Human Rights Agenda of the United Nations - Essay Example

WHY IS THE UN’s HUMAN RIGHTS AGENDA SO LIMITED? By of the of the of the School 31 July Introduction The UN human rights agenda has been criticized by numerous civil societies around the world based on its formulation and implementation. As the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) come closer to their expiry in 2015, there is quite a heated debate on how the next post 2015 development agenda should be prepared to avoid the flaws of the MDGs. This document is an argument on how the UN Human Rights Agenda was narrowly prepared, limited in focus, and with very little progress in terms of implementation, which makes it limited. Though hailed for fostering progressive developmental cooperation, some people around the globe, especially those concerned with the human rights treaties and millennium declaration, feel that it is a betrayal of the embodied universal values. Failure to place sufficient emphasis on sustainable development Based on items of the current human rights agenda of MDGs, the only item that tries to address sustainable development is on environmental sustainability. However, it gives a bias to two specific issues, which are water and sanitation to improve access to safe drinking water. Apparently, the item seems to focus much to the problems that many societies in the developing and emerging nations struggle with than the already developed nations. The focus of MDGs on access to clean water and sanitation is just but a narrow focus to the big question of water resources management, in a world that is struggling with environmental degradation, declining water resources affected by the climatic conditions and increased utilization of water. The truth is that even after the ‘water for life decade of action’ comes to an end, there will still remain persistent issues related to water, least to mention the challenging factors associated with the environment that affect sustainable development. It is evident that there was a narrow focus on sustainable development. According to Schaefer- Preuss, MDGs focused on “halving the proportion of people in the globe who lacked access to sustainable clean water and basic sanitation” (2014, p.1). While this is just an aspect of the complex need to sustainable development, policy makers failed to consider crucial changes a decade later. Climatic conditions, population growth, and factors of economic development like industrialization are all working to influence the global water cycle and utilization. Today, there are far worse challenges to environmental sustainability inclusive of deforestation, extractive industries that could lead to humanitarian crisis, and which serve as potential hindrances to broad sustainable development in continents. Water is slowly becoming unsustainable and could soon than anyone expects fail to sustain lives and social and economic activities in certain regions. It is already a problem in Africa, where some people have died out of hunger. Apparently, Loewe claims that “the pro-SDG side criticizes the MDGs for having a too narrow concept of development and giving immediate results preference over socially, economically and ecologically sustainable ones” (2012, p.1). Even though the item attempts to address the ecosystem, literally, they lack enough emphasis in perceiving the broader picture of sustainable development. Water serves a greater role in the agriculture and energy sectors for production of food and sufficient energy in the global community, but it is yet left out. Despite the effort drawn to ensure safe drinking water, what sustainable development is, addressed to the poor population who depend on water for irrigation in places like the dry regions of Africa is what the MDGs fail to capture and emphasize on. Left out humanitarian factors of peace and security Looking through the MDG goals, the direction they take to confront real issues in the modern society is comprehensible. However, critical elements focussing on peace and stability of the nations, which are fundamental to development, are left out. Rarely can someone address the issue of poverty without introducing education. Similarly, it is rather absurd to address development and avoid insecurity and nations’ stability. This is because the effectiveness of the former is affected by the latter. Over the last decade, the world has experienced numerous uprisings, social, and political conflicts all leading to states of insecurity in respective countries. In one way or the other, their economic development has declined significantly, crushing down any recent developments experienced in the new era. It is not just a matter of terrorism, but objectively seeking ways to address most especially, social and political conflicts. Before the year 2000, war and insecurities still existed in places like Somalia, the Gulf and Iraq,. Then came East African politically instigated wars, the Arab world uprisings for nations in MENA regions, all which demonstrated something in common., war and conflicts that were the basis of insecurities (food, peace and development) and governments’ instabilities (Messer, n.d.). Faced with conflicts, people continue to be threatened by various types of insecurities, such as hunger and poverty, due to the obstruction of movement to access food