PRESS BRIEFING BY UNDP ADMINISTRATOR

Press Briefing

PRESS BRIEFING BY UNDP ADMINISTRATOR

At a Headquarters press briefing this afternoon to mark Human Rights Day, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), James Gustave Speth, said a third of the people in the developing world were imprisoned by poverty. It was a prison so complete that it denied them their fundamental rights, such as the right to life, liberty and to a meaningful existence.

Explaining that much of the political attention on the human rights agenda had been reserved for issues of political and civil rights, he said poverty was not just the lack of income but the absence of basic amenities such as safe drinking water and medical care. The deprivation of the right to life was so severe that a third of the world's people from the least developed countries had a life expectancy of just 40 years. Illiteracy, one of the most common hallmarks of poverty, imposed severe restrictions on people's access to knowledge, informed opinions and participation in the political process. Women's rights were also being denied with a disturbing frequency around the world. So, incarceration by poverty could be as cruel and as confining as the "political gulag".

Mr. Speth said the human rights debate had been polarized by an ideological split for almost four decades. While some people had emphasized political and civil rights, others argued that without progress and development, the condition needed for the enjoyment of civil rights could not exist. That divide was almost unbridgeable during the cold war. The world had an opportunity in the coming year to move beyond that debate, to move towards an inclusive vision of human rights. With the appointment of Mary Robinson as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the emphasis by the Secretary-General's reform proposals on the progress and management of human rights issues, the future looked promising for human rights.

Reviewing UNDP's goals and objectives, Speth said the Programme was moving towards a rights-based approach in its work. UNDP's overriding objective was the eradication of poverty. Freedom from poverty was a basic human right. There would be a greater emphasis on that in the coming year. In 1986, the General Assembly had adopted the provisions related to the right to development, a right which was frequently denied. The right to development would be a priority in the coming year.

Continuing, he said almost 40 per cent of UNDP's programmes were in the area of good governance. UNDP was working to increase not only the capacity of governments to serve their people, but also their efforts in the areas of the rule of law, the building of judicial systems, constitutional protections, initiatives in political and civil rights, election support and facilitating

the democratic transition happening in different parts of the world. All of those built the social and political environment for the recognition and the realization of the broad and indivisible concept of human rights.

Rediscovering the full breadth of the human rights concerns around the world, the Administrator said, would be the major goal in the coming year. It would be a full year of intensive scrutiny of how the United Nations family could integrate human rights into their work. Political and civil liberties were important. The social, economic and political rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights were as fundamental as political and civil rights.

Citing article 25 of the Declaration, he said everyone had the right to an adequate standard of living, including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services. Everyone had the right to work, to free choice of employment, to a just and favourable condition of work, to protection against unemployment, and to a social order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in the Declaration could be freely realized. While the Declaration was adopted in 1948 to protect the full breath of economic, social, political and cultural rights of people everywhere, those rights had too often been honoured in the breach.

Responding to a correspondent's question on whether poverty eradication took precedence over the political agenda, Mr. Speth said there should be no hierarchy of priorities in human rights. Human rights were indivisible. The world must move beyond the debate of whether the realization of social and economic objectives should come at the expense of political and civil liberties. Or whether to elevate the political and civil rights and neglect issues like poverty. The world must see it as an integrated, holistic vision of human rights. The denial in one area affected opportunity in the other.

* *** *