Madam President,
The Declaration on the Right to Development offers hope to the millions of people around the world who live in abject poverty. Indeed, the aspiration to make the right to development a reality for all is the foundation for the quest to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
Norway wishes to use this general debate to share some thoughts on the way forward for the working group on the right to development.
Norway welcomes all efforts by the High-level Task Force to bring the Right of Development from an academic and political discussion to the development of practical criteria for implementation.
When the working group meets again in May it is our genuine hope that we will be able to find common ground through greater political consensus and more political will.
The starting point for such consensus must be the Declaration itself. At the same time it is our firm opinion that the High-level Task Force has remained loyal to the Declaration in their elaboration of criteria and sub-criteria. We have compared the Task-force’s document with the Declaration on the Right to Development, paragraph by paragraph, and do find its content reflected in the document. We thus urge all stakeholders to use the High-level’s Task Force’s document as the basis for our deliberations on the operationalization of the right to development.
Furthermore, we wish to highlight the decisive role of women’s rights and gender equality in the development process. As concluded in the World Development Report 2012 of the World Bank: Greater gender equality will improve development outcomes, enhance productivity and make institutions more representative. Gender equality is smart economics and is a key to promote the right to development. It is a key objective of our engagement in the working group on the right to development to strengthen the integration of a gender perspective in the criteria and sub- criteria that are under discussion. We thus hope for broad cross-regional support for this approach.
I thank you.
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