and work, for fear of their safety. There is a high probability that insecure nations will continue to be poor and fail to realize the MDGs, when the relationship between insecurity and development is considered (Denney, 2012). By avoiding addressing insecurity, the UN human rights agenda clearly fails to show the world the cost of insecurity to development. The UN post 2015 development agenda aims to reflect on important issues of peace and stability that would affect all MDGs goals and sustainable development (Neira, 2014). The humanitarian rights agenda of the MDGs offers a comprehensive guide, yet incomplete representations of the reality of problems that modern and future societies need to focus on. Perhaps the problem lies in the formulation of the agenda. After the numerous conferences seeking to develop and decide which policies were to go in the agenda, some of the statistics given and expected to be achieved could seem false or under-ambitious, when considering the reality. In a world comprised of billions of people, how ambitious is just halving populations suffering from sanitation and access to clean drinking water. Countries like China and India with the largest populations in world could produce such a number easily, without accounting for the rest of the world. Implementing such statistics appears to be false. One, if the government of a country like China or India has the capital and capacity to command resources and provide social security to half of their population, then it would have been possible to realize the statistical figures much easier and alleviate poverty, but this is not the reality (Alston, n.d.). Truth be told, not even these countries and other developing countries have come close to halving the proportion of the population suffering from deprivation and poverty in their countries. Few are those who have basically made a small positive change. Others have sunk into poverty and the difference between reality and expected change by 2015 still remains wide to achieve with a narrow goal. Another argument is that the target is too narrowly idealistic. While in operation for about 15 years, a much bigger target can be realised, as long as governments commit themselves to the agendas. According to Alston, “Thomas Pogge, posits that the MDGs do not go nearly far enough to warrant support, and focusing on halving world poverty rates by 2015, he claims such a formulation is radically under-ambitious and actually constitutes a dramatic lowering of goals previously endorsed in United Nations forum” (n.d., p. 12). A lot of factors included in key UN conferences like Cairo agendas concerning the plight of Women were left out. However, though the apparent minimalist nature, majority of the countries whom such goals aimed to assist have not realized them. They pose an aspect of reductionist agenda in the UN’s human rights undertakings, and demonstrate their lack of radicalism on the elementary changes necessary to assist the society achieve positive social and economic order. Out of the whole Millennium declaration, the eight goals of the MDGs can be fairly stated to be coined from policies related to the environment, poverty eradication and development. What happened is the breakdown of the existing policies into refined and narrow principles. Most of these have a bias on health, ranging from issues of HIV/AIDS and other diseases, child mortality, eliminating poverty and hunger and maternal health. These are the few impinging factors believed to affect development, but they fail to fully depict what most countries, especially developing ones around the world, require to achieve development. Issues of governance, democracy, security, and education beyond the basic level are fundamental, but are given no priority. A look at the broad international human rights framework, one would realize that the MDGs are just a ratio of a set of broad priorities. Unavailability of the qualitative aspect of development Much can be followed up in most of the goals in MDGs other than goal number 8. Measuring, monitoring and implementation of the development of global partnership for development is nearly lacking, which is one of MDGs weaknesses (Smith and Sengupta, 2014). There was a greater need of using qualitative factors or indicators to assess the progress. Based on goal number 8, it is no doubt that the future agenda would require qualitative means of assessment, just as quantitative targets at used. Such an approach would seek to warrant harmonization of the indicators of sustainable development and set enumeration targets. Limited process in development of agendas The agenda of the MDGs tries to play a unifying role of the international community, but it is so far limited in the process of development. The narrow essence of the MDGs cannot be fully separated from politics in the globe. Some would want the decisions for others, and this follows that while the developing nations are much dependent on industrialized nations, the latter tend to have much political influence. This does not go without appreciating the existing international imbalance of power least to mention the unequal participation of citizens and civil organizations from all countries around the globe. The question is, who really is at the receiving end and who are the benefactors? While there are too