Sustainable Development Goals and Human Rights

The 2030 Agenda’s Sustainable Development Goals and international human rights are connected to each other in many different ways. The contributions of this volume analyse this interdependency by addressing each aspect from a more human rights-focused angle and a development-policy angle. The comparative approach underlying the contributions sheds light both on similarities and differences between these two dimensions and therefore provides a broader perspective on the relationship between development policy and international human rights protection.

Addressing how a human rights-based approach can contribute to poverty reduction, the chapter reflects critically on the tendency of human rights research to imbed poverty analysis in somewhat undocumented allegations such as for instance the impact of neoliberal policies. Research based evidence on human rights and poverty reduction is only modestly available and mostly in local studies. The chapter argues that there are experiences from human rights-based endeavours at the local level that need to be taken into account when addressing how human rights-based approaches can contribute to the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG 1). Positive cases of empowerment processes and improved equal access to services exist. New technology may also offer opportunities for empowerment of the poor and for greater rights-based accountability. Such examples must be included rather than an exclusive focus on negative developments, for instance, with respect to deteriorating equality at national and global levels. The struggles that social actors undertake from below should be recognized and be given voice, even when human rights are discussed with a global perspective.

In its General Comments No. 14 and 19, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has specified the contents of the right to health and the right to social security. The main challenges associated with the implementation of these two human rights have been addressed in several major international policy initiatives and global partnerships: The 2030 Agenda now makes an important contribution to the concretization of the rights to health and social security, because it expressly obliges the international community both to implement the concept of social protection floors and to ensure universal health protection. The extra-territorial obligations deriving from the two human rights are also taken up by the 2030 Agenda.

The right to health is recognized as a basic human right in various United Nations official documents and in the founding principles of the World Health Organization whose constitution envisaged a right to the highest attainable standard of health for everyone. The health implications of the SDGs is linked to fundamental Human rights that the 2030 Agenda is anticipated to contribute extensively to (see footnotes 9, 10, 11).

We discuss the ability of Sub-Saharan African countries to protect the health rights of its populations given the challenges of poor economic development and significant poverty levels though some countries (Rwanda, Ethiopia, Ghana, etc.) have improved health services coverage by removing financial barriers. The right to health can be expensive and African countries did increase their health budgets, as decided in the “Abuja Declaration” target of allocating 15% of overall government budgets to health. Between 1990 and 2013 this allocation did increase from an average of 3.7% to 11.4%.

Attaining health rights in Africa requires certain policy emphases including protections from catastrophic expenditures for health, ensuring access to quality health services, and building effective “voice” for populations to exercise their rights. Enablers of health rights should include good policy and governance, with expanded social movements; and SSA countries should seize upon crises such as the Ebola outbreak to expand health rights. Scarce resources may mean rationing of health services, and it will be important to identify and utilize innovations and ICT technology that can help to make access to health care rights a reality for all.

The 2030 Agenda acknowledges the key role of gender equality and the empowerment of women for the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through Goal 5 as well as through the commitment to mainstreaming gender throughout all goals and in the implementation of the Agenda. The United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is the core international human rights treaty on women’s equality in all fields, and it has produced a wealth of information on causes of discrimination against women, on gaps in implementing women’s human rights that prevent their full and equal participation in all areas of life as well as on successful strategies and instruments to address the structural causes of gender-based discrimination. This article examines how the monitoring processes on CEDAW implementation can be used for promoting gender-sensitive SDG implementation. It also analyzes the possible synergies between the SDGs and CEDAW, in particular with respect to the national, regional, and global follow-up and review processes under the SDGs. As an example, the article looks into the role of National Human Rights Institutions in this regards.

This paper is conceptualized within the framework of gender equality and women’s empowerment and proceeds from the premise that the developmental and political goal of reducing gender inequalities remains largely unmet. The 17 SDGs with goal 5 as a stand-alone on gender equality and more than half of the 17 other goals have integrated gender dimensions with measurable indicators. The pioneers for women’s rights, over a century ago, focused on the labor market. Today, exclusion and discrimination in the labor market indicate that the struggle against these inequalities remains valid. Drawing on the discourse on poverty, the paper notes that this is a fundamental issue for the SDGs but that the feminization of poverty puts more women at risk. An institutional perspective to gender equality and women’s empowerment beckons, if the SDGs are to deliver on this cross-cutting agenda. The paper considers the 2015 review of progress since the adoption of the Beijing Platform of Action (BPFA) undertaken at the same time as the transition from the MDGs to the SDGs and poses the question, can the SDGs deliver on gender equality and women’s empowerment. The review noted that while there has been progress at the normative level, overall progress, has been unacceptably slow, with stagnation and even regression in some contexts. Change towards gender equality has not been deep enough, nor has it been irreversible (United Nation, Res 69/313, Addis Ababa Action Agenda for the third international development conference on financing and development, 2015). The paper analyses the potential for the promise of the SDGs to make change irreversible against the background that while economic prospects appear to have risen, gender disparities have persisted and in some instances, widened, despite the common knowledge that closing the gender gap portends even greater economic growth. The paper argues for a transformative approach that can address deep structure, capacities, mindset and organizing.

