecting those projects to scrutiny by lawyers withlittle to guide them but their intuitive notions of rightand wrong.