many interests vested in the status quo, most of the goals seem to have been influenced by the aid donors alone. In case one considers contesting this claim, he should ask himself why costly issues like insecurities had been left out for a broad strategy of 15 years. Rich nations and western organizations should not be the ultimate decision makers of what is best for the developing countries. Instead the real victims of the issues should define their problem before actually being pushed to accept limited strategized solutions that fail to ultimately address their problems. Every human rights agenda needs to be developed in an open manner within the UN’s framework with sufficient broad participation, if is to attract strong sense of ownership. Both the developed and developing countries and civil societies ought to be well represented and raise the real issues they face. There has been a growing concern that unlike the MDGs, the post 2015 goals should be “much more broadly owned and also relevant to countries affected by fragility and conflict, as they persevere in their efforts to attain lasting peace and a significant reduction in poverty levels” (Conciliation Resources, 2012). The people from different civil societies and countries felt left out it formulation of MDGs, which is one of the weaknesses of the agenda. There exists an element of undermined international negotiations where the body formulating the agenda is poorly represented. This would not only serve to impair the agenda’s acceptance, but even the commitment offered by respective countries and societies towards achieving the goals, because there lacks a sense of ownership. According to Pogge and Rippin, the Inter-Agency and Expert Group (IAEG) claimed to have formulated the Agenda comprised of officials “from the UN, the World Bank, the IMF and the Development Assistance Committee of the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD/DAC)” (2013, p. 2). Important parties were left out and this contributes to the insufficient goals, lack of genuine universality, and narrowly developed human rights agenda. Limited Progress upon agenda implementation It is so unfortunate that after implementation of the policies in different developing countries, the same problems of poverty, HIV and other disease, lack of economic development and deteriorating development still remain in the societies. While the developed nations are accused of scaling back assistance to needy countries, there are consistent weakness of the governments that prevent better socio and economic outcomes. Most of the MDGs will go unfulfilled in the deadline of 2015, because of the “weak political will and a continuing lack of accountability,” which have all served to limit the progress (cesr.org, n.d.). For progress to be realized even in the next 15 years human rights agenda, governments must be willing to cooperate with the UN, and strive to be accountable for their human rights obligations. Conclusion Sustainable development is achieved through attainment of human rights. By default, development is linked to human rights. This is an issue that is recognized in the Millennium Declaration of Millennium Development Goals. Although there is the recognition of the importance of human rights for development, very little attention is given to inequalities and discrimination. It can therefore be said that the UN human rights agenda is limited. The reasons behind this limitation include failure to place sufficient emphasis on sustainable development, left out humanitarian factors of peace and security, unavailability of the qualitative aspect of development, limited process in development of agendas and limited progress upon agenda implementation as discussed in this paper. References Alston, P., n.d. A Human Rights Perspective on the Millennium Development Goals. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 July 2014]. cesr.org, n.d. Sustainable development Goal. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 July 2014]. Conciliation Resources, 2012. Development Peace and Security: The Post 2015 Framework. [online] Available at:[Accessed 31 July 2014]. Denney. L., 2012. Security: The Missing Bottom of the Millennium Development Goals? Prospects for Inclusion in the Post-MDG Development Framework. [online] Available at:[Accessed 31 July 2014]. Loewe, M., 2012. Post 2015: How to Reconcile the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)? [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 July 2014]. Messer, E., n.d. Conflict as a Source of Hunger. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 July 2014]. Neira, M., 2014. Positioning Health in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. [online] Available at: [Accessed 31 July 2014]. Pogge, P. and Rippin, N., 2013. Universal Agenda on the Multiple Dimensions of PovertyBackground Research Paper for the Report of the High Level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda. [online] Available at:[Accessed 31 July 2014]. Schaefer- Preuss, U., 2014. Towards 2015 –Sustainable Development Goals and Post-2015 Agenda. [online] Available at:[Accessed 31 July 2014]. Smith, S.R. and Sengupta, R., 2014. Opinion Piece: Exploring Elements of a Global Development Agenda for International Trade and Investment. [online] Available at:[Accessed 31 July 2014]. Read More