In 2015, the United Nations agreed to pursue the Sustainable Development Goal 8 “To promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all.” The chapter argues that this goal will not be achieved. The abundance of persons offering their labor power in relationship to the limited demand for their labor stems from the insufficient absorption of peasants set free from their land. In many late industrialising countries most of those who are leaving agriculture do not find gainful employment even at the current junction. In fact, many of the late industrialisers are prematurely de-industrialising. Explanations for the lack of absorption capacity of industries and productive services range from overregulated labour markets to globalisation. On the basis of a comparison between the conditions prevalent among the early industrialisers and present-day late comers to industry and advanced services, the chapter highlights other factors: demographic pressures, restrictions on migration, productivity differentials vis-à-vis the Global North and the few successful late industrialisers, and the constraints on the promotion of industry stemming from neoliberal globalisation. It also points to challenges stemming from the colonial heritage such a lack of societal trust.

Respect for human rights is highly relevant for each person, everywhere. At the same time, a closer look is necessary on societies as a whole and their respective levels on inequality. Why? Growing inequality has significant impact on societies and has the potential to undermine democracy. For the first time ever, the global community has agreed upon the goal to reduce inequality within and among countries (SDG 10). This chapter aims to provide an overview of the reduction of inequality from a legal-developmental perspective, discussing the social, economic and ecologic dimension of inequality, the reason behind the highly complex SDG 10, its genesis, the long-standing idea of international solidarity, legal consequences, progress reporting on this SDG, Germany’s approach to implement SDG 10 and the road ahead.

SDG 16 includes the rule of law alongside a range of factors relating to violence and crime. In this respect, SDG 16 is reflective of a broader shift towards the securitization of the rule of law and human rights. Securitization here refers to the development of concepts to enhance the coercive function of the State. The chapter will demonstrate how SDG 16 thus sits in a broader context of the securitization of the rule of law in international practice, and raise concerns with this trend. The chapter concludes by warning about the potential further securitization of development generally.

Climate change is a global problem. Addressing it is one of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, which the 2015 Paris Agreement is intended to implement. It will also affect the enjoyment of human rights in many ways, but its causes, its effects, and those responsible, are too numerous and too widely spread to respond usefully to individual human rights claims or to analysis by reference to particular human rights. The 2015 Paris Agreement is relevant to human rights law, not for what it says about human rights—which is next to nothing—but for what it says about the need to address the risk of climate change taking global temperatures above 1.5 °C. The UN special rapporteur is right in principle to argue that human rights law as a whole requires states to comply with expectations set out in Articles 2, 3 and 4 of the Agreement. UN human rights bodies need to act accordingly and hold states to account for what they have agreed in Paris.

The conceptual and legal relationship between human rights, human development and environmental protection is not a straightforward one. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Climate Agreement adopted in 2015 link improvements in human development to human rights and to mitigating global changes in climate and the environment. The UN Declaration on the Right to Development (UNDRTD) adopted in 1986, however, does not include any explicit obligation to protect the natural environment, and to contribute to the provision of global environmental goods. The article explains how global environmental change is defined, how it is linked with human development and how it manifests itself. Then, the article takes a closer look at the UNDRTD and how it could be linked with global environmental change. Finally, the article proposes two concepts that could help to situate the UNDRTD within the challenges of the twenty-first century as exemplified in the 2030 Agenda. First, humanity should be introduced as a third category of right-holders (in addition to individuals and groups). This would include future generations more explicitly than now and put the relationships between species or life-forms as interdependent parts of the web of life into focus. Second, therefore, the rights of life forms should be established to transcend the conceptual boundaries of human rights and develop norms that govern the interdependencies between humans as well as plants and animals in the broadest sense.

In the 2030 Agenda governments committed to a revitalized Global Partnership between States and declared that public finance has to play a vital role in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But in recent decades, the combination of neoliberal ideology, corporate lobbying, business-friendly fiscal policies, tax avoidance and tax evasion has led to a massive weakening of the public sector and its ability to provide essential goods and services and to fulfill its human rights obligations. The same corporate strategies and fiscal and regulatory policies that led to this weakening have enabled an unprecedented accumulation of individual wealth and increasing market concentration. The proponents of privatization and public-private partnerships (PPPs) use these trends to present the private sector as the most efficient way to provide the necessary means for implementing the SDGs. But many studies and experiences by affected communities have shown that privatization and PPPs involve disproportionate risks and costs for the public sector and can even exacerbate inequalities, decrease equitable access to essential services and jeopardize the fulfilment of human rights. Therefore, it is high time to counter these trends, reclaim public policy space and take bold measures to strengthen public finance, rethink PPPs and weaken the grip of corporate power on people’s lives.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 are the new and ambitious global development agenda for the 2015–2030 period. That global agenda can only be realized through a global effort. What does that mean for the division of labour? Traditionally, fostering development has been seen as the primary responsibility of the territorial State. This chapter reflects from a human rights perspective on the role to be played by external governmental and intergovernmental actors in bringing about sustainable development. It ponders strengths and weaknesses of the right to development and extraterritorial human rights obligations, and identifies five challenges for human rights law: the legal status of the obligations to cooperate internationally; the distributive allocation of extraterritorial obligations; the triggers of extraterritorial human rights obligations; the scope of the extraterritorial obligation to cooperate for development; and the ability of human rights law to engage with strong definitions of development, which take growth agnosticism as their starting point.