Casting the Net Wider: Human Rights, Development and New Duty-Bearers (review)

Accountability in international development is a matter of increasing concern. Its weakness in relation to human rights in key international fora, institutions, and processes remains a challenge for a host of development actors and international institutions.

Casting the Net Wider: Human Rights, Development and New Duty-Bearers is a rich collection of essays on an important area of international law and policy—the accountability of non-state actors in international development and their putative duties in relation to human rights. The book is edited by Margot Salomon, Arne Tostensen, and Wouter Vandenhole, bringing together insights from a variety of disciplines and perspectives, including law, economics, political science, and public policy. Its dual purpose is the identification of (new) duty-bearers in relation to development and world poverty, and the consideration and clarification of their respective and various responsibilities (duties, obligations). It is ambitious in its goals and advocates pushing the boundaries of established international law and the confines of positive law, admitting also that the discussion of moral duties (as opposed to legal duties) illustrates the difficulty with which international law keeps up with the ethical demands of our time.

The first part of the book lays the foundation that an integrated view of global concerns is an important premise of the argument for new duty-bearers of human rights. The three interconnected pillars of the United Nations (human rights, security, and development) provide the backdrop for the emergence of a more pronounced understanding of the development-human rights nexus, recognition of the right to development, and the emergence of a more holistic conception of human development, beyond narrow macroeconomic parameters. Manfred Nowak makes a compelling case for the interrelatedness of the three pillars and for the connections between the threats to each, cautioning against fragmentation. These links are evident in Ivan Manokha’s analysis of the causal relationship between poverty and violations of economic and social rights on the one hand, and anti-Western terrorism on the other.

The empirical connection between development and human rights remains crucial to an integrated approach to these global concerns. From this, the critical question of the “value added” or justification for a human rights-based approach is the subject of the chapter by Hans-Otto Sano. It concludes that one of its key contributions is a strengthened accountability, particularly by fostering demand-side accountability and linking global and local accountability.

The second part of the collection addresses “new duty-bearers,” identifying the following as such: the EU, the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO. Extraterritorial obligations under human rights treaties remain contentious but are arguably one way to ensure the coherence and accountability in relation to integrated global concerns. The principle of extraterritoriality is applied to the case of the ICESCR for the EU in a chapter by Wouter Vandenhole. Although the central tenet of this chapter is whether and to what extent human rights obligations are incumbent on the EU as an international organization, the analysis is equally clear in recognizing that the EU has no direct obligations under the ICESCR because it is not a party to that treaty. Nonetheless, the discussion goes on to suggest ways in which the human rights obligations of the EU should not be excluded a priori, but it does not explore how human rights obligations of states parties to the Covenant might influence the actions in the same manner as EU member states.

The “essential element” human rights clause of the EU’s ACP-EC Partnership Agreements is inextricably linked to the consultation procedures under Article 96, the effectiveness of which depends on a host of factors including systematic follow-up, the clarity of objectives, the complementarity of EU actions with those of other actors, as well as transparency and civil society involvement (Chaper by García Pérez). Another crucial dimension of these Agreements is the concept of partnership, which Hugo Stokke explores in historical and...